He held her, letting her cry for a long time. He offered no platitudes, no words of false comfort, as though he knew that her only chance for healing lay in her tears.

“I’m through with him.” She spoke into his shoulder. “It’s over. I don’t love him anymore. I don’t think I have for a long time.” She was quiet for a moment, relishing the closeness of Alec’s body, knowing this was where she wanted to be. She flattened her hand against the small of his back. “Yesterday must have been terrible for you,” she said. “Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Sometime,” he said. “But not right now.”

“Mary Poor knew exactly what she was doing, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” Alec pulled gently away from her. “That she did.” He picked up the yogurt and cottage cheese from the table and carried them over to the refrigerator. He bent down to put them on the bottom shelf, and she noticed he was not wearing his wedding ring. It had left a band of light-colored skin on his tanned finger.

When he stood up again, his eyes went to the window above the sink. “Where’s Annie’s peacock feather?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said. “I broke it the night Paul told me that he and Annie had…” She caught herself and looked away from him, out the window, trying to think of some way to finish the sentence without saying too much.

Alec finished it for her. “The night he told you that he and Annie had made love.”

She looked up at him, stunned. “How did you know?”

“Was it just once since you’ve been here?”

“As far as I know.”

“Just before Christmas, right?”

“Yes. But how…”

“I figured it out last night. I spent the night putting clues together. She gave me plenty, and I missed them all because it never occurred to me to look for them.” He leaned back against the refrigerator. “One night, just before Christmas, she came home late from the studio and she was extremely upset. She had a sliver of glass in her hand, and she couldn’t get it out herself. I took it out for her, and she cried the whole time. Then she wanted to take a bath before she came to bed. She said it would help her relax, but I guess she just wanted to wash away any evidence of Paul before she got into bed with me.”

He lowered his eyes to the floor, and Olivia bit her lip.

“When I was thinking about this last night, when I was putting the clues together, I realized something must have happened between her and Paul that night, but I was hoping that maybe they didn’t actually…” He looked up at Olivia. “But they did, huh? I mean,” he smiled wistfully, “it wasn’t just that he tried to coerce her and she steadfastly refused him?”

She returned his sad smile. “Paul said it was…a mutual thing.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t think you knew, Olivia. I figured that if you did, you would have thrown it up in my face when I accused you of being a less honest person than Annie.”

“I considered it,” she said, “but I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He took a step toward her and cupped her head in his palms, kissing her softly on her forehead. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t think I could have handled hearing it from you just then.” He rested his hands on her waist and sighed. “Now I have to figure out when and how to tell my little girl that Tom is her father.”

“Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it’s something she needs to know. Medical history and all of that.”

He nodded. “I have to wait, though, until I can accept it myself before I can expect her to. I want to tell her in a way that won’t make her think less of Annie—that will make her feel compassion for her. I don’t think I can do that quite yet.”

“You’re a good father, Alec.”

“I thought you had some doubts about that.”

She shook her head. “About some of your methods, perhaps. But I never doubted your intentions or your love for Lacey.” She touched his cheek. “Are you glad you know the truth?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. He raised his hands until his thumbs grazed the sides of her breasts. “It’s eased my guilt about loving you.”

“You took off your ring,” she said.

“So did you.”

She smiled, pressing her forehead to his chin. “Alec…?”

“Hmm?”

“Could we go to bed?”

He laughed, his breath warm against her cheek. “Yes,” he said.

They made love at a more leisurely pace than the last time. The sun outside her window poured warm, thick, honey-like air into her room and slowed them down, made them take their time. She was straddling Alec as he came, and she watched his body strain and arch in the golden light, as he must have watched hers only seconds earlier.

When his breathing had settled down, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “You look beautiful up there,” he said. He stroked his fingers along the gold chain resting against her breasts. “I love you, Olivia.”

She was aware of her nakedness, something that had not concerned her at all only a few minutes ago. But now she felt as though she was all stomach, the rest of her body small and inconsequential.

“It scares me to love you,” she said.

“Why?”

“I just finished loving a man who wished I was Annie. I’m afraid that loving you might end up being the same thing.”

He shook his head against the pillow. “I want you, Olivia,” he said, his hands tightening on her thighs. “I want you just the way you are, with your organized mind, and your craving for structure, and your driving ambition, and your ability to put yourself first.” He touched her lightly where her body was joined to his, and she shivered. “And with your genuine, and thoroughly unsubtle, carnal needs.”

“And with my pregnancy?”

He slid his hands to the firm golden orb of her belly. “I’ve already raised and loved another man’s child,” he said. “I can do it again.”



CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE


September 1991

The electricity went out in the Manteo Retirement Home at about eight-thirty in the evening, and the portable radio grew scratchy and unintelligible. The residents, along with some of the staff, huddled together in the candlelit living room, taking turns playing with the knobs on the radio, fighting the dying batteries.

Mary sat off in a corner, the folded newspaper with its finished crossword puzzle resting on her knee. She didn’t need the radio to know what was happening outside. She could feel the devastation in her bones.

She’d opened the window in her room a few hours earlier and let the air blow over her skin. She’d sniffed it, tasted it, and she knew the storm was very close. It’s time, she thought. For days she’d had a feeling about this one. Even before the residents of the Outer Banks were told to evacuate, she knew this storm would be like no other. It would hit head-on, with a sudden punch at the defenseless coastline, the mere preamble to a beating that would last hours.

Trudy tried to talk her into joining a game of canasta.

“If anyone should be used to storms, it’d be you, Mary,” she said when Mary declined. “Look at you, sitting there like a scared little girl.”

She wasn’t scared, but she didn’t bother to defend herself to Trudy. She wasn’t afraid at all.

She went to bed far later than usual, but still she could not sleep. The wind was ferocious. It howled eerily through the big house, and every once in a while she could hear the crackling sound of a tree snapping in two. One of the windows in Jane’s room blew out during the night, and her screams brought everyone out into the hall. Jane spent the rest of the night on the pull-out sofa in the living room.

Mary finally slept a little toward morning. When she woke up, the sky was overcast and foggy, and the little circle of stained glass hanging in her window cast weak, muted colors on the walls of her room.

She joined the others downstairs in the dining room, but she couldn’t eat. After breakfast, when everyone else went out on the porch to look at the downed trees and the broken windows in the neighboring houses, Mary walked into the kitchen, where Gale and Sandy, the only two members of staff who had made it in this morning, were loading the dishwasher. They looked up at her when she walked into the room.

“What is it, Mary?” Gale asked.

“I need one of you to take me to Kiss River,” she said.

Sandy laughed. “You’re nuts, Mary. The Outer Banks flooded last night and they said on the radio a lot of the roads are still under water. We probably couldn’t get there if we wanted to.”

“Please,” she said. She hated this. She hated having to beg, having to depend on these young girls for everything. “I’ll pay you.”

Gale laughed. “With what, honey? Do you have some money tucked away we don’t know about?”

Mary leaned heavily on her cane. Her hip was throbbing this morning. “If you don’t take me, I’ll find another way to get there.”

Sandy and Gale looked at each other, finally taking her seriously. A few weeks ago, someone had gotten to Mary’s puzzle before she did, and when they refused to drive her to the store for another paper, she’d walked the mile there and back herself.

Sandy slipped a plate into the dishwasher and wiped her hands on a paper towel. “All right, Mary,” she said. “I’ll take you. But don’t expect us to get very far.”

Mary rode in the front seat of the van, while Sandy drove. Sandy tried to get her to talk, but finally gave up. Mary had little to say today. She tapped her finger on the top of her cane, straining her eyes through the milky fog, trying to make out where they were.

The main road up the island was clear of water, but the storm had taken its toll on the buildings. Each time the fog thinned, just for a second or two, Mary could see glassless windows in the houses, boards and brush littering the sand. The street was peppered with shingles blown off the roofs.