They turned onto the road that ran through Southern Shores and she wondered how Annie’s family had fared. Had they evacuated? Had Olivia gone with them or stayed here to doctor anyone hurt in the storm? She was head of that emergency room now. Most likely she had to stay.

Alec had invited Mary to dinner last week, and she had been surprised by the invitation, surprised that Alec held no grudge against her for her role in Annie’s betrayal. Olivia had been there—obviously pregnant, a complication Mary had not even guessed at—and she and Lacey and Alec cooked while Mary sat at the kitchen table, observing the outcome of her revelations in the keeper’s house. They were happy people, those three. Survivors of her last, and most likely final, rescue.

Paul Macelli had moved back to Washington, they told her, where he was working once again for the Post and writing poetry, reading it on the weekends to his faithful covey of followers.

“Here we go,” Sandy said, as the van approached a long stretch of road that was under water. Gamely, she put the van into four-wheel drive and plunged in, and in a few minutes they were on dry road again. Sandy patted the steering wheel.

“Good girl,” she said.

Mary looked out toward the sea, but the fog hugged the beach, and there was little she could make out. They hit a few more patches of flooded road before finally reaching Kiss River.

Sandy pulled onto the narrow road that led down to the lighthouse. “Wow,” she said. “Lot of trees down.”

Mary didn’t care about the trees. She barely took note of them. Sandy stopped the car at the edge of the parking lot, and Mary managed to pull the van door open before her young driver had a chance to get out.

“Stay here,” Mary said.

“No way. I’m coming out there with you.”

“I don’t want you with me.” Mary got out of the van and slammed the door shut, surprised at her own strength.

Something in her voice must have convinced Sandy. “If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m coming to find you,” she called out the window as Mary began walking away from the van.

Mary stepped from the paved lot to the wet sand, testing her legs, and began walking in the direction of the lighthouse. A dagger of pain cut into her left hip with each step, and her cane sank into the sand as she walked, but after a minute or two, the pain lessened and she thought no more about it.

She was nearly on top of the bayberry bushes before she saw them. The fog clung to the ground, to Kiss River, as it had many times in the past, and she had to rely on some inner sense of direction to keep herself on course. She found the path through the bushes, and once on the other side of them, could make out a couple of bulldozers and a truck laden with long, steel beams. They rested idly next to the keeper’s house. She walked a bit closer to the house, squinting, looking for damage. There was a bald spot on the roof where it had lost a few shingles, but the house itself was still standing, still in one piece, as far as she could see. A few windows were blown out, though. And right next to the cistern, a backhoe was tipped precariously onto its side.

The sea must have been all the way up here, she thought. And if it had been high enough to reach the house, it had been plenty high enough to…

She turned around and squinted up into the sky for the white tower, the black iron gallery. Maybe it was just too foggy to make it out. She walked in the direction of the lighthouse, barely using her cane now at all. She kept her eyes skyward. Had she gotten confused? Was she walking in the wrong direction? In her heart, though, she knew that wasn’t the answer. She’d known since last night, when she’d listened to the rain spiking against the roof of the retirement home and the wind snapping trees in half as though they were kindling. She’d known then what she would find out here today.

She took a few more steps. Quite suddenly, a gust of wind swept the fog out into the ocean, and she could see the scene in front of her as clearly as if she were looking at a painting in a museum. The sea hissed and swirled around the jagged remains of the Kiss River Lighthouse. The tower was one-third as tall as it had been, the cylinder of white bricks chewed off at an angle, and a few dozen feet of the circular stairs jutting into the thinning fog. The ground was littered with huge chunks of brick, the scene so startlingly clear that she wondered how she had missed it a few minutes earlier. The lens itself was nowhere to be seen, and she pictured it lying on the floor of the ocean, an enormous, prism-studded shell.

She glanced over at the bulldozers again, and the truck, waiting and ready to build a track that would not be needed. She shook her head, remembering the time she and Annie had sat up on the gallery and she’d told the younger woman, “If it’s time for the sea to take the lighthouse, we should just let it go.”

Mary could not resist a bittersweet smile at the memory. She began walking slowly back to the parking lot, the pain in her hip kicking to life once again as she shuffled through the wet sand. When she had nearly reached the row of bayberry bushes, she turned around for one last look at her lighthouse. “The time has come, Annie,” she said. “It’s finally come.”



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I’m indebted to Cher Johnson, Mary Kirk, Arlene Lieberman, Suzanne Schmidt, Laura and Pete Schmitz and Joann Scanlon for reading various drafts of Keeper with enthusiasm and insight.

Veterinarian Holly Gill, emergency room physician Martha Gramlich, Outer Banks nurse Betsy McCarthy, Outer Banks artist Chris Haltigan, stained glass artist Jimmy Powers, lighthouse enthusiasts David Fischetti, Hugh Morton and John Wilson and National Park Ranger Warren Wrenn all shared their expertise with me and graciously endured my endless questions. Also, The Keeper’s Log, issued by the United States Lighthouse Society, proved to be an invaluable source of inspiration.

I’m grateful to Peter Porosky for altering my vision and to my former editor, Karen Solem, for her faith, patience and wisdom.

ISBN: 978-1-4592-0422-5

KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

Copyright © 2002 by Diane Chamberlain

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