Lacey shrugged. “’Kay.”

Clay glanced behind him. “Better get to work,” he said, and he turned and walked back toward the stage.

The band began playing “Pomp and Circumstance,” and the graduates filed into their seats. Alec and Lacey turned to watch them. Alec tried to tune out the familiar, stirring music, imagining himself sailing across the sound, working with the wind.

The graduates were finally seated and the speeches began. He felt Lacey tense next to him as Clay walked up to the podium. He wanted to put his arm around her, pull her close, but he kept his hands in his lap as he watched his son. Clay looked for all the world like a man up there. His voice seemed deeper as it poured through the loudspeaker; his smile was genuine. There was nothing at all to betray his nervousness. Anyone would think he was making up the speech on the spot, he seemed so comfortable with the words. He talked about his class and its accomplishments. Then he hesitated briefly, and when he spoke again his voice quivered, almost imperceptibly.

“I’m grateful to my parents, who, through their love and respect, taught me to believe in myself and think for myself.” Clay looked at Alec for a moment and then back up to the crowd. “My mother died in December and my only regret is that she can’t be here to share this moment with me.”

Alec’s eyes filled. He felt a shifting in the audience behind him as people turned to look at him and Lacey. He would not fall apart here.

Windsurfing. Cutting through the water, far out in the sound, far from the shore. Far from the joyless reality that had become his life.

A woman leaned forward from the front row to get a look at him. For a moment he thought it was the doctor he’d met at the studio. Olivia. He leaned forward himself to see her more clearly, and felt some disappointment that the woman was a stranger.

Tomorrow was Saturday. He would go to the studio about the time she’d be done with her lesson. He would buy her lunch. He would finally ask the questions that had been haunting him for the last few long and lonely months.



CHAPTER TEN


The glass was cool beneath her fingertips. Olivia drew the glass cutter cleanly across the surface, mesmerized by the changing color of her hands. Tinted sunlight flooded the studio and fell across the work table in violet and teal and bloodred, at first making concentration on her task impossible.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tom said.

He was right. After a while, the colors seemed essential. Intoxicating.

Tom handed her another glass cutter, this one with a beveled, oil-filled handle. “Try this one on that piece,” he said.

She took the cutter from his hand and scored a perfectly straight line down the center of the glass.

“You’ve been practicing,” he said.

She beamed. “Nothing to it.” She had been practicing, setting up the glass at her kitchen table each evening after work. She’d had to force herself the first time—there were several articles she should have been reading in The Journal of Emergency Medicine—but then she got into a pattern, and she began to look forward to getting home in the evening, sitting down with the glass. She’d drawn her own geometric design on graph paper last night, and now she was cutting shapes to fit the design from scraps of colored glass.

She had nearly finished scoring the third piece when Alec O’Neill arrived. He nodded to Tom before his eyes settled on her.

“I’d like to talk with you,” he said. “Do you have some time after your lesson?”

She took off the green safety glasses and glanced at her watch, although she had no other plans for the day. “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. He was wearing acid-washed jeans and a faded blue polo shirt, but at that moment he was bathed in a vermilion light from head to toe.

“Twelve?” he suggested. “I’ll meet you across the street at the deli.”

He disappeared briefly into the darkroom and then left again after telling her he’d see her soon. The stained glass panel on the door swayed for a moment after he closed it, and Olivia watched the wall near the darkroom change from blue to rose, then blue again.

She reached for another scrap of glass, a piece she’d been eyeing since her arrival at the studio that morning. It was a deep green, with a light, rippled texture.

“No,” said Tom. “Not that piece. It’s hand-rolled. Too delicate.”

“But it’s so beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the cool, wavy surface. “I haven’t broken anything yet, Tom. Couldn’t I try it?”

“All right.” Tom reluctantly let her set the glass in front of her on the table. “But pretend this piece of glass is Alec, all right? He’s about as fragile as a person can get. I don’t know what it is he wants to talk to you about, but keep in mind you need a light touch, okay?”

She looked at Tom’s dark blue eyes. “Okay,” she said, and the word came out in a whisper. She slipped on the safety glasses again, then carefully set the cutter to the glass, licking her lips, holding her breath. But despite her caution, despite the lightness of her touch, the glass splintered raggedly in pieces beneath her multicolored hands.

The tiny deli was crowded. People in bathing suits pressed up against the counter, and the smell of cold cuts and pickles mingled with the scent of sunscreen. Olivia felt overdressed in her flowered skirt and green blouse. She stood against the wall by the door, searching the crowd for Alec’s face.

“Dr. Simon.”

She followed the voice with her eyes, peering around the back of a woman standing next to her to see Alec at one of the four small tables near the windows. She squeezed her way through the crowd. Alec stood up and leaned across the little table to pull the chair out for her.

“Thanks.” She sat down, catching her reflection in the window. Her straight, dark hair brushed the tops of her shoulders, and her bangs had grown long enough to sweep to the side. She remembered the black and white photograph of Annie, with her wide smile and glittering hair.

“It’s crowded, but they’re fast here.” Alec turned to look up at the menu, written in chalk on a black slate board hanging above the counter. “What would you like?”

“Turkey on whole wheat,” she said. “And lemonade.”

Alec got up—sprang up—and walked behind the counter where he spoke to one of the young women who was making sandwiches, his hand on her shoulder. Olivia studied him from the safety of her chair by the window. He looked about forty and a little too thin, thinner than he had been that night in the ER. He was tan, but there were circles beneath his eyes she did not remember from that night, and hollows in his cheeks. His hair was very dark, yet even from this distance she could see the gray creeping into it at his temples. He moved with an athletic grace and she imagined he worked construction, something that put him outside all the time, that allowed him to use up his wired energy and kept him in shape.

The woman behind the counter handed him their drinks and he nodded his thanks to her before turning to work his way back to the table. Olivia wondered if he ever smiled.

He put her lemonade in front of her and took a long drink from his own cup before sitting down again. She had the feeling he did not sit often.

He looked at her across the table. The sunlight hit his eyes and sharpened the contrast between the translucent blue and the small black pupils. “I asked you to meet me because I need some answers about what happened to my wife that night,” he said. She felt his denim-covered knees touch her bare ones and drew her chair back a little. “It didn’t seem important then, but I can’t seem to… I keep wondering…” He rubbed his temples with his long tanned fingers. “There are these gaps for me. I mean, I said good-bye to her on Christmas morning and that was it.” He dropped his eyes and leaned back as the waitress set their sandwiches down in front of them. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and Olivia knew he was very close to the edge.

“Mr. O’Neill,” she said after the waitress had left.

“Alec.”

“Alec. I’ll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, but some of the answers might be hard to hear. Maybe this isn’t the right place.”

He looked around him at the press of bodies. “I have an office near here,” he said. “I’m not working these days, but it’s open. We could take our sandwiches over there. Would you mind? Do you have time?”

She nodded. “That would be fine.”

Alec got a bag for their sandwiches, and they walked outside and across the street to the studio parking lot.

“You can follow me,” he said, opening the door of a navy-blue Bronco.

She got into her Volvo and followed him out to Croatan Highway, where he turned left towards Nags Head. He had an office, he’d said. Maybe he managed a construction crew. What did he mean he wasn’t working? She realized she knew nothing about him, other than the fact that he’d been married to the woman she both idolized and detested.

They pulled into the parking lot of the Beacon Animal Hospital and she frowned when she saw the shingles hanging below the sign: Alec O’Neill, DVM and Randall Allwood, DVM. He was a vet. She had to quickly reorganize her thinking about him.

Alec got out of his car, carrying the bag with their sandwiches. “Let’s sneak in the back way,” he said.

Olivia felt oddly criminal, as though she should tiptoe across the pea gravel that crunched beneath their feet as they walked around to the back of the building. Alec opened the door and they stepped into a cool, vinyl-tiled hallway. Frantic yapping filled the air. He unlocked the first door on the left and let Olivia in ahead of him. It was a small office, the walls paneled a pale, ashy color. The air was warm and stale, and Alec reached up to turn the knob of the air conditioning vent in the ceiling.