There was still hope in his eyes. It was always that way. Until you said it clearly, until you stopped mincing words, that hope would be there. The son understood, though. He looked like a younger version of his father—the same black hair, striking pale blue eyes beneath dark brows. He turned to face the wall, his shoulders heaving, although he made no sound.

“Do you understand what Dr. Simon is saying?” Kevin asked.

The man stared at her. “Are you saying Annie’s dead?”

Olivia nodded. “I’m sorry. We worked on her for over an hour but there was…”

“No!” The girl threw herself at Olivia, knocking her into the wooden arm of one of the chairs. She flailed at her with closed fists, but Kevin wrapped his arms around her from behind before she could cause any real harm. “She can’t be dead!” the girl screamed. “There wasn’t any blood.”

Alec O’Neill extracted the girl from Kevin’s grip and pulled her into a hug. “Shh, Lacey.”

Olivia regained her balance and set a hand on the girl’s back. How did she know about the blood? “She was bleeding inside, honey,” Olivia said.

The girl pushed Olivia’s arm away. “Don’t call me honey.”

Alec O’Neill pulled Lacey closer to him and she began to weep against his chest. Olivia looked at Kevin. She felt helpless.

“I’ll stay with them,” Kevin said.

Olivia walked to the door but turned back to face the family once more. “If you have any questions, please call me.”

Alec O’Neill looked across the room at her and Olivia stood fast, forcing herself to face the hurt in his eyes. She’d taken something from him. She needed to give him something back.

“She was very beautiful,” she said.

Jonathan and the helicopter pilot were standing in the hallway, and she had to pass them to get to her office.

“Nice job,” Jonathan said, his tone mocking.

She ignored him and walked into her office, where she cranked open her windows to let in the cold air. The snow was still falling, so silently that when she held her breath she could hear the thunder of the ocean two blocks away.

After a while, Kevin poked his head in her door. “You okay, Olivia?”

She turned away from the window, sat down behind her desk. “Yes. How’s her family?”

Kevin stepped into the room. “Dad and the son went in to see her,” he said as he sat down across the desk from her. “Daughter didn’t want to. I think they’ll be okay. Pretty solid family. Mom was the hub, though, you know, so it’s hard to say.” He shook his head. “Life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like this one was pretty rough on you.”

She felt a tear hit her cheek and Kevin plucked a tissue from the box on her desk and handed it to her.

“Cramer’s an asshole,” he said.

“I’m all right.” She sat up straight, blew her nose. “So, do you ever have to comfort Jonathan or Mike? Hand them tissues?”

Kevin smiled. “You think women have exclusive rights on feeling like shit?”

She thought of Alec O’Neill’s eyes when she’d left the waiting room. Those eyes were going to haunt her for a long time. “No, I guess not,” she said. “Thanks for stopping in, Kevin.”

It was after seven. Her shift was long over. She could leave now, anytime she wanted. She would drive to her house on the sound where she would have to tell Paul what had happened tonight, and for the second time that night she would watch a man crumble. What was it about Annie O’Neill?

Olivia looked down at her hand where it rested in her lap. She turned it palm side up and thought she could still feel it—the life, the warmth of Annie’s heart.



CHAPTER TWO


Paul Macelli turned off the Christmas tree lights at seven forty-five and returned to the dining room table, where the turkey, the sweet potatoes, the green beans had grown cold. The gravy had formed a skin and he dabbed at it with his knife, watching the pale brown film coat the silver. He’d lit candles, poured wine. He was trying, wasn’t he? But damn Olivia. She gave his anger justification at every turn. Her work was more important than her marriage. Even on Christmas she couldn’t get out of the emergency room on time.

He looked up at the darkened tree. He probably wouldn’t have bothered with one this year, but Olivia had bought it on her own a week earlier, a mountainous blue pine that she set up herself in front of the window facing Roanoke Sound. She decorated it with the ornaments they’d collected over the nine years of their marriage and strung it with tiny white lights. Last year he had dropped the crystal star they’d always put on top, and so, he thought nobly, it was up to him to find a replacement. He knew exactly what he wanted, had seen it weeks earlier in Annie’s studio. He’d been excited by the prospect of having a legitimate reason to go back, a legitimate reason to see her and feel himself surrounded by her stained glass and photographs. But she hadn’t been there on that particular morning, and he struggled to mask his disappointment as Tom Nestor, the ponytailed artist who shared her studio, wrapped the ornament in tissue paper for him.

“I feel bad charging you for this,” Tom said. “Annie’d probably just give it to you.”

Paul had smiled. “Annie would give everything away if she could,” he said, and Tom smiled back, as though they shared a secret, as though they both had the privilege of knowing Annie’s true nature.

He’d brought the ornament home and set it on top of the pine. It was a stylized stained glass angel in an oval frame with a light behind it. The angel’s silver-white robe had that look of liquid silk that was Annie’s trademark. How she was able to do that in glass he would never understand.

The first time Olivia saw the angel, her face paled and a look of utter defeat came into her eyes.

“Do you mind?” he’d asked her.

“Of course not,” she said, with a truly admirable attempt at sincerity. “It’s lovely.”

He heard Olivia’s car pull into the garage, directly below the dining room table. Paul felt the scowl grow on his face as the engine sputtered to a stop, and in a moment Olivia came in the front door, pulling her gray scarf from her neck. She glanced into the dining room and shook her head quickly, as if to rid her sleek brown hair of the clingy snowflakes.

“Hi,” she said quietly. She took off her coat and hung it in the closet by the front door.

Paul slouched in his chair and let his scowl speak for him, not liking himself much at that moment.

“Why don’t you have the lights on?” Olivia asked. She hit the wall switch and Annie’s angel sprang to life, the silvery robe seeming to swirl in the glass.

He didn’t answer, and Olivia moved to the table and sat down across from him. Sylvie, their gray Persian cat, leaped softly to her lap. “I’m sorry to be so late,” Olivia said, her white hands absently stroking Sylvie’s back. “We had a terrible case come in.”

“Everything’s cold.”

She glanced at the food, then back at him. Her eyes were beautiful. Green. Dark-lashed. A striking contrast to her white skin. “Paul,” she said, “the case that came in—it was Annie O’Neill.”

He drew himself up straight in the chair. “What?” he said. “Why?”

“She was working at the women’s shelter in Manteo tonight and she got in the middle of some gunfire.”

“Is she all right?”

Olivia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Paul. She died.”

He stood up so quickly she jumped, and the silverware shivered on the table. “Is this some kind of sick joke?” he asked, although he knew Olivia was not the type for jokes, sick or otherwise.

“The bullet went straight through her heart.”

The glowing angel taunted him from high above Olivia’s head. “Please tell me you’re lying. Please, Olivia.”

“I’m sorry.”

She was so calm. So cool. He hated her just then. “Excuse me,” he said. He turned and started up the stairs, Olivia close on his heels. He pulled his suitcase from the hall closet and carried it into their bedroom, where he tossed it on the bed. Olivia hung back in the doorway as he pulled some of the neatly pressed clothes from his closet and threw them into the suitcase still on their hangers.

“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

“I have to get out of here.” He felt trapped by her voice, by her presence. She could never understand.

“Paul.” She took a step toward him and then seemed to think better of it, retreating once more to the doorway, gripping the jamb with her fingers. “This is crazy, Paul. You barely knew her. You were infatuated with her. That was your own word, remember? You said it was one-sided, that she was happily married. I met her husband tonight. I had to tell him…”

Paul leaned toward her. “Shut up,” he said. She took a step back into the hall and he knew he had scared her. He was scaring himself. This was a new and alien Paul Macelli, not the person he’d been for the past thirty-nine years.

Olivia clasped her hands in front of her, the fingers of her right hand playing with the diamond-studded wedding ring on her left. When she spoke this time, her voice was small. “You can talk about her if you like. I know I said I didn’t want to hear it anymore, but this is different. I’ll listen. Just please don’t leave, Paul. Please.” Her voice cracked and he winced. He wanted to put his hands over his ears to shut her out.

He stepped into the bathroom and gathered up his toothbrush, his razor, the case for his eyeglasses. He walked back into the bedroom and dumped them on top of the clothes in the suitcase and zipped it closed. Then he looked up at Olivia. Her lips and cheeks were still red from the cold, her eyes blurry behind tears he had no desire to watch her spill. He looked past her, into the hall where he could see the faint light from the tree downstairs.