“Okay, reel in the line. Get the slack out of it. Do you want some help?”

“Uh uh.”

One of the young men came over and stood by her side. “Atta girl,” he said as she cranked the reel. “It’s probably gonna take off on you another time or two. Just…”

She yelped as the fish began stripping line from her reel once more, but it quickly tired of the battle this time, and she started reeling it in again, laughing.

Another of the men had come over to watch. “It’s a blue,” he said, as the fish thrashed wildly just below the surface of the water. “And a real beauty. Almost as pretty as the fisherman.”

Lacey managed to grin at him as she struggled with her pole.

“Fisherwoman,” the first young man corrected him.

“Right,” said his friend. “No doubt about that.”

Lacey blushed. Alec thought she looked like a trembling mass of erogenous zones.

The first fisherman reached over the railing with the net as Lacey pulled the bluefish from the water. “Eight pounds, I’d say.” He scooped the fish up easily and lifted it onto the deck.

“Don’t let it jump back in!” Lacey screamed, and she lowered herself next to Alec, holding on to the fish with a rag while he extracted the hook from its mouth. One of the young men lifted the lid of the cooler, and Alec dropped the fish inside. Then, with one last look at Lacey, the fishermen returned to their own poles at the stern.

Alec and Lacey baited their hooks again and took their seats. Lacey was smiling.

“That was good work, Lacey,” he said.

“We don’t have to eat it, though, do we?” she asked.

“No. We can give it to Nola. She loves bluefish.”

“Noler,” she corrected him and he laughed. Annie, with her Boston accent, could never master those open “a”s. “I’d like you to meet my friend Noler and her daughter Jessiker,” Lacey said, mimicking her mother’s husky voice.

“She wasn’t quite that bad,” Alec said.

“I’m just glad she didn’t name me Melissa or something.”

He smiled at a memory. “She wanted to name you Emma, but I refused. I told her I’d only go along with it if she could say the name for a week straight without turning it into Emmer. But of course, she couldn’t do it.”

“Emma. God, Dad, thanks, you saved me.”

The young man who’d called her a real beauty walked by, and Lacey turned to smile at him.

“I should tell them you’re barely fourteen,” Alec said.

Lacey shrugged. “Well, Mom was only fifteen the first time she…you know.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me.”

“She did?” Thanks, Annie.

“I mean, she said it wasn’t good to do it that young, but she turned out all right.”

“She was lucky she didn’t get pregnant. And there are diseases around now that she didn’t have to worry about back then.”

“I know all that, Dad.”

He couldn’t see Lacey’s face, but he could practically hear her rolling her eyes, and he waited a moment or two before he spoke again. “So, does that mean you’re planning to have sex next year when you’re fifteen?”

“God, Dad, that really isn’t any of your business.”

He stopped himself from telling her it most certainly was his business. This was too good. She was actually talking to him. He probably should say something about birth control. If he brought it up, though, wasn’t that tantamount to giving her the go-ahead?

“Jessica’s done it,” Lacey said suddenly, her eyes glued to the water.

“What?”

“God, I shouldn’t have said that. You won’t tell Nola, Dad, will you?” she pleaded. “Please don’t. Jessica would kill me.”

“No, I won’t.” Could he keep that promise? He would have to. He tried to picture sultry little Jessica Dillard in bed with someone and could not come up with a clear image. “Is she…being careful?”

“I guess.” Lacey sounded irritated by the question and he decided not to push her further.

They caught a second and third bluefish before the rocking of the boat took the pleasure out of fishing. Alec was relieved when the captain turned the boat around and headed back to shore. Most of the other fishermen had reeled in their lines and were sitting down. A few of them moved inside the cabin as the wind whipped up.

“You’re supposed to watch the horizon if you don’t feel well, right?” Lacey asked.

“You’re not feeling well, Lace?” He did not feel that well himself.

She drew her windbreaker tighter around her and shook her head. A rain was starting. He could see droplets of it fill her hair and sparkle in the light from the cabin.

Lacey suddenly moaned and stood up, grabbing for the railing. He stood next to her, lifting her thick hair away from her face as she got sick, and he remembered doing the same for Annie when she was carrying Lacey. A horrendous pregnancy, although she had always told Lacey it had been a delight-filled nine months, as though she was trying to change the memory of it in her own mind.

Alec took his handkerchief from his jeans pocket and wiped Lacey’s eyes and mouth. “Let’s move over here,” he said. They sat down on the deck, leaning against the cabin to give them some protection from the wind and rain. Her teeth were chattering and he put his arm around her, pleased that she didn’t protest.

One of the fishermen was getting sick somewhere on the other side of the cabin. Lacey whimpered at the sound of his retching, and leaned against Alec.

“Daddy,” she said, “I feel so bad.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He looked out at the horizon. Through the haze he could make out the string of lights along the shore and, to the north, the pulsing beacon of the Kiss River Lighthouse. “Look, Lace,” he said, “we’re almost home.”

She raised her head, but lowered it to his shoulder again, moaning, and he hugged her tighter. He was cold and wet and running the risk of Lacey getting sick down the front of his jacket, yet he had not felt this completely content in a very long time.

Lacey staggered to the car when they reached the inlet, while he carried the cooler of fish. He set it in the back of the Bronco and climbed into the driver’s seat. He looked over at his daughter. “Still a little green around the gills,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Mmm.” She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.

She was quiet during the drive home. She did not even bother with the headset, and the radio rested silently in her lap.

Once in the house, Alec set the cooler on the kitchen table and took a good look at his daughter as she pulled off her soppy windbreaker. Her face was white, the skin around her eyes puffy. “I guess fishing wasn’t the best idea,” he said.

She set her crumpled jacket on one of the chairs and opened the top of the cooler. “Well,” she said, lifting out the smallest bluefish, “Noler will be happy.”

He smiled. “I’ll take care of the fish, Annie. You go on up to…”

Lacey spun around to face him. “I am not Annie!” She threw the fish at him and it caught him on the cheek, cold and wet, before falling to the floor with a thud.

“I’m sorry, Lace,” he said.

“You make me sick!” She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, her red hair flashing in the kitchen light.

She was already gone by the time he got up in the morning, and the house felt empty. He carried the fish over to Nola’s. She was out, but the house was unlocked and he put the fish in her refrigerator and left a note on the kitchen table. Blues in the fridge, he wrote, and imagined adding a second line—By the way, your daughter is having sex. How would he feel if Nola knew something like that about Lacey and didn’t tell him?

He was putting together some information on the lighthouse for Olivia when Lacey came home that afternoon. He heard the back door slam shut and the thumping of her footsteps on the stairs as she ran up to her room. He’d been rehearsing what he would say to her all afternoon, what Olivia had coached him to say during their phone call the night before: He’d enjoyed her company last night, he would tell her. Please don’t let his one mistake ruin it.

The door to Lacey’s room was open, and at first he thought there was a stranger in the room—a young girl with jet black hair, sorting through the top drawer of Lacey’s dresser.

“Lacey?”

She turned around to face him and he gasped. She had dyed her hair and cut it short, nearly to her scalp. In some places it looked practically shaved, the whiteness of her scalp clearly visible against the stark blackness of her hair.

“What did you to do yourself?” he asked.

She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t look a thing like her now, do I?”



CHAPTER TWENTY


“She cut off her hair and dyed it black,” Alec said.

Olivia rolled onto her side, moving Sylvie out of her way. She knew when the phone rang at ten-thirty each night who it was, and she was sure to be in bed by then. He was the one who said it first—that he liked talking to her from his bed, that his bed was the loneliest place in his house since Annie died. Yes, she agreed, she knew exactly what he meant. She felt close to him, talking to him in the darkness. His lights were off as well; she had asked him that the first night. She’d stopped short of asking him what he slept in, not certain she wanted to know.

“She’s tired of existing in Annie’s shadow,” Olivia said. She understood all too well how Lacey felt.

“It makes her look cheap,” Alec said. “I keep thinking of those men on the boat. She was enjoying their attention a little too much. She told me her best friend is having sex. Maybe she’s not as naive as I’d like to think. Annie was only fifteen her first time.”