She did not know what to say. She had no idea what words she could use to save the little scraps of whatever they had left together. And so she watched in silence as he finished dressing, as he bent low to kiss the top of her head, as he left the room. She listened to him hunting in the study for whatever it was he needed. Then she heard him leave the house, closing the door quietly behind him, but closing it all the same. She listened to him pull the car out of the driveway, and she could still hear it as he turned the corner onto Mallard Run. It was another hour before she shut her eyes, and an hour after that before she slept. And it was just a few short weeks before she knew that the seed Paul had imagined himself planting in Annie had started a new life in her.
Alec wasn’t surprised to find Randi still waiting for him in his office. He had avoided seeing her these past six months. He’d bumped into her a couple of times, once in the grocery store, once at the Sea Tern, but he’d kept those meetings brief, shifting away from her when he saw impatience replace the sympathy in her eyes. Now, though, he was cornered.
“Sit down, Alec.” She was sitting in the chair Olivia had vacated, and he sat down once again behind his desk.
“It was so great to walk in here and see you in that chair,” she said.
“Look, Randi, I was here because we were talking about something too heavy for a restaurant. This was the best place to meet. Don’t read so much into it.”
“When are you coming back, Alec?”
He hated being asked that question so directly. It made it impossible to dodge. “I don’t know,” he said.
She sighed, exasperated, and leaned forward in the chair. “What the hell are you living on? How are you keeping your kids fed? How do you plan to get Clay through four years at Duke?”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Isn’t your brain disintegrating?”
“I like the time off, Randi. It gives me loads of time to work on the lighthouse committee.”
She sat back, scowling. “Alec, you’re pissing me off.”
He smiled.
“Don’t give me that condescending smile,” she said, but she was smiling herself. “Oh, Alec, the bottom line is I miss you, and I worry about you. But you just dumped everything on me. You said it would be one month, and here I am nearly a year later doing it all.”
“It hasn’t even been six months, and you’re not alone. Isn’t Steve Matthews working out?”
She waved her hand impatiently through the air. “That’s not the point.”
He stood up and walked around to the front of his desk, leaning back against it, working his way toward the door. “Randi, if it’s really too much for you, tell me and we’ll get someone else in to help out. I don’t want you to be overextended.”
She sighed and seemed to deflate in the chair. “I’m all right. I just thought playing on your guilt might work.” She stood up too, and he was pleased to see she was surrendering. She walked over to him for a hug, which he provided, stunned for a moment by the way her breasts felt against his chest, by the way her hair lay warm and fragrant next to his cheek.
He pulled away from her, gently. “Wow, do you feel good. It’s been a while since I hugged a woman.”
There was a sudden glint in Randi’s eyes. “I’ve been dying to fix you up with this friend of mine,” she said.
He shook his head.
“You’d love her, Alec, and it’s time you went out. There’s a world full of single women out there, and you’re a free man.”
He was irritated by the word free. “It’s way too soon,” he said.
“What about that doctor? She’s pretty and…”
“And married and pregnant.”
“Don’t you miss sex?” she asked bluntly.
“I miss everything,” he snapped, suddenly angry, and Randi took a step backward. “This is not some high school game, here, Randi. I’ve lost my wife. My right arm, you know? Annie wasn’t replaceable.”
“I know that,” Randi said in a small voice. There were tears in her eyes.
“Let me do things at my own pace, okay?” He picked up his keys from the desk and started for the door.
“Alec,” she said. “Please don’t be angry.”
“I’m not.” He opened the door and looked back at her. “I shouldn’t expect you to understand, Randi. Don’t worry about it.”
He was sweating by the time he reached the Bronco. He sat for a moment with the door open, letting the air conditioner blow the heat from the car. Then he pulled onto the road, heading north, his car practically operating on autopilot. In a short time, he had reached Kiss River. There might be tourists at the lighthouse this time of day, but he knew how to escape them.
He turned onto the winding, wooded road that led out to the lighthouse. He had to stop for a minute as one of the wild mustangs—the black stallion he had treated for an infection last fall—leisurely crossed the road in front of him. He drove on until he reached the small parking lot, surrounded on all sides by thick, scrubby bayberry bushes. He got out of the Bronco and took the footpath that led to the lighthouse.
The ocean was rough today. It broke wildly over the jetty, and he felt the spray against his face as he neared the lighthouse. It rose above him, the white brick sun-drenched and blinding. There were a couple of kids on the crescent of sand that made up the small, ever-shrinking Kiss River beach, and a few tourists milling around, some of them reading the plaques, others shading their eyes as they looked skyward toward the black iron gallery high above them.
Alec tried to make himself invisible as he approached the door in the white brick foundation. He glanced over at the old keeper’s house. It looked as though no one from the Park Service was around today. Good. He slipped a key from his pocket and into the lock, jiggling it a little before the door opened. Mary Poor had given the key to Annie years ago, and she had cherished it. Controlled it jealously.
He disappeared inside, locking the door behind him. It was cool, almost chilly. There were birds somewhere in the tower. He couldn’t see them, but he heard the echoing flap of their wings, the occasional chirp that ricocheted off the rounded brick walls. The brick was white in here as well, although the paint was crumbling, flaking onto the floor in a coarse white powder.
Alec began the long climb to the top up the steel circular staircase, not bothering to stop at the six rectangular windows that marked the landings along the way, and by the time he reached the claustrophobic room below the lantern, he was winded. He was not getting enough exercise these days.
He opened the door and stepped into the sunlight on the gallery. He sat down, close to the tower so he could not be seen from below, and breathed in the damp, salty air.
Glassy blue water stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see. He had a clear view of the jetty, and it made him remember the funeral and the welcome numbness that had befriended him back then. From the moment Olivia Simon told him Annie was dead, he’d felt nothing. He didn’t cry, didn’t even feel close to crying. Nola helped him make the arrangements, weeping most of the time and talking about how Annie usually did that sort of thing, how good she was at rallying people together at a time of crisis, and he’d muttered some form of agreement from inside the comforting protective capsule that had formed around him.
The funeral was held in the largest church in the northern Outer Banks, but even it was not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to come. Someone told him later that people stood in the vestibule and spilled out onto the front steps and into the parking lot.
Alec sat between Clay and Nola. Lacey had refused to come and he didn’t press the issue with her, although person after person wanted to know where she was. He was too dazed to realize that his response “—she didn’t want to come—” was not enough.