“Meet me out front about seven forty-five. I’ll talk to the committee first and clear the way for you a bit, all right?”
He thanked her and got off the phone. At least she hadn’t asked him what his interest was in the lighthouse. He would have said something about being a history fanatic, someone who couldn’t bear to lose the past. It would have been the truth.
Nola Dillard was a striking woman. Early forties, probably. Pale-blond hair pinned up in back, enormous gray eyes, and skin a little too lined from a tan she probably nurtured year-round.
She reached her hand toward him and he shook it. “We’re all set, Mr…. Paul, is it? I’m Nola. Come on in.”
He followed her through the familiar main room of the restaurant, with its heavy wooden tables and sea-lore accents, to a small room in the back. The committee members sat around one long table, and they looked up when he entered. There were three men and one woman besides Nola. He glanced at their faces and was startled when his eyes found Alec O’Neill at the head of the table. He recognized him immediately, from the glimpse he’d had of him with Annie, and more so, from the photograph of him in her studio—the black and white picture that had frightened him a little with its dark, unsmiling countenance and a threat in his pale eyes. Those eyes were on him now as Nola guided Paul toward the head of the table. He glanced quickly at the exit. Should he take off, make an absolute fool of himself? Nola’s hand was soft at his elbow, pushing him forward, as Alec rose from his chair.
“Paul, this is Alec O’Neill, our venerable leader. Alec, Paul Macelli.”
Alec O’Neill raised his dark eyebrows in Paul’s direction. Paul shook his hand, mumbling a greeting, his tongue suddenly too big for his mouth. He nodded his way around the rest of the group and took a seat next to Nola. A waitress came into the room and asked him what he’d like to drink. His first thought was something stiff and fiery, but a quick look around the room told him alcohol was out. Alec himself was drinking what looked like lemonade.
Paul ordered iced tea. He leaned back in the chair, loosening the collar of his shirt.
Alec looked at him with those riveting eyes and Paul felt totally exposed. Could he possibly know? Perhaps he recognized Paul’s name as the man who’d written the article about Annie in Seascape.
“Nola says you’re a journalist,” Alec said.
“Yes. I work for the Gazette, but I freelance too. So, if there’s any way you think I can help, just let me know.” He laughed nervously, the color rising in his cheeks.
Alec took a swallow of his lemonade. “Well, I think there probably is a way you can help us. We need to educate the public. I handle speaking engagements locally and around the state, but we need to shift our publicity to the national level. The Kiss River Lighthouse is a national monument, so it shouldn’t be up to the locals to support the preservation effort. We’re talking about putting together a brochure of some sort on the history of the lighthouse, something that would have wide distribution.” Alec leaned back in his chair. “Do you think you could help with that?”
“Of course.” Paul had dropped his eyes to Alec’s hands sometime during the last few minutes. Alec’s fingers were long, tanned, and angular. Paul thought of him touching Annie with those hands, pulling her close to him in their bed. Hands she welcomed on her body. Alec still wore his wedding ring. From this distance it looked like a plain gold band, but he knew that up close it would be inlaid with the same gold braid that had graced Annie’s ring. What had Alec done with her ring? She’d been cremated. What did they do …
“So, paper and printing will be donated,” Alec was saying, and Paul quickly returned his gaze to Alec’s face, to his eyes, ice-blue and unavoidable. “It’s the compilation of the facts and the actual writing that we need.”
“Is there a historical collection I can use?” Paul asked, and then he had a sudden, disconcerting thought. What if the old lighthouse keeper, Mary Poor, was still alive? She couldn’t be, he reassured himself. She’d been an old woman the last time he had seen her, and that had been many long years ago.
“There’s a private collection,” Alec said. “I’ll check into getting you permission to look at it. But for now, how about just covering our efforts in the Gazette?”
“Fine,” Paul said, and he sat back, glad to have the attention of the room off him as Alec shifted the topic to a silent auction. He would leave the moment the meeting was over.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was Mary Poor’s ninetieth birthday and she was quite content. She sat on the porch of the blue, two-story house that had been her home for the past two years and watched the early morning sunlight turn the boats on the waterfront purple, then pink, then yellow. She had gotten used to this view, to the gentle rhythm of the rocker, to sharing her porch with others her age. She had expected to live out her life at Kiss River, but she knew she was luckier than most to have had sixty-five years under the warmth of the beacon.
She still spoke of the lighthouse to anyone who would listen. Over and over again, she recounted tales of the storms, the wrecks, the sea. She knew she sounded like the others when she rambled on that way, trapped in the past, but she didn’t care. It was a conscious decision she made to allow herself to babble, a privilege that came with age.
The doctor who examined her yesterday had marveled at her keen vision, her fine hearing, and her strength, despite the tortured bone in her hip. Mary had talked politics with the man, showing off. “You’re sharper than I am, Mrs. Poor,” the doctor had said, and Mary was certain he had not been patronizing her.
“So, if I’m in such good shape, why can’t I have a cigarette?” she’d asked him, but he’d only laughed, and slipped his stethoscope into his bag.
Mary rarely let others know just how capable she still was. She wanted to enjoy some of the pleasures of old age, of being taken care of, pampered. She even let Sandy, one of the girls on the staff, cut her short, snow-white hair now, although she could still do it perfectly well herself if she had to.
She tried to keep up with things. She watched the news, television still an amazement to her. She’d had one at Kiss River, but all it ever brought into her house there was static and splintery gray lines. She kept up with the newspaper, too. Right now the Beach Gazette rested on her lap, and when the boats on the waterfront finally lost their color and the show of the sunrise was over, she picked up the paper and began to read. Her favorite part was the crossword puzzle, but she always saved that until last, until she’d read everything else and needed something to work on as she waited for Trudy or Jane to get up and join her on the porch.
She read the front page and then opened the paper. She was folding the page back when she saw the picture: the tall, glittering white brick lighthouse against a dark sky. A little well of pain surfaced briefly in her chest, then subsided. In the corner of the picture she could just make out the northern tip of her old house, her husband Caleb’s family home, the house the Park Service now owned. The headline read, Erosion Threatens Kiss River Lighthouse. There was a byline. Paul Macelli. Mary narrowed her eyes. Paul Macelli? They’d let anybody write about Kiss River these days. She read the article through. A committee had been formed to save the lighthouse. Alec O’Neill was chairman. Mary smiled when she read that. It fit.
She rested the paper on her lap again and thought about Alec O’Neill. She had learned of Annie’s death too late to get to her funeral, and she’d wept, unable to remember the last time she’d cried
