Olivia frowned at her. “You are a little young to be hanging around with graduating seniors.”

Lacey smirked at her. “Graduating seniors,” she said, mimicking Olivia’s voice. “God, Olivia, sometimes you sound like an old lady.”

“Well, that’s what Clay is, right? A graduating senior? When do those parties get over?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I understand you don’t have a curfew. So what time do you usually get home?”

“One or two.”

“Lacey. That’s outrageous. You’re fourteen years old.”

Lacey gave her an almost patronizing smile. “It’s summer, Olivia, and summer school’s over. It’s not like I have to get up early in the morning or something.”

“Did you stay out that late when your mother was alive?”

Lacey poked her fork in the lasagna. “I…no,” she said, pursing her lips. “I didn’t need to, but she wouldn’t have gotten on my case if I did.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t need to?”

Lacey looked up at her. “I liked being home then. My parents were fun. My friends practically lived at my house, they liked being around my parents so much.” She tightened her lips again. “You should have known my father then. He was really funny, and he always had ideas for what we should do. Once he got us all up in the middle of the night and drove us to Jockey’s Ridge and we climbed out on the dunes in the dark and then laid down in the sand to watch the stars. He was always doing things like that. He used to take me and my friends up to Norfolk for concerts. Nobody else’s father would ever do that. He was so cool.” She looked out the window at the darkening parking lot. “He’s changed so much. That’s part of why I stay out late. I don’t like being around him, ’cause he reminds me of how fucked up everything is.” She looked over at Olivia. “Excuse me for saying that. Fucked up, I mean.”

Olivia sat back from the table. “I want to buy you something,” she said. “What?”

“A watch.”

“You’re kidding.” Lacey smiled uncertainly. “Why?”

“Someone your age should have one.”

“My mother…” Lacey stopped herself. “Could I pick it out?”

“Yes, but it comes with a contingency.”

“What’s a contingency?”

“Something you’ll have to do in order to get the watch.”

Lacey looked intrigued. “What?”

“You’ll have to call me every night at midnight, no matter where you are, to let me know you’re okay.”

“What?” Lacey laughed.

“That’s the contingency.” She knew she was undermining Alec, but perhaps Alec needed to be undermined.

“I’ll wake you up,” Lacey said.

“Yes, you probably will, but I’ll fall back to sleep knowing you’re safe.”

Lacey stared at her solemnly. “Why do you care whether I’m safe or not?”

Olivia studied her own plate for a moment. Her manicotti had hardly been touched. She looked up at Lacey again. “Maybe you remind me a little of myself at your age,” she said.

“Well,” Lacey set down her fork and looked coyly at Olivia. “There’s a contingency about me calling you.”

Olivia smiled. “What’s that?”

“I’ll call you if you’ll stop working at the Battered Women’s Shelter.”

Olivia was touched by the unmistakable concern behind Lacey’s request. She shook her head. “I like working there, Lacey. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not very much like your mother. I don’t think I would ever have the courage to risk my own life to save someone else’s.”

They stopped in the drug store on the way back to Olivia’s to look for a watch. Lacey tried on six or seven, carefully avoiding those in the higher price range, before finally selecting one with a glittery silver face and a black band adorned with silver stars.

They picked up a carton of ice cream and, once back at Olivia’s, built themselves huge banana splits. They carried the sundaes into the living room, where they sat cross-legged on the floor to eat them. Sylvie curled up, purring, in Lacey’s lap as they dug into the ice cream. Every minute or so, Lacey raised her left hand to study her watch.

“I can’t believe that you’re fourteen years old and that’s the first watch you’ve ever owned,” Olivia said.

“If my mother was buried, she’d be rolling over in her grave right now.”

Olivia cut off a chunk of banana with her spoon. “Was she cremated?” she asked.

“Yes. Well, of course, first every little speck of her that could be used by someone else got donated. Then what was left was, you know…” Lacey waved her hand through the air. “Clay and my father threw her ashes into the ocean at Kiss River.”

Olivia shuddered, the imagery almost too much to bear.

“I didn’t go to the funeral,” Lacey said.

“How come, Lacey?”

“I wanted to remember her like she was alive.” Lacey’s face suddenly darkened. She looked down at Sylvie. “I don’t get why some bad people can live to be a hundred years old and someone as good as my mother dies so young. She hated—what do you call it when you go to the electric chair?”

“Capital punishment?”

“Yeah. She hated that, but if I could see the man who killed her and I had a knife, I’d slice him up.” Her hands were balled into fists as she spoke, and Sylvie opened one eye to observe the unprotected bowl of ice cream on the floor in front of her. “I could do it,” Lacey said. “I could kill him and I wouldn’t ever feel bad about it.”

Olivia nodded, certain Lacey meant what she said.

“I keep imagining what it must have felt like to have that bullet shoot into her chest.”

“Your father told me you were with her when it happened. That must have been terrible for you.”

Lacey poked at her ice cream. “I was standing right next to her,” she said. “I was in charge of the green beans, and she was in charge of the salad. This man rushed in and started yelling at this lady in the food line. Mom could never stay out of anything. She stepped right in front of the lady and said, ‘Please put the gun away, sir. It’s Christmas.’ And he shot her. Bam.” Lacey winced, and a visible shiver ran through her arms. “I keep seeing her face. Sometimes when I’m in bed at night, that’s all I can see. Her eyes got real wide, and she made a little noise like she was surprised, and where the bullet went through her shirt, there was a little speck of blood.” She looked up at Olivia. “I blamed you for a long time, because I was so sure she’d be all right. I couldn’t imagine her dying. Then it seemed like once you got to her you made things worse. My father says you didn’t, though. He said you tried really hard to save her.”

“He’s right, Lacey. I did.”

Lacey ate a few more mouthfuls of her sundae before looking at Olivia from under a shock of two-toned hair. “Do you like my father?” she asked.

“Very much.”

Lacey lowered her eyes again. “He’s been a little better since he started…being friends with you,” she said. “He used to walk around like he was sleepwalking or something. He hardly ate anything and he didn’t care what he wore and all his clothes got too big for him. He looked like a scarecrow, and all he’d do was carry around his stupid old pictures of the lighthouse and stare at them every chance he got. He used to sleep with my mother’s old sweatshirt.”

Olivia ached for Alec. She was embarrassed by this glimpse into his dark and private world.

Lacey took the last bite of her banana, now swimming in a chocolate soup. She swirled her spoon around in the bowl with her stubby fingers and their chewed-off nails. “I met your husband at the lighthouse meeting the other night,” she said, glancing up at Olivia. “I thought he looked kind of nerdy. No offense.”

Nerdy? Olivia supposed that a forty-year-old man with wire-rimmed glasses and cerebral good looks would probably strike a fourteen-year-old as nerdy. “No offense taken,” she said.

“Do you think my father’s handsome?”

Olivia shrugged noncommittally, aware she was treading on dangerous ground. “I suppose so.”

“My mother used to say he was hot. They were, like, completely and totally in love.” Lacey moved her wrist back and forth, her watch sparkling in the light from the table lamp. “Nola would love to get into my father’s pants,” she said, her eyes glued to the watch.

“That’s sort of a crude way to say she’s interested, don’t you think?”

Lacey grinned at her. “I think you’re kind of prissy. I mean, if you think my father’s handsome, don’t you sometimes wonder what it would be like to go to bed with him?”

Olivia struggled to keep the shock from her face. She leaned forward and spoke slowly. “What I think, or what your father thinks, or what Nola thinks about that sort of thing is very personal, Lacey. It’s not your place to speculate about it.”

Lacey’s eyes filled in a half-second’s time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, crimson patches forming on her throat and cheeks. Her lower lip trembled in a way Olivia could not bear to watch. She set her own bowl of melting ice cream on the floor and moved forward to take Lacey in her arms. Lacey held her tightly, her delicate shoulders shaking with her sobs.

“It’s okay.” Olivia kissed the top of her head. She remembered being held this way a lifetime ago by Ellen Davison, who never pressed her to tell her why her body ached and bled, who never once suggested she go home again. She remembered the surprising strength in Ellen’s slender arms, strength that let her know she could finally turn her burden over to a grown-up who would keep her safe.

“My father hates me,” Lacey wept.

“Oh, no, honey. He loves you very much.”

“There was just that drop of blood on her shirt, so I told him she’d be all right. He was so scared. I wasn’t used to that—I’d never seen him look scared of anything before—and I kept telling him not to worry. He believed me that she’d be okay. He blames me for getting his hopes up.”