the light to be just as it was described in the book.”
“That must have been upsetting,” Olivia said.
“There are several other lighthouses here for you to explore,” Alec suggested.
She shook her head quickly. “I’m into preservation,” she said. “And I was very upset to realize that not only had the lighthouse been destroyed, but that no one has ever tried to retrieve the Fresnel lens from the ocean.”
“That’s an issue that was put to rest a long time ago,” Alec said, wishing he could put it to rest in this room as well.
“I know.” She rubbed her palms over her backpack. “I wanted to see if I might be able to do something about that.”
“About raising the lens?” Olivia asked.
Gina nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see it on display somewhere.”
Alec did not understand why someone from the Pacific Northwest would give a hoot about the Kiss River light, and her intrusion into something that really did not concern her annoyed him. As a lighthouse historian, though, amateur or not, she had to know that the lens was very rare. Only two of them still existed in North Carolina, and they were valued at over a million dollars apiece. He was suddenly suspicious of her motives.
He folded his arms across his chest. “The first thing for you to realize is that it’s unlikely the lens is still in one piece.”
“I know that,” she said.
“And second, the lens would be government property, no matter who salvaged it. You wouldn’t get any money out of raising it.”
She looked stricken, and he knew he had offended her.
“I’m not after money,” she said. “I just want to see it displayed appropriately for the public to enjoy. I was hoping you might be able to help me make that happen.”
“I’m not the right person to help you with this, Gina,” he said, shaking his head. Again, he was aware of his wife’s eyes on him. She was a quiet, but hardly disinterested, observer.
“Lacey and Clay said you used to be the head of the Save the Lighthouse committee,” she said.
“That’s true, but that was a long time ago and I’ve since changed my allegiance. Now I just want to let things stay the way they are.” The eldest of their three cats, a Persian named Sylvie, stole into the room and hopped up on Olivia’s lap. Gina reached over to scratch the cat’s head.
“Are there other people who were on the committee with you who might still want to see the lens salvaged?” she asked, her eyes on Sylvie.
Alec sighed. He wanted her to go. Wanted to get back to bed with his wife. But there were other people who might be willing to help her, and in the interest of fair play, he thought she should have those names. He could see the determination in her eyes and knew she would dig them up anyway, with or without his help. “There’s Nola Dillard,” he said.
“Oh. The real estate agent, right?” Gina pulled a pad and pen from her backpack and wrote down the name.
“Yes.”
“Where can I find her?”
“She has her own company now,” Olivia said. “It’s on Croatan Highway in Kitty Hawk around milepost four.”
“What’s the name of the highway again?” Gina asked.
Olivia spelled the word for her. Croatan was the common name for Highway 12, the main road through the Outer Banks. Gina was showing her outsider status in more ways than one.
“And who else?” She looked across the room at him.
“Walter Liscott and Brian Cass are the other two,” he said. “They’re getting up there in years, though, and spend their days playing chess at Shorty’s Grill and not doing much else.”
“That’s on the beach road in Kitty Hawk,” Olivia volunteered.
“They’re not going to be up for much of a fight these days,” Alec said, although he knew both men would probably love to raise that lens as their final tribute to the Kiss River light.
“Well, I can talk to them about it,” Gina said, writing on her notepad.
“The only other person on the committee was another woman, Sondra Clarke,” Alec said, “but she got married and moved away a few years ago.” There had been one other person on the committee—Olivia’s first husband, Paul—but his work for the committee had not been born of a sincere effort to save the lighthouse. Besides, he lived in Maryland.
Gina nodded. “Well, I’m grateful to you for giving me the names,” she said.
“You know—” Alec shifted his weight on the arm of the chair “—I hate to see you waste your time with this. It’d be better spent on some other project.”
“This particular project is important to me,” Gina said. Something in her voice reminded him of himself back when he’d fought to save the lighthouse, and he wondered if she, too, was being driven by more than the mere salvage of bricks and glass.
“How do you know Clay and Lacey?” Olivia asked her. She had her legs tucked under her on the sofa now, as if expecting Gina’s visit to last a long time.
“I was looking at the lighthouse, and Clay came out of the keeper’s house and we started talking. He and Lacey offered to let me rent one of the rooms in the house for a little while. It was so kind of them.”
Lacey had been the one to invite her to stay, almost certainly. His daughter would take in any stray she could find, while Clay would barely notice his or her existence. It had bothered Alec when Clay and Lacey moved into the keeper’s house in January. He hadn’t been back there in nearly a decade, and he’d had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach the first time he’d driven to Kiss River to visit them. That storm should have taken the entire Kiss River promontory, in his opinion.
“How long are you staying?” Olivia asked their visitor.
“I’m not sure yet,” Gina said. “At least a week. Maybe longer.”
“Do you know that Monday is Lacey’s birthday?” Olivia asked, and Alec knew the question was as much to remind him as it was to inform Gina. He didn’t need the reminder, though. He had forgotten Lacey’s birthday once, long ago. He would never make that mistake again.
“I didn’t know that,” Gina said. “Thanks for the heads-up.” She stood, and so did he and Olivia. “And thanks for the help,” she said to Alec. “It was nice of you, especially since I know you’d rather I didn’t pursue this.”
Alec shrugged as he opened the front door for her. “You know there are other first-order lenses already on display, don’t you?” he asked.
“But they’re not the Kiss River lens,” she said with a smile. She stopped short as she walked through the doorway, and he followed her gaze to the small, oval-shaped stained-glass window to the left of the doorjamb.
“Oh,
