Keeper of the Light
Also by DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
THE LIES WE TOLD
SECRETS SHE LEFT BEHIND
BEFORE THE STORM
THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES
THE BAY AT MIDNIGHT
HER MOTHER’S SHADOW
KISS RIVER
KEEPER OF THE LIGHT
THE SHADOW WIFE
(formerly published as Cypress Point)
THE COURAGE TREE
SUMMER’S CHILD
BREAKING THE SILENCE
Watch for
THE MIDWIFE’S CONFESSION
May 2011
DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
Keeper of the Light
Dear Reader,
I’m so pleased that Keeper of the Light is once again available for you to enjoy. Originally published in 1992, Keeper quickly became one of my most popular books—so popular that readers pleaded with me to write a sequel. I finally did so eleven years later, turning the story of the O’Neill family into a trilogy. The second book, Kiss River, will be reissued later this year, and Her Mother’s Shadow next spring.
I took certain liberties with the geography of North Carolina’s Outer Banks to make room for Kiss River and its lighthouse. Kiss River and the people who love it are purely works of fiction, but the unique and beautiful Outer Banks are very real and hold a special place in my heart. I hope they will in yours, as well.
Diane Chamberlain
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Christmas 1990
It rained the entire day. It rained with such force that the shrubs next to the emergency room parking lot lay flat to the ground and the new roof sprang a leak. One of the nurses set a bucket on the floor of the waiting room to catch the water, and within an hour the rain had filled it to the brim.
Olivia Simon watched the downpour through the broad windows of her office. The rain sapped her concentration, and the journal on her desk was still open to the article she’d started hours before. There was something unnatural about this rain. It sucked the oxygen from the air and made it hard to breathe, and it pounded above her head like marbles falling on a sheet of tin. Just when she thought she could no longer tolerate the noise, it stopped. In the silence, Olivia watched the sky turn light and shiny, like the inside of an eggshell. Then suddenly, it was snowing.
She walked into the reception area, where Kathy Brash and Lynn Wilkes had been playing pinochle for the last abysmally quiet two hours.
“It’s snowing,” Olivia said.
They lifted their rained-dazed eyes to hers, then turned their heads toward the windows.
“Unreal.” Lynn stood for a better look, her white coat scraping a few cards from the table.
“It’s beginning to be an annual tradition on the Outer Banks,” Kathy said. “Last Christmas we actually got snowed in.”
Olivia looked at her watch. Five-thirty. She couldn’t afford to get stuck here tonight.
Lynn took her seat again. “Want us to deal you in, Olivia?”
Olivia declined, and returned to her office. She couldn’t make herself join them tonight. She was too antsy, too preoccupied. She needed to get home.
She sat behind her desk and dialed her home number.
“It’s snowing,” she said when Paul answered.
“Yeah, I know.” He sounded irritated. She was getting accustomed to the curt tone he used with her these days. “When are you getting out of there?”
“Soon. Just a half hour more.” She’d had no choice but to work today. Of the four emergency room physicians, she had the least seniority. She wished she could tell Paul that it had been worth her while coming in today, worth their being apart when, God knows, they needed the time together. But all she had seen in eleven long hours was a scraped knee and a case of severe post-turkey indigestion. On days like this, she found herself missing the chaos of Washington General, where she’d worked for the past ten years, where her seniority had given her some control over her schedule. It scared her these days, being away from Paul. When she wasn’t close enough to touch him, she was afraid he might disappear.
They’d spent last Christmas with his family in Philadelphia. Paul had written a poem about her and stitched it into a sampler sometime during the long hours she was at work and he was not. The sampler hung in the study, and now each time she looked at it she wondered how the warmth Paul had felt for her one short year ago could have disintegrated so quickly.
“Turkey’s falling off the bone,” he said now. “Should I take it out?”
Olivia started to answer, but just then the police radio in the hall outside her office coughed to life.
“Hold on, Paul.” She held the receiver away from her ear and listened as Kathy sat down in front of the radio.
“Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room,” Kathy said.
“We’ve got a gunshot wound to the chest.” A male voice broke through the static. “Female. Mid to late thirties. Pulse one-fifty and thready. B.P. seventy-five over forty.”
“What’s your ETA?” Kathy asked.
“Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. It’s fucking snowing out here.”
Olivia stood up. “Paul, I’ve got to go.” She hung up the phone and raced to the treatment room. “Call Jonathan,” she said as she passed Kathy. Jonathan Cramer was not Olivia’s favorite physician to work with, but he was the back-up physician tonight and he lived closest. He could be here in seconds.
She was soaping her hands and wrists at the treatment room sink when Jonathan arrived. “Gunshot, huh?” he said as he rolled his shirtsleeves over his beefy forearms. “We’ll stabilize her and fly her up to Emerson.”
Olivia turned on the EKG monitor. “We haven’t even seen her yet.”
“She’s going to need a trauma unit.”
Olivia began setting up the intubation tray. Jonathan had last worked in a sleepy Louisiana hospital. Gunshot wounds were probably not his area of greatest confidence. He had been here a little over a year, the first physician hired by the new free-standing emergency room, the only emergency facility serving North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She’d been told she’d be on an equal plane with him, with equal say in all decisions made. Yet she often wondered if someone had neglected to pass that information on to Jonathan.