“And I need the income.”

He pulled into the little parking lot and turned off the ignition. “Annie had a life insurance policy.” He looked over at her. “It was ridiculous. Three hundred thousand dollars on a woman who earned about fifteen thousand a year and gave most of it away. Or,” he laughed, “spent most of it on insurance premiums, I guess. It was a shock to me. Tom found it when he was cleaning up her stuff at the studio.”

“Why did she do it?”

Alec watched the windsurfers on the sound. “I have two theories,” he said. “Either she knew I’d be so devastated if she died that I wouldn’t be able to work for a long time. Or else, some insurance salesman got to her and she just wanted to make his day. She needed people to like her.” He shook his head. “I think that was why she gave so much of her work away. She never lost that insecurity. She never thought people would care about her just for herself.”

“Well, money’s not the only reason for working,” Olivia said. “You loved treating that horse last night, Alec. You lit up when you were talking about it. Why don’t you go back a day or two a week?”

He hesitated. “It scares me. I’m not in such great shape, though I’m a lot better than I was before you told me about that night in the ER.” He looked at her. Her cheeks were red. The zinc oxide had faded from her nose. She would be hurting tonight. “But it gets stressful at the animal hospital, especially in the summer,” he continued. “Lots of emergencies— Well, look who I’m talking to about emergencies, and I’m just talking about dogs and cats.”

“Yes, but they still suffer. And so do the owners.”

“Right. It never used to bother me, but since Annie…”

“It’s like getting back on a horse, though,” Olivia interrupted him. “You’ve got to do it, and the longer you wait the harder it becomes. After something terrible happens, I sometimes force myself to go into work the next day even if I’m not scheduled. I went in the day after Annie died, even though I didn’t have to.”

He stared at her. “You push yourself too hard, Olivia.”

“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “Just one day a week, okay?”

He smiled. “If you’ll call Paul and try to see him this weekend.”

Paul thought he’d made a mistake in leaving her.

Olivia drove from Rio Beach to the little shop across the parking lot from Annie’s studio, where she bought the Jenny Lind crib she’d had her eye on for weeks. The sales clerk helped her load the box into the trunk of the Volvo, and she drove home with a long-forgotten sense of hope and well-being—and the beginning sting of a fierce sunburn.

She lugged the box into the house and rolled it on its sides through the hall until she reached the little room she would make into a nursery. There, she rested it against the wall, stopping short of taking it apart and setting up the crib. She wouldn’t tempt fate by being overly optimistic.

She would call Paul tonight, ask to see him, talk to him. She was rehearsing the conversation in her mind as she walked out to the mailbox to pick up her mail, and it was there she found the note, scribbled on the back of a used envelope.

“Stopped by on my way to Washington,” Paul had written. “I’ll be up there for a week or so working on a story about oil drilling off the Outer Banks. Call you when I get back.”

She stared at the envelope, at the familiar handwriting. She turned it over, peered inside. Then she balled it up in her fist, crushed it between her palms. She wanted to track him down, call him at his hotel, scream at him. “Didn’t you just tell Alec O’Neill you’d made a mistake?”

But she knew she would do no such thing. Instead, she walked back into the house, where she soaked a few teabags to nurse her burn. Then she called Alec to tell him she’d be happy to accompany him to Norfolk on Saturday.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Wednesday was Jonathan Cramer’s birthday, and Olivia agreed to take his night shift, hoping it would keep her mind off the amniocentesis scheduled for the following morning. Around six, Alec dropped off a blue folder filled with lighthouse in formation she would need to know for the radio interview on Saturday. The waiting room had been full then, and there was little time to talk as he handed her the folder across the reception desk.

“What time are you done here?” he asked.

“Midnight.” She returned his look of disappointment. They would not be able to talk on the phone tonight.

It was close to eleven when a teenage boy was brought in by his friends. Olivia heard him before she saw him.

“I’m gonna have a fucking heart attack,” he screamed, as Kathy and Lynn wheeled him into one of the treatment rooms. Olivia joined them and began questioning the boy—a good-looking kid with sun-streaked blond hair. He was seventeen, he said, and he had been at a party, drinking a little, when his heart started racing, beating so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else. He reeked of alcohol. His blue eyes were glassy, frightened.

“Start a monitor,” she said to Kathy. Then to the boy, “What did you have besides alcohol?”

“Nothing. Just a couple of beers.”

He was lying. He was too agitated, too wired, his palpitations too wild. “I know you had something else. I need to know what it was to be able to treat you properly.”

“My heart’s gonna fucking burst.”

She glanced at Kathy. “He has friends here?”

Kathy nodded. “In the waiting room,” she said. “I asked them what he took, but they claim he was just drinking and then started complaining of a rapid heartbeat.”

Olivia left the boy under Kathy’s care and walked into the waiting room. There were three of them, two girls and a boy, and they sat close together on the blue vinyl couch, sharing a stony, defensive demeanor. They had probably talked on the way over here, agreeing with one another about how they would answer any questions asked of them. Olivia felt their fear, though, as she neared them. Behind their hardened features, their faces were ashy pale.

“I’m Dr. Simon.” She pulled up a chair, glad the waiting room was empty now, save for these three. “And I need to get some information from you about your friend in there.”

They stared at her. The boy looked about eighteen. He was barefoot and blond, his hair brushing his shoulders. The blond girl wore skin-tight jeans and a white T-shirt, the sleeves and midriff cut into fringes, while the other girl had on a scoop-neck jersey and a light blue miniskirt. Olivia was so astonished at being able to clearly see the girl’s floral underpants that it was a moment before she noticed her hair. It was very dark, and looked as if it had been cut by a butcher. Olivia knew without a doubt who was sitting in front of her. The girl may have tried to rid herself of her mother’s red hair, but there was little she could do to mask those freckles and dimples and dark blue eyes.

“Lacey?” Olivia asked.

The blond girl drew in her breath. “How does she know your name?”

Lacey struggled to avoid Olivia’s eyes.

“I need to know what your friend in there took,” Olivia said.

“Just beer,” said the boy, his voice deep, challenging.

“No,” Olivia said. “He did not have just beer. This is serious. Your friend could die. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

“Crack,” said Lacey, and the boy threw his hands in the air and stood up. He swung around to glare at Lacey.

Olivia leaned over to squeeze Lacey’s hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you know how he’s doing. In the meantime, please give the receptionist his phone number and the name of his parents.”

Olivia returned to the treatment room. The boy was hooked up to the monitor. He had settled down, his eyes closed. His heartbeat was rapid, but rhythmic, and there was little they could do except observe him for now. Within a half hour, Olivia felt certain he was out of danger and she returned to the waiting room to tell his friends.

The two girls were still close together on the sofa, while the boy leaned against the wall, smoking a cigarette.

“He’s going to be all right,” Olivia said. The three of them looked at her stonily, no emotion showing in their faces. “Lacey, I’d like to see you for a moment in my office.”

Lacey looked at the boy before she got to her feet and followed Olivia through the waiting room door. She said nothing as they walked down the hall and into Olivia’s office.

“Have a seat,” Olivia gestured to a chair in front of her desk. She sat down herself, a little overwhelmed by the odor of alcohol and tobacco that had accompanied Lacey into the room.

Lacey gave Olivia a narrow-eyed glare across the desk. The loss of the long red curls had transformed her into a tougher, more arrogant-looking young girl. “How did you remember me?” she asked.

“I remember you very well,” Olivia said. “It was a terrible night, and it really stayed in my mind.” What she knew now that she had not known then was that Lacey had been with her mother when she was shot. “It must be very difficult for you to be here in the ER, Lacey. It must bring back some terrible memories for you.”

Lacey shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

“Your friend could have really gotten himself into trouble,” Olivia said. “Not just with his health, but with the police as well. Maybe you’re getting in with the wrong crowd of people. It could have been you in there.”

“The hell it could. I wouldn’t touch that stuff. None of us would. And I’ve never even met him before. He’s a friend of Bobby’s from Richmond. He brought the crack down with him, but he’s the only one who used it.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Olivia said. The blue folder Alec had brought her was in front of her on the desk, and she touched it lightly with her fingertips before she spoke again. “How did you get to the ER?”