Mary felt the color in her cheeks. How foolish she must seem, a seventy-three-year-old woman talking this way.

“But you never hung the cloth?” Annie prodded.

“No.”

“It must have hurt,” Annie said, “wanting to do something so badly, but thinking that you couldn’t.”

Mary smiled. Annie did understand. “That was the real reason I wanted to work with the Life Saving crew,” she said, “so I could be around the men, so I could feel the excitement of what might happen. But I’d come to my senses every time I came close to going through with it. What right did I have to be so dissatisfied, I’d ask myself? To want more than I had?”

Mary tapped her fingertips against the glass. She would have liked a cigarette, but she knew it distressed Annie when she smoked.

“Sometimes I’d force myself to stop thinking about other men, but it felt like I was cutting off a leg or an arm, it was so much a part of me. We’d go to church and even there I couldn’t stop myself from imagining. People would say that Caleb wasn’t good enough for me. Some of them would ask me what I saw in him, me being such a fine woman—so they thought—and Caleb just a plain man, solid and steady.” She shook her head. “He was a thousand times better than I was.”

Annie leaned forward in her chair, the fire throwing gold light into her long red hair. “You are far too hard on your self, Mary.”

Mary took a full swallow of the brandy, thick as honey as it warmed her throat. She looked up at Annie. “It was my nonsense that killed Caleb,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

Mary shook her head. “Even at sixty-three, my head was still full of that schoolgirl silliness. No one knows this—the truth of how Caleb died, I mean. Can you keep it here in this room?”

Annie nodded.

“Well, there was a fisherman who’d taken a shine to me when I was in my thirties, and we talked off and on over the years, teasing each other about how one day we’d do more than just talk. Finally he persuaded me. He told me I wasn’t getting any younger, and I thought to myself. He’s right. It’s got to be now or never. We planned to meet one evening when Caleb was away for the night. Only Caleb didn’t go. So when I went out to the beach, it was to tell Chester it was off for that night. He didn’t believe me, I guess. Thought I was weaseling out of it. So he started kissing me right there on the beach, and I was fighting him, afraid Caleb might be up in the tower. And that’s just where he was. He saw it all and thought Chester was attacking me. He flew down those stairs and out to the beach and started sparring with Chester. Two gray-haired old men.” She shook her head. “They ran into the water, pounding each other in the waves. Caleb was just too old for that. They both were really, two old coots going at it like a couple of wild Indians. By the time Caleb drug himself out of the water, he couldn’t get his breath and he just fell dead at my feet.” Mary winced, recalling her initial disbelief that Caleb was dead, and, later, her self-loathing.

“A few weeks after Caleb was buried, Chester had the nerve to ask me to marry him. Needless to say, I turned him down. I’d finally found the cure for my wicked imagination, but it came with a big price tag.”

Mary talked a while longer and felt a change in Annie, a silent drawing in. Annie had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and now she pulled it tighter, staring at the flames as Mary spoke. After a while, they heard a faint cry from upstairs.

“He’s awake,” Annie said softly.

Mary nodded. “You’d better get home.”

Annie rose, letting the shawl drop from her shoulders to the chair. Her footsteps were heavy and slow on the stairs. Mary listened to her reassuring Clay with her cooing and clucking.

When Annie returned downstairs, she handed the baby to Mary, resting him on the older woman’s lap. “Let me stoke the fire for you before I go,” she said, as she always did. She stirred the wood for many minutes, and Mary watched the flames leaping around her head. When Annie finally stood up and lifted Clay into her arms, her face was flushed, and heat poured from her hands and her clothes. She didn’t meet Mary’s eyes, and for a moment Mary wished she had not spoken so freely. She had risked too much in telling her. She had risked this special friendship.

Mary stood up and walked Annie out onto the porch. Annie turned to face her, hugging her baby close to her against the wind.

“Mary,” she said. “Your longings…your fantasies…they didn’t make you a bad person.”

Mary breathed in a quick, silent sigh of relief. “No,” she said.

She watched as Annie walked through the darkness toward her car. Halfway there, she turned back to Mary, and in a voice so soft she could barely be heard over the sound of the sea, said, “Mary. We are more alike than you know.”

For just a moment she was illuminated by the beacon of the lighthouse and Mary saw the shine of her cheeks, the stubby hand of her child coming up to touch her chin, and then the world was dark again.



CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


Paul’s car was in her driveway when she got home from the emergency room that Thursday evening. Olivia felt a disconcerting mix of joy and anger. Should he be allowed to come and go as he pleased? What if he’d walked into the room that was to become the nursery and discovered the crib?

Inside, the house smelled of garlic and olive oil and wine, familiar smells of Paul’s cooking. She walked into the kitchen, and he smiled at her from the stove where he stood over the skillet, a fork in his hand like a conductor’s baton and his old red smock apron tied around his waist.

“Hi,” he said. “I thought I’d surprise you. Scampi.” She had told him once, long ago, that his scampi was an aphrodisiac.

She set her purse on the table. “Could you let me know before you come over in the future?” she asked. “I don’t think it’s fair for you to…just walk into this house.”

He looked surprised that her first words were critical, that she did not appear overjoyed to see him. “I’m still paying my share of the mortgage,” he said.

“It isn’t a matter of money,” Olivia said. “You left me. I’m entitled to at least some privacy.” She wanted to look down at her stomach to see if there was any telltale bulge.

He rested the fork on the counter and turned to face her. “You’re right. I didn’t think. I just wanted to surprise you. I wanted to do something nice for you, Liv. Do you want me to leave?”

She shook her head. “No.” There was a surly edge to her voice that surprised her as much as it did him. “I want you here,” she said, gently now. “Let me change my clothes.”

Once in her bedroom, she put on the one pair of jeans she could still fit into and a long, baggy T-shirt. Soon, she was going to have to give in and buy maternity clothes. People would know then. Paul would know.

She returned to the kitchen. “Can I help?” she asked.

“It’s ready,” he said. “Just sit down.” He gestured toward the kitchen table. She still had not replaced the table in the dining room.

She sat down, and Paul set a plate covered with fat garlicky shrimp and wild rice in front of her. He was a natural cook, one of those people who could turn out stunning meals without ever consulting a cookbook. He had always been far more domestically inclined than she. Their plan had been for him to stay home with their children while she went off to work.

He tilted the bottle of wine above her glass but she held her hand over the rim. “No thanks,” she said, and he looked down at her in surprise. “I’ve stopped for a while.”

“Why?”

It would have been easier just to let him pour the wine. She didn’t have to drink it.

“Cleaning up my act a little,” she said.

He sat down. “I was hoping to get you drunk tonight so I could seduce you.”

She felt her cheeks redden and looked down at her plate.

Paul leaned across the table to rest his hand on her arm. “You’re really furious with me,” he said.

“You’ve done some things that are hard for me to simply overlook.”

He nodded and leaned back again, pouring wine into his own glass. “I guess I can’t blame you,” he said, “but I did something today you’ll approve of.”

“What’s that?”

“I donated two of Annie’s stained glass panels to the library.”

She was truly surprised. “You did?”

He sipped his wine. “I can’t just quit cold turkey, Liv, but I’m working on it. The two underwater scenes in my living room. Plus the little oval in my car. The librarian was thrilled. Those panels are probably worth a lot more now that she’s…been gone awhile.” He pursed his lips for a second, as though acknowledging that Annie was dead still hurt him. “I’ll get rid of the rest of them in a week or two, as soon as I find the right place to donate them.”

“That’s good, Paul.” She tried to smile at him. “Whether we get back together or not, you really need to put her behind you.”

He flushed. “What’s your game, Olivia? Are you playing hard to get or what?”

“I’m not playing any game at all.” She looked at him, at the warm hazel eyes behind his glasses. “This is hard for me, trying to figure out how to behave with you. I’m terrified of trusting you, of letting my guard down around you. I’m afraid to commit myself to you when I’m not certain you can make a commitment yourself.”

“It worked before,” he said. “We just need to get away from here.”

She ate in silence for a moment before looking up at him again. “I’ve received a job offer,” she said. “At Emerson Memorial.” She described the call from Clark Chapman, as a smile spread across Paul’s face.

He set down his fork and leaned across the table again, reaching for her hand this time. “It’s a sign, don’t you think? A good omen. We move to Norfolk and start over. Start fresh. Tell him yes, Liv. Call him tonight and tell him.”