Praise for Diane Chamberlain

‘Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read.’

—Closer

‘An excellent read’

—The Sun

‘This complex tale will stick with you forever.’

—Now

‘A hugely addictive twist in the tale makes this a sizzling sofa read … a deeply compelling and moving new novel.’

—Heat

‘This exquisite novel about love and friendship is written like a thriller … you won’t want to put it down.’

—Bella

‘A bittersweet story about regret and hope’

—Publishers Weekly

‘A brilliantly told thriller’

—Woman

‘An engaging and absorbing story that’ll have you racing through pages to finish’

—People’s Friend

‘This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.’

—Inside Soap

‘A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises’

—Star

‘Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’

—Daily Mail ‘Chamberlain skilfully … plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart.’ —Publishers Weekly

‘So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’

—Candis

‘The plot is intriguing and haunting revelations will have you glued to the very end.’

—Peterborough Evening Telegraph

‘I was drawn in from the first page and simply could not put it down until the last. I think I have found a new favourite author.’

—Daily Echo

‘[A] gripping summer read that’s full of twists and turns—5 stars’

—Woman’s Own

‘The compelling story of three friends who are forced to question what it is to be a friend, mother and a sister.’

—Sunday World

‘A gripping novel’

—The Lady (online)

‘Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.’

—Literary Times

‘A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult for, as this builds, one does indeed wonder if all will come right in the end.’

—lovereading.co.uk

‘I couldn’t put it down.’

—Bookseller

Kiss River

Diane Chamberlain

GETS TO THE HEART OF THE STORY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Also by Diane Chamberlain

Keeper of the Light

The Lost Daughter

The Bay at Midnight

Before the Storm

Secrets She Left Behind

The Lies We Told

Breaking the Silence

The Midwife’s Confession

Brass Ring

The Shadow Wife

The Good Father

For Haseena and all the other waiting children

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

—Richard Bach

Chapter One

THE AIR CONDITIONER IN HER AGING CAR WAS giving out, blowing warm, breath-stealing air into Gina’s face. If she could have torn her concentration away from her mission for even a moment, she would have felt a pang of fear over what the repair of the air conditioner would cost her. Instead, she merely opened the car windows and let the hot, thick, salt breeze fill the interior. She took deep breaths, smelling the unfamiliar brininess in the air, so different from the scent of the Pacific. The humidity worked its way into her long hair, lifting it, tangling it, forming fine dark tendrils on her forehead. Another woman might have run her hands over her hair to smooth the flyaway strands. Gina did not care. After six days of driving, six nights of sleeping in the cramped quarters of the car, several quick showers stolen from fitness clubs to which she did not belong and eighteen cheap, fast-food meals, she was almost there. She was close enough to Kiss River to taste it in the air.

The bridge she was crossing was very long and straight and clogged with traffic. She should have expected that. After all, it was a Friday evening in late June and she was headed toward the Outer Banks of North Carolina, an area she supposed was now quite a tourist attraction. She might have trouble finding a room for the night. She hadn’t thought of that. She was used to the Pacific Northwest, where the coastline was craggy and the water too cold for swimming, and where finding a room for the night was not ordinarily an impossible chore.

The cars were moving slowly enough to allow her to study the map she held flat against the steering wheel. Once she left the bridge, the traffic crawled for a mile or so past a school and a couple of strip malls, and then perhaps two-thirds of the cars turned right onto Highway 12. She turned left and entered an area the map identified as Southern Shores.

Through the open car windows, she could hear, but not see, the ocean on her right. The waves pounded the beach behind the eclectic mix of flat-topped houses, larger, newer homes and old beach cottages. In spite of the slow-moving stream of cars, the Outer Banks seemed open and wide and empty here. Not what she had expected from reading the diary. But the diary had not been about Southern Shores, and as she continued driving, live oaks and wild vegetation she did not recognize began to cradle the curving road. She was approaching the village of Duck, which sounded quaint and was probably expensive, and interested her not in the least. After Duck, she would pass through a place called Sanderling, and then through a wildlife sanctuary, and soon after that, she should see a sign marking the road to the Kiss River lighthouse. Although she knew she was miles from the lighthouse, she couldn’t help but glance to the sky again and again, hoping to see the tower in the distance through the trees. Even though it was the tallest lighthouse in the country, she knew she could not possibly see it from where she was. That didn’t stop her from looking, though.

She had more time to study the little shopping areas of Duck than she wanted, since the cars and SUVs crept along the road at a near standstill. If the traffic didn’t clear soon, it would be dark by the time she reached Kiss River. She’d hoped to get there no later than five. It was now nearly seven, and the sun was already sinking toward the horizon. Would the lighthouse be closed for the evening? For that matter, would it be open to the public at all? What time did they turn on the light? Maybe they no longer did. That would disappoint her. She wanted to see how it illuminated Kiss River, once every four and a half seconds. If people were allowed to climb the lighthouse, she doubted they would be permitted to visit the lantern room, but she would have to get into that room, one way or another. Only recently, she’d discovered that she was a pretty good liar. She’d lived her entire life valuing honesty and integrity. Suddenly, she’d become manipulative, a master at deceit. She could, when pressed, travel far outside the law. The first time she’d snuck into a fitness club to use the shower on this trip east, she’d trembled with fear, not only at the possibility of being caught, but at the sheer dishonesty of the act. By the time she sauntered into the club in Norfolk, though, she’d almost forgotten she didn’t have a membership at the place. The end justified the means, she told herself.

So, if visiting the lantern room of the lighthouse was not allowed, she would find another way to get up there. That was the entire purpose of this trip. She would talk with someone, one of the guides or docents or whatever they were, and make up a reason for needing to see that room. Research, she would say. She was writing about lighthouses. Or taking pictures. She touched the borrowed camera hanging around her neck. It was heavy, impressive looking. She’d make up something that would sound plausible. One way or another, she needed to see the lantern room and its enormous globe of glass prisms, the Fresnel lens.

The drive through the wildlife reserve seemed to go on forever, but at least the traffic had thinned out, as cars turned onto roads leading to the houses near the beach. The remaining traffic moved briskly and the road was, for the most part, straight. Gina could examine the map easily as she drove. The sign indicating the location of the lighthouse should be somewhere along here, she thought. The road to Kiss River would run off to the right, cutting through the red oaks and loblolly pines, although it was possible that the landscape had changed since the days of the diary. Given the size and newness of many of the houses she had passed, it was possible the trees were completely gone by now and the road lined by more of the touristy homes.

Finally, she spotted a narrow road heading east into the trees. She pulled to the side of the main road, as close to the trees as she dared, and studied her map. There was no street sign, no hint at all that anything special lay down that road, but this had to be it. On the map she could see the way the land jutted out from the road. There was no river at Kiss River. It was little more than a promontory with a whimsical name and a towering lighthouse. Surely that lighthouse was a tourist attraction. So why was there no sign?

She wondered if she should continue driving up the main road to look for another, more promising, turn, but shook her head. The sign must have blown over or been struck by a car. Trusting her map, she turned right onto the road.

Instantly, the road jogged to the left, surrounding her by trees. The macadam was rutted and poorly maintained, and the road twisted its way into near darkness. The air was dusky, the trees so thick that little light could cut through them. Through the open windows, she heard the buzzing of crickets or frogs or some other critter, and the sound grew louder the deeper she drove into the forest.

The road ended abruptly at a small cul-de-sac in the woods. Stopping the car, she turned on the overhead light. The map clearly showed the cul-de-sac, with a smaller road leading from it out to the lighthouse. Looking to her left, she spotted a narrow gravel lane with a heavy, rusty chain strung across its entrance. A sign hanging from the chain read in bold red letters, NO TRESPASSING.

This could not be right, she thought. Even if the lighthouse itself was not open to the public, the grounds surrounding it and the keeper’s house certainly should be.

She checked the map again. There were no other roads like this one, ending in a cul-de-sac. This was it, whether she wanted it to be or not. She looked up at the gravel lane beyond the chain again. The path was foreboding, dark and shrouded by trees.

She did not consider herself a brave person, although these last few months she had found courage in herself she’d had no idea she possessed. Getting slowly out of the car, she locked the door behind her. She did have a flashlight in the trunk, but the batteries had died somewhere in Kentucky, so she carried only her map and the camera around her neck as she walked across the cul-de-sac. One end of the chain was attached to a tree, the other padlocked to a post. Skirting the post, she started walking down the gravel lane.

Even if this was the wrong road, she told herself, what harm could she come to by walking down it? True, she could break an ankle in one of the many ruts or trip over one of the tree roots that raised the gravel in a disorderly veinlike pattern. More likely, though, the worst that could happen was that she’d come to someone’s tucked-away home. She would apologize, ask for directions to the lighthouse. But then she remembered the horses. There were wild horses out here. And wild boars. They could be dangerous, she remembered reading in the diary. She imagined trying to climb one of the stubby trees to escape them. Her heart pounding, she listened hard for the sound of horse hooves or breaking twigs and realized that, this deep into the woods, she could not even hear the traffic. Only the thick, strange buzz of those crickets or whatever they were. It occurred to her that she would have to walk back through these woods again, and it would be even darker by then.

How far had she walked? It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of a mile. Stopping on the road, she peered hard through the trees. The road had looked quite short on the map, and surely she should be able to see the top of the lighthouse by now. She walked a bit farther and heard a whooshing, pounding sound that took her a minute to recognize as the ocean. It sounded close. Very close.

Ahead of her, the road turned slightly to the right. The vegetation was thinner and she could see light between the branches of the trees. Quickening her step, she suddenly broke free of the forest and found herself in a small, sand-swept parking lot. Had this been the visitors’ parking lot for the lighthouse? One thing she knew for certain by now: for whatever reason, the Kiss River light was no longer open to the public.

Through the trees and shrubs surrounding the parking lot, she saw the curved white brick wall of what had to be the lighthouse, and she knew immediately that something was wrong. There was a narrow path cutting through the trees, and branches scratched against her bare arms as she followed it. A few steps later, she stopped, staring in horror at what stood in front of her.

“No,” she said aloud. “Oh, no.”

The lighthouse rose high above her, but the top portion of it was missing. The lantern room was gone, and the entire tower could not have been more than three-quarters of its original height. Craning her neck, she could make out several steps of the steel staircase jutting a few yards above the jagged opening at the top of the tower.

She stood numbly, consumed by a distress that went far beyond disappointment. No wonder no one else was out here. It must have been the sea that destroyed the lighthouse, because even now the breaking waves swirled around the base of the tower, and it was apparent from the packed, damp sand beneath her feet that it was not yet high tide. A storm, she thought. This was the work of a damn storm.

Panic rose up inside her. She’d driven all this way. All this way. For nothing. For dashed hopes. Shutting her eyes, she felt dizzy. The sound of the waves cracking against the base of the lighthouse filled her ears, and a spray of salt water stung her face.

As she took a few steps toward the tower, a house came into view thirty or so yards to her left. The keeper’s house. Long ago abandoned, most likely, although she noted the windows were not boarded up and two white Adirondack chairs graced the broad porch. Odd.

She looked up at the tower again, then took off her sandals. Dangling them from her fingertips, she stepped into the shallow water. It was colder than she’d expected, and she caught her breath at the unanticipated chill. The sand sucked at her feet and the water rose nearly to her knees one moment, only to fall to her ankles the next.

She climbed the three concrete stairs leading to the foyer beneath the tower. Despite her disappointment over finding the lighthouse damaged beyond repair, she still felt a thrill at finding herself inside it. She knew this place. Oh, how she knew it! She knew, for example, that there had once been a door at the foyer entrance, although there was no sign of one now. She knew there might be birds inside the tower, and indeed, when she took another step deeper into the foyer, she heard the flapping of wings above her.

She was in the cool air of a circular room. The floor was covered with octagonal black and white tiles, and on the white brick wall across from her, the steel stairs rose at a diagonal. Walking across the room, she dropped her sandals on the floor near the first step and began to climb.

The stairs had a woven texture and she could see straight through them to the purply-gray sky high above her and, as she climbed higher, to the dimly lit floor below. The spiral of stairs gradually narrowed and she quickly grew breathless. She’d never been great with heights, and she hugged the cold, white brick wall as she rested on the landings. Through the wavy glass of the tall, narrow windows at each landing, she could see the keeper’s house. Then she’d return to the stairs, clutching the railing, no longer daring to look down as she climbed higher.

The stairs rose several yards above the opening of the lighthouse, right up into the evening sky. Gina leaned against the brick wall, her heart beating more from fear than from exertion as she contemplated climbing those last few unprotected steps. She could sit on that top step, she thought, and look out at the ocean. Maybe she’d discover the lens was directly below her in the shallow water near the base of the lighthouse.

She forced herself up another step, then another, holding on to the railing with both hands, and when she reached the top step, she turned and gingerly sat down on it. She was above the world here. The ocean was spread out in front of her like a huge, deep-purple rug fringed with white. The thick wall of the lighthouse looked as if it had been chewed off by some huge monster, leaving the jagged edges of the brick behind.

What was she going to do now?

Afraid of losing her balance, she carefully leaned a bit to the left and pulled the small photograph from the rear pocket of her shorts. Pressing it against her knee, she studied the image. A little girl. Much smaller than she should have been for being one year old, her age when the picture was taken. Skin the color of wheat. Very short, jet-black hair. The hugest, darkest eyes. Sad, hopeful eyes.

Gina shut her own eyes, feeling the sting of tears behind the lids. “I’ll find a way, sweetheart,” she said out loud. “I promise.”

She sat very still for a long time, watching the last traces of daylight disappear in the sky, her mind only on the child in the picture. She did not think about how she would manage to climb down the spiral staircase in the dusky light, or walk back to her car through those darkening woods, or find a room on a Friday night in a place overrun by tourists.

She must have moved her head just a fraction of an inch to the left, because something caught her eye and made her turn around. And what she saw then stopped her breath in her throat. Every window of the keeper’s house glowed with stained glass.

Chapter Two

CLAY O’NEILL STOPPED HIS JEEP DIRECTLY IN front of the chain. Removing the key he kept attached to his visor, he got out of the car, unlocked the padlock, then dragged the chain to one side of the road. He tried to remember if his sister would be home yet. It was Friday, and Lacey usually attended an Al-Anon meeting on Friday evenings. He would leave the chain open, then. Save her the effort of unlocking it.

Once back in the Jeep, he noticed a car parked on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac. Strange. Someone must have left it there, then hiked through the woods to the beach. He forgot about the car as he turned onto the gravel road, avoiding the familiar ruts and driving very slowly, since he had nearly broken an axle on one of the tree roots a few weeks earlier. He would need to trim some of the branches back one day soon; they scraped the roof of the Jeep as he drove through the tunnel they formed above him.

Emerging from the woods, he could see the keeper’s house, its windows aglow with stained glass. Seeing the house so alive with color in the gray dusk of evening, he understood why Lacey insisted on setting the lights on a timer. She usually beat him home after work and she’d told him she hated coming home to a dark house, but he knew her real reasoning: she loved to see her handiwork glowing from all the windows. He’d argued that it was a huge waste of electricity, but he didn’t argue hard or long. Lacey had done too much for him. He would let her have her lights. He supposed the stained glass comforted her in a way, and although he would never admit it to her, it comforted him as well. Their mother had also been a stained-glass artist. Coming home to those windows was like hearing an old lullaby.

He parked in the inch of sand that covered the corner of the parking lot nearest the house, then got out and opened the rear of the Jeep to retrieve the groceries. It had been his turn to do the shopping, and he had bought thick, mauve-colored tuna steaks to grill for a late dinner, along with a week’s worth of milk and cereal and fruit and some cleaning supplies. The grocery bags were heavy, but he managed to carry all four of them as he made his way across the sand to the house.

Setting the groceries down on the new wooden countertop in the kitchen, he heard Sasha bounding down the stairs. The black Lab ran into the room to greet him, and Clay leaned over to give him a hug.

“Hi, boy,” he said, scratching the dog’s broad chest. “Bet you’d like to go for a walk, huh?”

Sasha took two steps toward the door and looked back at his master. Poor neglected dog, Clay thought as he opened the refrigerator door. “Just let me get this stuff put away and I’ll be right with you,” he said.

The small kitchen was the first room he and Lacey had helped refurbish when they moved into the house six months earlier, right after the first of the year. The room was a small square, with pine cabinets and wood flooring. The original porcelain-topped table sat in the center of the room, surrounded by four oak chairs. The room was inelegant but functional. Elegance was not their goal in this house. Historical accuracy was far more important.

He had finished putting away the groceries and was nearly to the door with Sasha when he happened to look through the kitchen’s rear window. Beneath the wide panel of stained glass hanging from the sash, he could see the lighthouse. The sun was down, the sky a milky gray, but he could still make out the silhouette of the tower, and he looked hard at it. Something was different. Squinting, he leaned closer to the glass. He knew how the tower should look from here. He knew the ragged shape of the rim and the way the spiral staircase rose above it. The line of that staircase was blurred now, and it took him a moment to realize that someone was sitting up there, on the top step, the place he thought of as his own private roost.

Was it Lacey? But no, her car was not in the parking lot. It was a stranger, then. It was so rare to see anyone out here. Tourists had long ago forgotten Kiss River, and the road had been chained off ever since the storm destroyed the lighthouse ten years ago. It was possible to get to the lighthouse by the beach, but difficult, since the water had eroded so much of the sand. By boat, perhaps? His eyes scanned the area in front of the lighthouse for a boat. He didn’t see one, but it was too dark to be sure. Then he remembered the car parked in the cul-de-sac.

“Come on, boy,” he said, opening the door and stepping onto the porch. He kicked off his sandals, picked up the flashlight from the seat of one of the Adirondack chairs and headed toward the tower. Sasha ran full speed toward the trees at the side of the yard, where he liked to do his business.

It was a woman sitting on the lighthouse stairs, that much he knew for certain. Her long hair rose and fell with the breeze, and she was facing the sea. And looking to break her neck, he thought. Those stairs could be treacherous in the dark if you weren’t used to them. The waves swirling around the base of the lighthouse shone white with froth, and Clay stepped into the chill water, keeping enough distance between himself and the tower that he could still see the woman when he craned his neck to look up.

“Hello!” he shouted, just as a wave crashed onto the beach.

The woman didn’t turn her head, and he guessed she could not hear him over the sound of the sea.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Yo!” he hollered. “Hello!”

Sasha came running at the sound of his call, and this time the woman peered over the edge of the tower at him. So high above him, she was very small, her features invisible. If she answered him, he didn’t hear her.

“It’s dangerous up there,” he called. “You’d better come down.”

The woman stood up, but Clay instantly changed his mind. It would be too dark inside the tower. “Wait there!” He held up a hand to tell her to stay. “I’ll come up and get you. I have a flashlight.”

He told Sasha to stay on the beach, then waded through the water to climb the concrete steps into the foyer. Turning on the flashlight, he saw the familiar, eerie, nighttime look of the stairs and railing against the curved white brick wall. He was used to the stairs and took them easily, without a hint of breathlessness. He made the climb nearly every day, sometimes more than once. The tower was a wonderful escape.

The salt breeze washed across his face as he stepped above the broad, jagged-edged cylinder of bricks. The woman stood up again, backing away a bit, and he thought she might be afraid of him. Understandable. It was dark; she had nowhere to run.

“You could trip going down the stairs in the dark,” he said quickly, showing her his flashlight.

“Oh. Thanks.” Her dark hair blew across her face, and she brushed it away with her hand.

She was extraordinarily beautiful. Very slender—too slender, perhaps—with long dark hair and large eyes that looked nearly black in the dim light. There was a fragility about her, as if a good gust of wind could easily blow her from the top of the tower.

As though reading his mind, she lurched a bit, grabbing the railing. He knew how she felt. The stairs held you suspended in the air above the tower, and it was easy to experience vertigo. The first few times he came up here with Terri, he’d actually felt sick. The stairs were solid and sturdy, though. It simply took the inner ear a while to get used to that fact.

“Sit down again,” he said. “We’ll wait till you feel steady on your feet before we go down.”

The woman sat down without a word, moving to the edge of the step closest to the railing, which she quickly circled with both her hands. Clay sat one step below her.

“What brings you up here?” He tipped his head back slightly to look at her, hoping he didn’t sound as if he was accusing her of something. Behind her windblown hair, the sky had turned a thick gray-black. There were no stars. No moon.

“Just … I …” Her gaze was somewhere above his head, out toward the dark horizon. “What happened here?” she asked, letting go of the railing with one of her hands, waving it through the air to take in the lighthouse and all of Kiss River. “What happened to the lighthouse?”

“Hurricane,” Clay said. “More than ten years ago.”

“Ten years.” The woman shook her head. She stared out to sea, and Clay thought her eyes were glistening. She didn’t speak.

“I’m Clay O’Neill,” he said.

The woman acknowledged him with a brief smile. “Gina Higgins.” She pointed behind her to the keeper’s house. “Has that become a museum or something?” she asked.

“No.” From where he sat, the house looked like a church, its windows filled with color. “It was abandoned for many years,” he said. “Then a conservation group I’m part of took it over. My sister and I are living in it while it’s being restored. We help with the work and act as general contractors, for the most part.” The restoration was progressing very slowly, and that was fine with him. There was no target date, no reason to rush.

Gina looked over her shoulder at the house. “The stained glass …”

“It’s my sister’s,” he said. “She just hung it in the windows while we’re living here. It’s not part of the restoration.”

“Your sister made it?”

“Yes.”

“What a talent,” Gina said. “It’s beautiful.”

He nodded, glancing at the house again. “She’s pretty good at it.”

“And what are the plans for the house when it’s refurbished?”

“Actually, none, so far,” he said. Holding tight to the railing, he stood up to peer over the edge of the tower, hunting for Sasha. He spotted the dog nosing at a pile of seaweed and took his seat again. “Possibly a little museum,” he said. “Possibly a B and B. Maybe even a private residence. The situation is unusual, since the lighthouse is off limits. They aren’t sure they want to draw people out here. I was surprised to see you here, actually. How did you get in?”

“I walked in from the road, where that chain is. I ignored the No Trespassing sign.” She looked beautifully sheepish. “Sorry,” she said.

“It’s off limits because it’s dangerous out here, as you can probably tell,” he said. “But you haven’t gotten yourself killed, so no big deal. Were you hiking? Exploring? Most people don’t even realize this lighthouse is here anymore.”

“Oh, I’m an amateur lighthouse historian,” Gina said. She touched the camera hanging around her neck. “So I was curious to see the Kiss River light and get some pictures of it. Where is the rest of it? Where is the Fresnel lens?”

She pronounced the word FREZnal instead of FraNELL. Odd for a lighthouse historian. But she’d said she was an amateur; she had probably seen the word in writing but had never heard it spoken before.

“The Fresnel lens is somewhere at the bottom of the ocean,” he said, diplomatically using the correct pronunciation, and even in the darkness, he could see coins of color form on her cheeks.

“Why didn’t they raise it?” she asked. “It’s very valuable, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yes, but there was a lot of opposition to raising the lens,” he said. His own father, once an advocate for saving the lighthouse, had led the fight against finding the lens. “The travel bureau and the lighthouse society wanted it raised, but the locals tend to think that things should remain right where nature puts them. And, as you can imagine, they’re also not keen on bringing even more tourists to the area as it is. Besides, who knows? The lens could be in a thousand pieces down there.”

“But it also could be in one piece, or in just a few pieces that could be put back together,” she argued, and he knew she had a feisty side to her. “I think it’s a crime to leave something that’s historically valuable on the bottom of the sea. It should be displayed in a museum somewhere.”

He shrugged. He didn’t really care about the lens. Never thought about it, actually. In the great scheme of things, it did not seem worth getting upset over.

“It was a first-order lens, wasn’t it?” Gina asked.

“Yes. It’s three tons, at least. Whether it’s in one piece or a hundred, it would be a job to bring it out. Once they got the thing up, it would probably have to spend months in an electrolyte bath so the metal parts didn’t disintegrate in the air.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “The metal parts are brass, aren’t they? Brass wouldn’t need an electrolyte bath.”

She was right, and he was wrong. And also a little impressed.

“And if it’s three tons,” she continued, “it couldn’t have drifted too far from the lighthouse, then, could it?”

He looked out toward the black cavern of the sea. Long ago, he and Terri would drive up here to Kiss River and sit on these stairs at low tide, trying to spot the lens, expecting to see it jutting out of the water. They never were able to spot it. “It was an unbelievable storm,” he said. “And there have been a few just as bad since then. The coastline’s really changed here. Before that storm, the water was never up this high. It’s washed away the beach. By now the lens could be just about any—”

“Hey!”

The shout came from the beach, slipping past Clay’s ears on the breeze. Leaning over, he saw a flashlight far below them.

“Hey, Lace!” he called back. “We’ll be down in a sec.”

Turning to Gina, he stood up. “That’s my sister,” he said. “Are you ready to go down?”

She nodded. He held his hand out to her as she stood up, but she didn’t take it. Leading the way down the staircase, he kept his flashlight turned backward a bit to light the stairs for her. “Watch your step,” he warned. “It’s not as easy in the dark.”

He moved slowly, aware that Gina had a death grip on the railing behind him, and it was a while before they exited through the tiled foyer. The waves washed over their feet and legs once they’d descended the three concrete steps into the water. Sasha bounded toward them, splashing their arms and faces as they waded to the dry sand where Lacey stood.

Gina nearly ignored Lacey as she squatted low to the ground to pet Sasha, and Clay’s opinion of the woman instantly rose a few notches. Sasha rolled in the sand, exposing his stomach to the stranger, and Gina obliged by rubbing his belly.

“That’s Sasha,” Clay said. “And this is my sister, Lacey. Lacey, this is Gina …?” He couldn’t recall her last name.

“Higgins.” Gina stood up, wiping her sandy hand on her shorts before extending it to Lacey.

“Are you a friend of Clay’s?” Lacey asked as she shook Gina’s hand, and Clay heard the hope in her voice. His sister would love nothing better than for him to have a new woman in his life.

Gina smiled at her. “No,” she said with a slight laugh. “I’m a trespasser, actually. I was up on the lighthouse when it got dark and your brother rescued me. That’s all.”

“Really?” Lacey raised her eyebrows at him.

“She came in from the road,” he explained.

“I walked around the chain,” Gina said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see—”

“No big deal,” Lacey said, waving her unlit flashlight through the air. Her long red hair was tied back against the breeze, and her fair skin glowed white in the darkness. “We don’t own this place.” She glanced from Gina to Clay and back again, and he could almost see what she was thinking. Right age, very attractive, perfect for Clay. “Are you here on vacation with your family?” she asked. “Or with a bunch of girlfriends?” Clay nearly groaned at her transparent probing. Why didn’t she just come right out and ask the woman if she was available to be fixed up with her pathetic brother?

“I’m alone,” Gina said. “Just here for a few days.”

“She’s a lighthouse historian,” Clay said.

“Amateur,” Gina added, glancing away from him. She was probably still embarrassed over her pronunciation of Fresnel.

“Well, listen.” Lacey swatted a mosquito that had landed on her bare shoulder. “Have you eaten? Would you like to stay for dinner?”

“Oh, no,” Gina protested.

“We know absolutely every minute detail there is to know about the lighthouse,” Lacey coaxed. “We can tell you everything.” He knew his sister would not take no for an answer. He understood how her mind worked. It wasn’t so much that she was hoping to fix Gina up with him, or that she was eager to tell her stories about the lighthouse. It was that she couldn’t bear to think of anyone being alone.

“I bought plenty of fresh tuna for dinner, so you might as well stay,” Clay said, surprising himself as well as Lacey. “Then one of us can drive you back out to your car.” The truth was, he didn’t want her to go, either. He wanted to see her in the good light of the kitchen. He wanted to find flaws in that perfect face.

Gina looked down at Sasha, who was leaning against her thigh. She scratched the dog behind his ears.

“All right,” she said. “That’s so nice of you. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about walking back through those woods, with the wild horses and pigs and all.”

He and Lacey stared at her, then started to laugh.

“Wild pigs?” Lacey asked.

“I’d heard there were wild pigs,” Gina said. “Boars, I mean.”

“A long, long time ago,” Clay said, wondering where she’d received that piece of information. Whatever lighthouse source she was using had to be ancient. She hadn’t known the Kiss River had been destroyed. And wild pigs?

“The horses were moved way up past Corolla and fenced in,” Lacey explained. “Too many were getting killed because of the traffic. And it used to be open range here, long ago. Full of cows and hogs, and some of them did run wild. Mary Poor, who used to be the keeper, told me about them. I think there’s still some wild boar up in the wildlife refuge.”

“You know Mary Poor?” Gina asked. The name was obviously familiar to her.

“I did,” Lacey said. “She died a few years ago, but I used to visit her in the nursing home where she was living.”

“I’d love to hear more about her,” Gina said.

“Sure,” Lacey said, motioning in the direction of the house. “Let’s get dinner started and I’ll tell you all about her.”

The three of them began walking toward the house, sand sticking to their damp feet. Gina was tall and long-legged, and she carried her sandals dangling from her fingertips. Watching her, Clay nearly forgot about the charcoal.

“I’ll fire up the grill,” he said, breaking away from the women to make his way to the shed where he kept the charcoal. He was only half-surprised when Sasha elected to stay at Gina’s side rather than walk with him. His dog could be as manipulative as his sister.

* * *

When he brought the grilled tuna steaks into the kitchen, he found Lacey and Gina making salad and boiling cobs of corn. They were deep in conversation, deep in that world of women that was so natural for them and so elusive to men like him. They were talking about the history of the light station, Lacey entertaining Gina with tales of the keepers, Mary and Caleb Poor. She knew far more than he did, due to both her interest in the subject and her relationship with Mary, and Gina kept her eyes on his sister while she tore apart the leaves of romaine, clearly enraptured.

In the light of the kitchen, Lacey and Gina looked like two women in a painting, one a redhead, the other raven-haired. Both beautiful. Both slender, fair-skinned. His twenty-four-year-old sister looked tougher than Gina, though. The muscles in Lacey’s arms and legs were tight and defined. Her face was fuller. She not only had her mother’s vivid hair and artistic talent, but her dimples as well, along with that pale, freckled skin that needed serious protection from the sun. Although she was also fair, Gina looked as though she might be able to tan well, but he doubted her skin had seen the sun in years. She was older than he’d thought, a couple of years older than himself. Thirty maybe. The damp sea air had found its way into her hair, which had taken on the same windblown, wild look that would mark Lacey’s hair if she were to let it loose.

He put the plate of tuna steaks on the porcelain-topped table and Gina brought over the salad, while Lacey carried the platter of corn.

“Where do you live?” Clay asked, taking his seat at the table. He passed Gina the tuna steaks, motioning to her to help herself.

“Bellingham, Washington,” Gina said. “It’s north of Seattle.”

“Washington!” Lacey said. “What are you doing out here?”

“I had time off,” Gina said, reaching for the salad, and, Clay thought, measuring her words. “I teach school, so I have summer vacation, same as the students. I’m familiar with the lighthouses in the Pacific Northwest, and I wanted to visit some in the East. I thought I’d start here.”

Clay laughed as he transferred one of the steaks to his plate. “Well, you picked the wrong one to start with,” he said. “Tomorrow you can drive up to the Currituck Light. That one’s in great shape and open to the public.”

“Bodie’s not that far,” Lacey added. “And Hatteras is only a couple of hours from here. You probably know that they moved the Hatteras lighthouse a few years ago because it was going to fall into the sea, just like this one did—” Lacey nodded toward the beach “—so you might find that really intriguing. They have a video there you can watch.”

Gina nodded. “Thanks,” she said, poking corn holders into the ends of the cob on her plate. “I’ll be sure to see them all. But right now I’m a bit distressed over the fact that the Kiss River lighthouse is crumbling away. And I don’t understand why no one has tried to see if the lens is still in one piece.”

“I agree with you,” Lacey surprised him by saying. “I think they should have at least salvaged the lens.”

“You’ll have to fight Dad on that one,” Clay said.

“Why your father?” Gina looked from him to Lacey.

“He’s got OCD,” Lacey said with a flash of her dimples. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He used to be obsessed with saving the lighthouse. He led the Save the Lighthouse committee. After the hurricane, he became obsessed with keeping it the way it is and leaving the lens in the ocean.” She held up a hand to ward off the obvious question. “Don’t ask me to explain why my dad is the way he is, because I can’t.”

“Is he … does he … have some say in what happens to the lighthouse and the lens?” Gina asked.

“Not officially,” Lacey said. “But when it comes to the locals, everyone follows his lead.”

There was silence at the table for a moment, filled only by the crunch of corn and the chink of forks against the plates. Gina took a swallow of iced tea.

“This is the first time I’ve eaten fresh tuna,” she said, putting down her glass. “It’s wonderful.”

“My favorite,” Lacey agreed.

“You must get a lot of salmon where you live,” Clay said.

“Tons.” Gina nodded. She cut another piece of the fish with the side of her fork, but didn’t bring it to her mouth. “If I wanted to look into getting the lens raised,” she said, returning to the more difficult topic, “is your father the person I should talk to?”

Clay didn’t understand her apparent interest in the lens, but after growing up with his father, he was accustomed to an unexplained fixation on the Kiss River light. He nodded. “If you don’t have his backing, you can forget about getting anyone else’s,” he said. “But … and don’t take offense at this, please … you have to keep in mind that you’re an outsider here. People won’t much care what you want. The fact that you’re a lighthouse historian, though, might give you a little credibility.”

Gina’s huge, dark eyes were on him as she set down her fork. “Where would I find him?” she asked. “Your father?”

“He’s a vet,” Lacey said. “He works at Beacon Animal Hospital in Nag’s Head.”

“Is that far from here?”

“Half an hour,” Clay said. He pictured Gina walking unannounced into the animal hospital, and his father’s response when he realized the purpose of her intrusion. “If you want to contact him, though, I’d call him first. And don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t.” Gina smiled at him, but it was a quick smile that seemed somehow false. “So,” she said, “what sort of work do the two of you do? I assume you’re in construction?”

Lacey shook her head. “I’m a part-time vet tech at the animal hospital,” she said. “And a full-time stained-glass artist.”

She sold herself short, Clay thought. Vet tech and stained-glass artist just scratched the surface of who his sister was. She also volunteered on a crisis hot line, tutored kids at the local elementary school, read to residents in the nursing home where Mary Poor used to live and attended Al-Anon meetings in support of her biological father, Tom Nestor, who was also her stained-glass mentor and—at long last—a recovering alcoholic. She gave blood regularly and had donated her bone marrow the year before. She had, in short, turned herself into their mother, who the locals used to call Saint Anne. Lacey’s gradual metamorphosis into Annie O’Neill made Clay uncomfortable.

“And how about you?” Gina was looking at him.

He finished chewing a mouthful of salad. “Architect,” he said.

“Really?” Gina asked. “What sort of architecture?”

“Residential,” Clay said. “I have an office in Duck.”

For the first time that evening, he felt the too-familiar dark cloud slip over his shoulders. It used to be that, even before Clay would say he was an architect, he’d say that he trained dogs and their owners for search and rescue work. That had been his avocation and his passion, but he hadn’t put Sasha through his paces once since Terri’s death, and he no longer bothered to return the calls from people looking for training. Lacey had nagged him about it at first but quickly learned that approach could only backfire. It made him angry. It made him wonder if she’d loved Terri at all. She used to say that Terri felt more like a sister than a sister-in-law. Then why didn’t she understand that he just didn’t feel like doing a damn thing that reminded him of his wife?

“What grade do you teach?” Lacey asked their guest.

“Junior high,” Gina said. “Science.”

That explained her knowledge of brass and the electrolyte bath, Clay thought.

“Rough age,” Lacey said, and Clay had to smile to himself. Lacey had been one of the roughest fourteen-year-olds imaginable.

“I love it,” Gina said. “I love the kids.”

“Do you have any of your own?” Lacey asked.

Gina didn’t answer right away. She toyed with her salad for a moment, pushing a cherry tomato around with her fork. “No,” she said. “Someday, I hope.”

“Are you married?” Lacey asked. God, Clay thought. His sister could be so damn nosy. But his eyes fell to Gina’s hands, searching for a wedding ring. She wore two rings, actually: on her right hand, a small ruby in a white-gold or platinum setting, and on her left hand, an onyx set in silver. Her fingers were long and slim, like the rest of her, and her nails were unpainted, pink and rounded, cared for but not pampered.

Gina shook her head. “Not married,” she said.

Clay stood up and lifted his plate from the table to carry it to the sink. He had never been very good at sitting still for long, especially not for after-dinner small talk. He was just like their father that way, filled with a nervous sort of energy that had driven Terri crazy and was now doing the same to his sister. Lacey had long ago given up on asking him to stay seated for a while after dinner.

“Well.” Gina looked at her watch as if he’d given her the cue that it was time to leave. “I’d better be going,” she said. “I still have to find a room for tonight.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Clay asked from the sink. It was a Friday night at the end of June. She would never find a room.

“No.” She looked guileless. “I didn’t think about making a reservation. After I saw the traffic coming over the bridge this afternoon, I knew I should have, but …” Her voice faded away as she shrugged. “It’s not a problem for me, though. I slept in my car the entire trip out here. I can certainly do it one more night.”

“That’s crazy,” Lacey said. “You stay with us tonight, Gina. Tomorrow you can look for a room. No way we’re letting you sleep in your car.” Lacey didn’t look at him as she spoke. He knew she didn’t want to see any disapproval in his eyes.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Gina said. She looked genuinely chagrined by the invitation. “You’ve already been so kind. And after I trespassed on your property and took over your evening.”

“You’re staying here,” Lacey insisted. “The spare bedrooms haven’t been redone yet, but you’re welcome to take one of them as is, if you like. We have clean sheets for the bed. So you have no excuse not to stay.”

He knew he should speak up himself. He should tell her it was okay, that he’d like her to stay, but for some reason the words were stuck in his throat.

Gina played with her crumpled napkin where it rested on the table. “Well, thank you so much,” she said, glancing from Lacey to him. “I can’t believe how nice you two are being to a perfect stranger.”

“Let’s go move your car,” Lacey stood up.

“May I use your bathroom first?” Gina asked, and Clay pointed the way. Once she was out of hearing range, Lacey dared to look at him.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It’s fine.” But he couldn’t explain the apprehension he felt at the thought of sharing the house with this stranger, a lighthouse enthusiast who couldn’t pronounce Fresnel, if even for just one night.

Chapter Three

GINA KNEW THIS ROOM. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN in it before, but she knew it all the same. She stood in the doorway in the darkness, breathing hard, although the small, soft-sided suitcase she’d carried up the stairs, along with her backpack and camera, was not heavy. Without turning on the light, she walked to the window and, with a little work, managed to open it. A soft breeze blew through the screen. The sky had changed since she’d first walked into the house earlier that evening, and now it was filled with stars, more stars than she’d seen before in her life. She could make out the tower, a gray ghost against the night sky, fifty or so yards away from her.

In all her fantasies of what this day might bring, she had not expected to find herself in this room, this house. She had not expected to eat dinner at that old kitchen table, running her fingers over the smooth porcelain, knowing things about it her host and hostess could not know.

The last thing she’d expected was to be taken in, however temporarily, by two strangers. How quickly they had felt like friends! Lacey, primarily. She reminded Gina of one of her students, a red-haired girl with an expansive nature, the sort of person who could talk to anyone as if she’d known them all her life. But Gina was not here to make friends. She was not generally an introvert, but she would have to keep to herself on this trip. Lying to strangers to get what she needed was one thing; lying to friends, another. And already she had lied to Clay and Lacey.

Fresnel. She squeezed her eyes shut, still embarrassed by her faux pas. A lighthouse historian, my foot. But Lacey and Clay seemed to buy it, or at least to accept it. Tomorrow she would find herself a room, then see if she could talk with their father about raising the lens. And if he said to forget it? She wasn’t certain what she would do then. One bridge to cross at a time.

The lens was so close. Through the window, she could hear the sound of the sea, the breaking of the waves. White foam swirled around the base of the lighthouse under the night sky. The lens was out there, just below the surface of the water. There had to be a way.

She switched on the lamp on the night table. From her suitcase, she pulled the T-shirt she would sleep in and her toiletries bag, which held only her toothbrush, toothpaste, floss and sunscreen. She wore a bit of makeup when she taught, but lately, her looks had been the last thing on her mind.

The small pink diary with its broken lock and tattered corners rested on the clothing in her suitcase, and she took it out and set it on the bed Lacey had already made up for her. She knew the diary’s contents by heart.

Pulling off her shorts, she extracted the picture of the little girl from her pocket and propped it up against the lamp. She finished undressing and climbed beneath the covers, then picked up the picture to study it in the lamplight. She had wanted things in her life. She’d wanted her mother to get well. She had at one time wanted a husband and a good marriage, but that was not to be. But never had she wanted anything so much as to hold this child in her arms again.

She set the picture back on the night table, then turned out the light. Lying in the old, full-size sleigh bed in the dark, she could still see the stars. Years ago, the light from the lens would have shot through this small bedroom once every four and a half seconds, illuminating the walls and the ceiling and the covers on the bed.

Yes, she knew without a doubt whose room she was in.

Chapter Four

Saturday, March 7, 1942

THE LIGHTS WENT OUT AGAIN TONIGHT. I’M sitting on my bed, writing by the glow of the hurricane lantern, just like I used to do when I was younger, before the electric came to Kiss River. Daddy’s put the lighthouse on the emergency generator—he won’t let that light go out no matter what. But here in the house, we have no backup. Mama says “You’ve gotten spoiled and soft, Elizabeth.” Maybe she’s right. She argues with me no matter what I say these days. Or maybe I argue with her. I don’t know. We’re not getting along well, is all I can say about that. All I know is, even though it’s not unusual for the lights to go out, tonight I feel scared by the sudden darkness. And I have to add that nothing much usually scares me. Not the storms that wash clear across this island or even the wild boar that kill chickens and sometimes a dog or cat and once that I heard of, but don’t know for a fact, an old woman hanging out her wash on the line behind her house. I’m not even sure now why I feel scared. Maybe because the adults are. They don’t say it, of course, but I can feel fear everywhere I go. Everybody’s talking about the war. People sit around at Trager’s Store and talk about it, not laughing much or telling jokes like they used to. In my own living room, my parents sit right next to the radio, listening. Always listening. There’s still music. I am sick of hearing that song, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” and especially “Perfidia.” What does Perfidia mean, anyhow? Is that supposed to be someone’s name? If it’s not Glenn Miller music, it’s Gabriel Heater and his “Up to the Minute World News!” and none of that news is good. Lines I never noticed before are on Mama’s forehead. Although I am angry with her and all her rules for me, I want to take my hand and smooth it over her forehead to erase those lines. When I feel like that, I know I still love her and Daddy. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that!

We’re not in any real danger up here in the northern beaches, Daddy said to me just yesterday, even though some ships have been sunk not far from here. Most of the ships that have been torpedoed by the Germans were down around Hatteras. After today, though, I bet Daddy’s thinking he might have to eat his words.

This morning, I was up in the lantern room, cleaning the lens. We are not needed here the way we used to be before the electric came, when we had to keep the lighthouse lantern lit all night long, winding the clockworks and toting oil up them two hundred and seventy steps. The keepers of other lights have been let go, but somehow Daddy’s been allowed to stay on as a “civilian keeper,” as long as he does all the maintenance work around here. So I help by cleaning the lens. At least, the lower part of the lens. I can’t reach much higher than that, and Daddy won’t let me use the ladder near all that glass, and secretly I’m glad he won’t, because it’s much harder work than I guessed. All these years, I’ve been watching him clean the smooth glass prisms with his soft chammy and jeweler’s rouge, wishing I could do it myself. A year ago, when I turned fourteen, he finally let me, and now I wonder why I begged him to do it. You have to be so careful not to scratch the glass. I wasn’t supposed to ever touch it. “Eighteen panels of crown glass prisms, manufactured and polished in Paree, France,” Daddy says to anyone who will listen and even some people who won’t. Fingerprints can dull the light, he always says, but I used to touch the prisms when he wasn’t looking, because I loved the slick, cold feel of them. The lens is more than twice his height and I never realized how truly huge around it was until I had to clean it myself. I think it would take up half this room (my bedroom).

It’s funny that I’m writing in this diary now. Toria (my cousin) gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday and I couldn’t have cared less then. I had too many other things to do, like fishing and crabbing and riding my bicycle and playing with the dogs. Now, fishing bores me all of a sudden. That’s all anyone ever does around here. Fishing, crabbing, clamming, oystering. The time I used to spend fishing, I now seem to spend thinking, and I know that’s not a very useful way to pass the time, but I can’t seem to help it. Anyhow, I put this diary in my dresser drawer after I got it, beneath my underthings, and pretty much forgot about it. About a week ago, I was reaching into that drawer and my hand brushed something hard. It was the key, stuck in the keyhole of the diary, and I pulled the book out of the drawer and stared at it and words started coming to me. I want to write down what I’m thinking, and put them thoughts somewhere safe, where no one can see them except me. There is no other place I can say what I think. Mrs. Cady (my teacher) doesn’t want to hear it. And Mama and Daddy are right critical of every word out of my mouth, like those words might burn them and they have to protect themselves from them. So suddenly I am grateful to Toria for giving me this book. I still keep it in my underwear drawer, only now, after I lock the diary, I hide the key between the mattress and box spring of my bed.

So, the light is still burning in the lantern room tonight, and when it swirls around I can see the white tower of the lighthouse outside my window, even though I can’t see the light itself unless I move closer to the window and bend my head over, but I like how from my bed, the white tower is smack in the center of my window. My whole room fills up with the light. When Toria stays over, she can’t sleep at all. I don’t think I could sleep without it, I’m so accustomed to it.

But here’s what happened this morning that’s got me full of jitters. While I was in the lantern room doing my cleaning, something out to sea caught my eye. I knew what it was right away—smoke, a big black bubble of it, expanding from a spot straight out from Kiss River, not quite to the horizon. And I knew where it was coming from, too.

Daddy keeps binoculars up there and I looked through them, but I couldn’t see the ship itself, just the smoke. There were orange flames coming out of the water, and I guessed it must’ve been an oil tanker. This was the closest one. The first one I’ve seen with my own eyes, although I know it’s not the first to go down. Not by a long shot. The sign at the post office says, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships. That means we should be quiet about anything we know about the merchant ships traveling along the coastline, because you never know who might be spying right next to you. That seems silly to me, because I know nearly everyone around here. A stranger would stand out, especially a German stranger. Krauts, some people call them. I heard Daddy call them that once, when he didn’t think I was listening. It shocked me to hear him say that, because he and Mama are always after me not to see myself as any better than anyone else. When Mama heard one of the boys at Trager’s call Mr. Sato “slant-eyes,” she threatened to wash his mouth out with soap.

None of us ever saw a Japanese person before Mr. Sato came here a year or so ago. His son was married to a girl from here and they lived with Mr. Sato in Chicago. When the son died a year ago, the girl, whose name I don’t remember, wanted to move back here, and she brought Mr. Sato with her, since he’s crippled in a wheelchair and couldn’t live alone. They live in a house on the sound, across the island from me. I have to go right past his house on my way to school, and I used to see him out fishing. He would sit in his wheelchair on the deck that hangs right out over the water from their house, with the fishing pole in his hand. I used to wave to him because I felt sorry for him, and he’d always wave back. Everyone calls him slant-eyes behind his back and the kids make fun of him. No one is very friendly to him, and after Pearl Harbor, I’d be surprised if anyone talks to him at all. I never see him outside these days. He might be scared to go out and I don’t really blame him. He looks like a harmless old man, though, tiny, gray-haired and sort of shriveled up in his wheelchair. I wouldn’t know he still lives in that house if I didn’t hear other people whispering about him, saying how they don’t like having a Jap for a neighbor.

Anyhow, I got off my topic again. Mrs. Cady is always after me about that. She says, “You write real well, but you jump around too much.” Glad she’s not reading this!

Back to the burning ship. So those Germans are killing us right outside our back door now. Their sneaky U-boats come up from under the water and attack, just like a shark. When I watched that black smudge growing out to sea, I wondered if someone’s loose lips might have gotten word to the U-boats out there somehow.

I have not seen a U-boat myself, although I keep looking for one. When I’m cleaning up in the lantern room, or after school when I come home, I go up there and stare at the water with the binoculars, looking for one of the German subs. I’m not sure what to look for, exactly. Would a periscope be too small for me to see? That sounds like it would be fun to have. A periscope. To see what was happening someplace you weren’t. You could see people, but they couldn’t see you. Without a doubt, that’s what happened out there this morning. Some American ship filled with hardworking men got spied with a U-boat’s periscope, and then bam! The Germans torpedoed them. This is the first I’ve seen this close up, and I don’t want to see another. It was as if, when I saw that smoke, all the fun went out of me. I was suddenly as sour and dead inside as some of the grown-ups I know, and I didn’t like the feeling.

There is one good thing and one thing only that I like about this war: it’s brung the Coast Guard boys to the Outer Banks. They’ve taken over the lifesaving stations, and each one of them is more handsome than the next. They are from all parts of the country, and hearing all their different accents makes me want to get out of North Carolina and see the world. I’ve been to Elizabeth City and Manteo and even once to Norfolk, but that’s it. Mama keeps an eye on me when they’re around. I can feel her watching every move I make, and so I pretend not to even notice those boys. But I do. And some of them notice me right back.

Tonight, Mr. Bud Hewitt (he’s the chief warrant officer for the Coast Guard up here) came to dinner like he does sometimes. He and Mama and Daddy have become friends. He told us they fished a bunch of the sailors from the torpedoed ship out of the sea, but fifty-some were lost, and already a few bodies had washed up on shore. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Daddy asked Mr. Hewitt, and Mr. Hewitt looked serious and sad, and said, “Yes, we just aren’t prepared for this. We’re so used to being spared fighting right here in the United States that no one expected this bombardment. And nobody thinks much about North Carolina. All eyes are on the West Coast. But they better start thinking, or it’ll be too late.”

Mr. Hewitt said we need a blackout, but one hasn’t been ordered, and I can tell he’s mad about that. He explained how the U-boats can see our ships clear as day out there, silhouetted against the lights from shore. Mr. Hewitt actually got tears in his eyes as he talked about it. I could see how frustrated he is about the whole thing.

I told Mr. Hewitt how I was looking for periscopes out on the water, and my parents laughed at me, making me feel foolish. Mr. Hewitt saved me though. He said he was glad I was doing that, he wished more people would take their duty seriously, but it was more likely I’d see the conning tower—that’s the raised-up part of the deck—rise up out of the water. The periscope would be too hard to see, he said. And if I ever did see something, I should go to him immediately. I promised him I would. The station is only a half mile from my house, but I wish I could just call him on a telephone. Down where Toria lives, they have them crank phones. There aren’t any phones yet in Kiss River, even though people are getting them on the other side of the island. I’ve heard that Mr. Sato’s daughter-in-law was one of the first to get one. It won’t be long till we have them here, too, Daddy keeps telling me.

I asked Mr. Hewitt if it had been an oil tanker and he smiled at me and said I was right, how did I know? I explained about the orange flames I saw, that I knew it must be oil burning on the water. He said I was smart. I like him. He always treats me like I’m an adult, even in front of Daddy and Mama. He said something about the boys at the Coast Guard station thinking I’m a good-looking girl, and I thought Daddy was going to clobber him. But both Mama and Daddy like Mr. Hewitt. “He’s on God’s side,” Daddy says, which is something he says about all the Allies. Even Mrs. Cady says that, and when I asked her if the Japanese and the Germans and the Italians tell their children that God is on their side, she accused me of being unpatriotic. That is not true. I love my country and I know we’re right. But I bet the Germans think they’re right, too. I don’t think God picks sides. And when I see what God lets happen to them merchant ships, I’m sure of it.

I’ve learned a lot about the war from Dennis Kittering. He’s a teacher in High Point who comes here almost every single weekend, winter and summer, to camp on the beach near Kiss River. Since January when the U-boats started sinking ships, he’s had to have a special pass to be able to camp out there, but they gave him one without any trouble. I like him, even though he can aggravate me to no end with his know-it-all attitude. He is very young for a teacher, only out of college one year, with dark hair combed straight back and glasses with wire frames, like Mrs. Cady’s, and he walks with a limp because he was born with one leg a little shorter than the other. He treats me like Mr. Hewitt does, like my thoughts are worth something. I’ve learned more from him about what’s going on in the world than I have from anybody. It’s Dennis who explained to me why this war is happening, and about the internment camps that are starting up for the Japanese people. He said they are innocent people who are suffering and struggling just to survive. The way he explained it put tears in my eyes. I asked him how come Mr. Sato isn’t going to one of them internment camps, too, and he said because it’s only on the West Coast, so I guess Mr. Sato is lucky to be living here even if people pick on him.

Dennis is the one who told me I should read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I am the library’s best customer. I read more than anyone I know. I am the top reader in my school, although I guess since there are only twenty-three students in my whole school, and most of them are younger than me, that’s not saying much. But I read even better than the older ones. I’d finished all the Nancy Drews, and then Mrs. Cady told my parents I should be allowed to read whatever I want. They said it was all right with them. So I am now reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and a book of stories by Eudora Welty, and I discuss them with Dennis on the weekends. I was reading at the kitchen table yesterday, taking notes with my pencil right on the tabletop, because I didn’t have any paper right there and the table is porcelain and the notes will wash right off, but Mama yelled at me anyhow.

Mama says I’m not allowed to call Dennis by his first name. I’m supposed to call him Mr. Kittering, like I do with other adults. But Dennis laughs at me when I call him that. So around him, I call him Dennis. When I talk to Mama, though, I call him Mr. Kittering.

The lantern’s getting low on oil, so I am going to turn it off now and go to bed. I’m afraid of having nightmares tonight after seeing that ship burn, but at least if I wake up afraid, I’ll be able to see the light fill up my room and know I’m safe.

Chapter Five

GINA WAS TOUCHING HIM. CLAY FELT THE HEAT of her body next to him in his bed, and he held his breath as she slipped her hand beneath the sheet, over his chest, lower. Lower. Touching him, teasing him. This is a dream, he told himself. He wasn’t responsible if it was only a dream. She smiled at him with those lovely white teeth before tossing the sheet aside and lowering her head, her mouth, to where he wanted it to be. He waited to feel her lips and her tongue on him, but instead, he was jolted awake by the touch of something cold and damp against his arm. Opening his eyes, he turned to find the bed empty next to him and Sasha nudging his arm with his nose. Clay groaned and rolled onto his back.

He hated the weekend because he had no real need to go into his office, no way to lose himself in his work. During the week, he’d go in early and stay late, and that seemed to keep his mind occupied well enough to save him from too many disturbing thoughts. But the weekends were different. There was plenty of work to keep him busy around the keeper’s house, of course, but it was solitary work, for the most part, and gave him too much time to think. Some weekends, he went diving with his long-time buddy, Kenny Gallo, but Kenny had to work today. Clay decided he would replace the rotting boards in the cover of the old cistern on the south side of the house. That would take him most of the day and he would wear his Walkman and listen to jazz. Terri had hated jazz, so he would hear nothing that would remind him of her. A decent plan. He did this every day before he got out of bed: planned the day so that every minute was filled and safe from thoughts of Terri and any guilt that might accompany them. Maybe later, when he was done with the cistern and Kenny got out of work, they could meet at Shorty’s Grill and just hang out for a while. He relished spending time with Kenny these days. Kenny didn’t expect—or even want—him to talk about anything heavier than the results of the latest ball game.

Sasha nudged his arm again, and he patted the bed, inviting him up. Sasha was another source of guilt. Poor dog. He had to miss the old days, when he and Terri’s dog, Raven, were constantly on the go, being challenged and rewarded and the center of the universe. Back then, Clay and Terri had lived in Manteo, on a large, treed lot with a huge pile of rubble in the backyard. Clay had dragged other people’s castoffs into the woods behind their house: old appliances, huge chunks of concrete, narrow boards suspended between sawhorses, even an abandoned, totaled Mustang. That was where he’d trained dogs for search and rescue work. Not only Sasha and Raven, but dogs from other search and rescue teams who traveled to see him. Because he was the best. Or at least, he had been, once. Sometimes he missed Raven nearly as much as he did Terri. A shepherd-Lab mix, Raven had been the finest, keenest rescue dog Clay had ever worked with, and she’d been a bit wasted on Terri. Terri had been an interior designer, and she had never truly enjoyed the work with the dogs. Clay didn’t like to think about that fact. He’d ignored Terri’s lack of interest in search and rescue, because he didn’t want to see it.

He still owned the house in Manteo, although he hadn’t really lived there since late November, shortly after Terri died. He’d tried staying there for a while, but he couldn’t tolerate the loneliness, and he’d quickly retreated to the spare room in the cottage Lacey used to rent in Kill Devil Hills. Then Lacey arranged for both of them to live here in the keeper’s house. Leave it to Lacey. She could find a solution to anyone’s problems—except, perhaps, her own. For once, he was grateful for his sister’s ability to play the role of savior.

So, the old Manteo house stood empty. He could probably rent it, if he could find someone who didn’t mind a pile of trash in their backyard, but he didn’t have the motivation to fix up the house on the inside to get it ready for a tenant. He’d always been known for his energy, his need to constantly be on the go, but the truth was, he didn’t feel like doing much of anything these days. He knew he was not well. Not in his head or his heart. But that was another thing he didn’t want to think about.

So strange, living with Lacey. It reminded him of when he was a kid, living with his mother. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor. Did you inherit that sort of thing? It was almost spooky. And she always had something to feed him. He could look in the pantry and see nothing. She could take that nothing and turn it into something delicious. She was taking care of him, and he was letting her. His little sister.

He heard voices in the hall outside his room. Lacey’s and the deeper voice, the voice of the woman who had been about to give him a blow job before Sasha had ruined it. He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye this morning. It was a dream, Terri, he thought to himself. Out of my control.

He would wait awhile before getting up. Maybe Gina would be gone by then and he wouldn’t have to look at her long hair and dark eyes and faintly pointed chin across the table from him over his bowl of cold cereal.

Sasha, though, was not going to cooperate. He jumped from the bed and began whining at the door, which was colored green and blue from sunlight pouring through the stained-glass panel in the window. Sasha’s handsome brown eyes pleaded with his master. No choice now. Clay had to get up and let him out.

“Hold on just a minute, boy,” he said as he dressed. Sasha sat down by the door, eyeing him patiently, his tail thumping against the old wooden floor.

He made Sasha wait another minute while he used the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then he followed the dog downstairs.

The kitchen smelled of good coffee, homemade waffles and the yeasty aroma of rising bread. He could see the bowl of dough on the counter, covered with a dish towel. Lacey made whole wheat bread every other week, just as their mother had. Right now, she was seated at the table across from Gina, the steaming waffle iron next to her plate.

“Huckleberry waffles,” Lacey said, looking at him, and he knew she had been up early, picking the huckleberries from the bushes at the edge of the woods and kneading her bread dough.

Gina glanced up at him. “They’re delicious,” she said, reaching for the syrup with the slender ruby-ringed hand that had touched him in his sleep. She had the phone book open on the table next to her plate, her finger marking her place on one of the yellow pages. The portable phone rested next to the book, and her large, heavy camera hung around her neck.

He merely nodded at the women as he walked outside with Sasha. Standing on the porch, he breathed in the already hot morning air as the Lab ran off to the woods. Sasha reappeared, running across the sandy yard, then leaping up the porch steps with one wild jump before stopping short in front of the screen door. He sat down, as he’d been trained to do, turning his head to look at his master, waiting for him to enter the kitchen first. Sasha knew very well the pecking order in this house.

Lacey already had Sasha’s food in the bowl, and the dog dived into it with gusto.

Gina laughed. “I’ve never seen a dog eat like that,” she said.

“Do you have a dog?” Clay poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from her. He reached for the handle on the waffle iron and looked at his sister. “Is this ready yet?” he asked.

“Wait till the steam stops.” Lacey put a plate in front of him and sat down again herself.

“When I was a kid,” Gina said. “I don’t have one now. I work long hours, so it wouldn’t be fair.”

Clay opened the waffle iron and used his fork to extract the berry-marbled waffle from the grill. “What are you looking for in the phone book?” he asked.

“A room,” she said. “I tried a couple of places already, but no luck. I thought I’d try this place next.” She looked down at the book. “Suiter’s Inn.”

“No, not that one,” Clay said.

“Is that the one near Shorty’s Grill?” Lacey asked him, and he nodded. “It’s a bit seedy, Gina. You shouldn’t stay there.”

“I can’t pay a lot,” Gina said, her finger still on the page in the phone book. “I might have to settle for something a little less luxurious than the Ritz.”

“What area do you want to be in?” Clay asked.

Gina shrugged. “Near Kiss River, I guess. But anyplace on the northern part of the Outer Banks would do.”

“Maybe there’s a cottage available,” Clay said. “Maybe someone had to cancel their reservation at the last minute. That happens. Then you’d have something for a week or two. How long were you planning to stay?”

“No more than that,” she said.

“I’ll try Nola,” Lacey said, reaching across the table for the phone.

“Who’s Nola?” Gina asked.

“An old family friend,” Lacey said, dialing. “She’s also a Realtor and she’d be able to find out what’s available.”

Gina and Clay ate quietly while Lacey spoke with Nola. She pulled the phone book toward her to write a few notes in the margin of the page, but from the conversation, Clay could tell that the news was not good. Lacey hung up the phone and wrinkled her freckled nose at their guest.

“She could only find one cottage available,” she said, reading from her notes. “It’s soundside in Duck and it’s sixteen hundred dollars a week.”

Gina shook her head. “I can’t do it, then,” she said. “But if I can’t find something here, maybe there’d be a room available on the other side of that long bridge. That would be close enough, and—”

“Stay here,” Clay said, the words surprising him as they slipped out of his mouth. He didn’t need to look at Lacey to know she was astonished by the invitation, but he also knew she wouldn’t mind. She’d probably been thinking the same thing herself, but had been afraid to suggest it because of how he might react. “You can rent the room you’re in for a hundred a week,” he said.

“I … I …” Gina stammered. “That’s so nice of you.” She looked at Lacey. “Are you sure that’s all right with you? Do you two want to talk it over in private, or—”

“It’s great with me,” Lacey interrupted her.

“You have to charge more than that, though,” Gina said. “I’m not that broke. I can—”

“It’s a token amount,” Clay said. “We’ll put it into the keeper’s house conservation fund.” He was aware he was not acting rationally, but he hadn’t felt rational in a long, long time.

“Well, thanks,” Gina said. Her hand shook a bit as she lifted her glass of orange juice to her lips. She took a sip, then set it down again. “That’s a huge relief to me. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Clay said. He extracted another waffle from the iron and offered it to Gina, but she shook her head again. He put it on his own plate, then poured more batter into the grill.

“Do you mind a check from my bank in Bellingham?” Gina asked. “Or I could get some money from an ATM and—”

“A check is fine,” Clay said.

Gina sat back from the table, finished with her breakfast but not with conversation. “I thought I would call your father today, and see if I could talk to him about raising the lens.” She looked at him, then Lacey. “It’s been ten years, right? Maybe he and the other people who objected to raising it ten years ago have mellowed about the idea by now.”

“You’re talking about our father,” Clay said with a halfhearted laugh. “Mellow, he ain’t.”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” Lacey said. “You’re exactly like him.”

He couldn’t argue with her. As much as Lacey looked like their mother, he resembled Alec O’Neill. So much so, that when one of the old-timers spotted him and Lacey together in the grocery store a few weeks ago, he’d thought they were Alec and Annie. It had taken them quite a while to convince him of the truth. And although Clay didn’t like to admit it, he was no more mellow than their father. He had both Alec’s wiry build and the bundled, hyper sort of energy that accompanied it.

“Dad’s off this afternoon,” Lacey said. “I think you should just go to his house and talk to him.”

“Call first, though,” Clay said.

“I don’t think she should call,” Lacey said, her tone more pondering than argumentative. “He might just blow her off if she calls.”

“He can blow her off just as easily at his front door,” Clay argued. His father would be kind about it, but it was doubtful he’d have any interest in talking to anyone about the Kiss River light.

Gina followed their conversation as if watching a Ping-Pong match.

“Well, we can call him, then,” Lacey said.

“No, no.” Gina held up a hand. “You two have done too much already. Let me take care of this on my own. Okay?” She looked at each of them in turn, and they nodded. “Can you give me his address and phone number?” she asked.

Lacey stood and walked over to one of the kitchen drawers, then returned to the table with a notepad. In her seat again, she jotted down the address. “I’d go with you,” she said, “but today I have two kids to tutor, a three-hour shift on the crisis hot line and an appointment to donate blood at two-thirty. Not to mention bread to bake.”

Gina stared at her. “I thought today was your day off?”

Lacey dismissed her question with a wave of her hand. “It’s all fun for me,” she said.

“Where do you do your stained glass?” Gina asked.

“I share a studio in Kill Devil Hills,” she said. “But I do some work here, too, in the sunroom.” She pushed the pad across the table to Gina. “His house is on the sound in Sanderling.” Pointing to the camera hanging around Gina’s neck, she added, “You know, he used to take pictures constantly of the lighthouse. He’ll have a thousand for you to look at if you ask him.”

“What sort of pictures?” Gina looked intrigued.

“You name it, he has it. It used to be all he ever did. Drove me nuts.” Lacey shuddered at the memory.

“He’s still consumed with photography,” Clay said.

“Yeah, but now he just takes pictures of his kids,” Lacey said. “At least that’s normal.”

“His kids?” Gina asked. “You mean, you two?”

“No. He’s remarried.” Lacey hopped up again and reached for her purse where it sat on the counter by the door. Clay knew she was going after her wallet and the pictures of Jack and Maggie. She held them out for Gina to see. “He started over again. This is Jack. He’s ten. And that’s Maggie. She’s eight.”

“What beautiful children,” Gina seemed genuinely interested. It was, Clay knew, a womanly skill. She looked up at him. “They both look like you, Clay.”

Clay and Lacey laughed. “They both look like Olivia, our stepmom, actually,” Lacey said. “Jack isn’t even my dad’s son.”

And Lacey was not even her dad’s daughter, Clay thought. Lacey didn’t share that little detail with people quickly or easily, though, and he thought he knew the reason why: it made their mother look bad.

“Jack’s from Olivia’s first marriage,” Lacey continued. “But my dad adopted him.”

“Ah,” Gina said, touching the pictures with the tip of her finger. “Do you see them much?”

“We do things with them all the time,” Lacey said. “They’re the cutest kids.”

Clay felt antsy. The last thing he wanted was to get into a conversation about marriage and relationships. He stood up, and Sasha immediately ran to the door.

“Taking Sasha for a walk,” he said. “Then I’m going to work on the cistern. Gina, holler if you need anything.”

Chapter Six

ALEC O’NEILL PULLED THE BEDROOM SHADES against the midday view of the sound and lit the five jasmine-scented candles Olivia had set on the dresser. From the corners of the room, Bocelli sang in wistful Italian, and Alec was pleased he’d finally had the speakers repaired. He and Olivia had sold their separate homes and moved into the house on the sound when they were married nine years earlier, and the bedroom speakers had never worked. Clay fixed them just last month after Alec had mentioned their useless existence, and now he knew what he and Olivia had been missing. If they’d had Bocelli singing in their bedroom all these years, who knows how often they would have gotten around to making love?

He could feel Olivia’s presence behind him as he lit the last of the candles in the stained-glass holders Lacey had given them years ago. Olivia was already in their bed, already naked, having nearly torn her clothes off as she walked from the living room to the bedroom. She’d made him laugh, as she often did. An impatient lover. He could barely remember a time she’d held off long enough to actually let him be the one to undress her. Her eagerness this afternoon only made him take his time with the candle, pretending he could not get it lit, because he liked teasing her.

“Alec, don’t worry about the candle,” she said from the bed.

“Got it,” he said, blowing out the match.

It had been, what? Two weeks? Maybe longer. When you had kids, it was sometimes impossible to carve out time together. That’s why he had rushed home after his morning appointments at the animal hospital and why Olivia had swapped her day off with one of the other docs at the E.R. Jack and Maggie were at day camp, and now he and Olivia had a couple of hours free for lovemaking.

He walked toward her, pulling off his T-shirt. Olivia’s arms were folded beneath her head and her eyes were on his, a small smile on her lips. She was the sort of woman who became more beautiful with the years. He liked the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. Her hair was still the same soft brown it had been when he first met her, although now the color came from a bottle. He would have been equally as happy if she’d let it go gray, but at nearly fifty and with two young kids, she feared looking more like their grandmother than their mother, so he understood. His own hair was more gray than black now, and he still felt an occasional jolt when he looked in the mirror, expecting to see the dark hair he’d once possessed. He still felt like that younger man inside. Most of the time, anyway.

He began to unbuckle the belt on his jeans, but Olivia stretched an arm toward him.

“Come here,” she said. “Let me do that.”

He lay down next to her, and she kissed him, her hand freeing the end of his belt from the buckle just as the doorbell rang. Olivia’s fingers froze, and she groaned, burying her head in his shoulder with a laugh.

“Let’s ignore it.” He pressed his hand over hers where it rested on the snap of his jeans.

Olivia nodded in agreement, then unsnapped his jeans and curled her fingers beneath the waistband. The bell rang again.

“What if it has something to do with the kids?” she asked, leaning away from him. Her pretty, green eyes were wide open, the desire that had been in them only a moment earlier already gone. She was mother now, all of a sudden. Not wife. Not lover. She would not be able to ignore the bell.

He nodded and sat up, pulling on his shirt. He knew she was right. Their house stood alone, at the tail end of a small, out-of-the-way road that ended at the edge of the water. No one came out here unless they had a real purpose.

He bent over to kiss Olivia’s temple, then walked out of the room, buckling his pants. The bell was ringing again by the time he reached the living room, and he opened the door to find a young woman standing on the wooden front porch.

“Yes?” He tried to place her. Some of his patients occasionally brought their sick pets to him when he was off, and he didn’t always recognize them out of the context of his office, but he doubted he’d ever seen this woman before. He would remember her if he had. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, with long, very dark hair, milky-white skin and eyes the color of charcoal. In short, the sort of woman you could not see once and then forget.

“Are you Dr. O’Neill?” she asked. She was wearing dark-blue shorts and a light-blue shirt, open, over a white top of some sort.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m Gina Higgins, a friend of your son and daughter’s.”

With his mind already on Jack and Maggie, his heart did a nervous little dance in his chest until he realized she was probably not talking about his two youngest children. “Oh,” he said. “Do you mean Clay and Lacey?”

She nodded. “That’s right,” she said with a smile. “I should have made that clear. I forgot you have younger children.”

He felt awkward, if not downright rude, standing in the doorway without inviting her in, but this did not appear to be an emergency, and he was anxious to get back to Olivia. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I was wondering … May I come in for a moment?” She looked past him into the living room. “Is this a good time?”

“Actually, it’s not,” Alec said, but Olivia walked into the room in her khaki shorts and white shirt, and he figured there was nothing to get back to, at least not at that moment. He opened the door wider. “It’s fine,” he relented, stepping back to let her walk past him into the living room. She was wearing a green backpack. “Olivia,” he said, “this is Gina Higgins. Right?” He looked at Gina to check his memory.

“Right.” She held out her hand to Olivia, who shook it, smiling her usual gracious smile.

“Gina’s a friend of Lacey and Clay’s,” Alec explained.

“It feels so good in here,” Gina said, taking in a deep breath and smoothing her dark hair back from her damp forehead. “The air conditioner’s broken in my car.”

“Have a seat, Gina.” Olivia motioned toward the sofa. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Gina sat down, slipping her backpack from her shoulders to her lap. “No, thank you. I don’t want to take that much of your time.” She looked up at Alec, who was still standing in the middle of the room. “Lacey and Clay suggested I talk to you,” she said. “I’m a lighthouse historian in the Pacific Northwest. I came to the Outer Banks to do some exploration of the Kiss River light. I hadn’t realized that it had been demolished.”

Alec felt his smile freeze at the mention of the lighthouse. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Olivia lower herself to the other side of the sofa, and he knew she was watching him, waiting for his reaction to this news. He rarely thought about the lighthouse anymore. His long-ago fight to save it had been misguided and had sapped far too much of his time and energy. It had been part of his crazy grieving process after Annie died. “All grieving seems crazy,” Olivia had comforted him, but he knew he’d gone a bit over the edge.

He sat down on the arm of the upholstered chair near the door and studied their guest. It seemed odd that a lighthouse historian would not have known that the Kiss River light was no longer standing. “I’m surprised you didn’t know it had been damaged,” he said.

“Well—” Gina smiled “—my focus has been on the West Coast. And I’m just an amateur at this. I’m really a schoolteacher, and I only get to pursue my lighthouse passion in the summer. I admit I didn’t do my research very well, did I?” She was clearly nervous. Her hands clutched the backpack in her lap as she leaned forward on the sofa, and her smile had a shiver to it. He felt some sympathy for her. “I was using an older lighthouse guide because it’s a favorite of mine,” she continued, “and I popped out here, expecting 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, this must be Lacey’s,” she said, touching the glass image of a woman walking a greyhound.

“No, actually,” Alec said, “it was made by my first wife.” The oval window had been one of ten in the house he’d shared with Annie. When he and Olivia sold their separate homes to buy this one, it was Olivia who’d insisted he not leave all of Annie’s work behind. “You’ll regret it someday,” she’d said. He’d let her pick which oval window they should bring with them, not really caring at the time. But over the years, he’d been grateful to her for knowing he needed that little reminder of the good times with Annie.

“Oh,” Gina said. “I can see where Lacey got her talent.” She nodded to him. “Thanks again,” she said, then looked past him toward Olivia. “Nice meeting you both.”

“Nice meeting you, Gina,” Olivia said from behind him.

After closing the door, Alec walked over to where his wife was sitting on the sofa and leaned down to kiss her, but he knew the mood had long ago been broken. Bocelli was no longer singing, and most likely Olivia had blown out the candles when she left the bedroom. She returned his kiss, but then pulled away to look at him.

“The money is there to salvage the lens,” she said. “You know it is.”

He shook his head. “Olivia …”

“You could help her,” Olivia said. “No one knows the history of that lighthouse as well as you do.”

“No,” he said, letting go of her, standing up straight. “And please, don’t talk to me about it again.” He bent over again to kiss her lightly on the forehead, then turned to walk toward the kitchen, and if he hadn’t disliked the stranger the moment he’d opened his front door to her, he certainly did now. She had ruined his entire afternoon.

Chapter Seven

Saturday, March 14, 1942

MAMA AND I BAKED ALL MORNING, AS WE DO often on the weekend. Today was very cold for the middle of March and I was glad to have the oven heat up the house. I am so tired of going out to use the privy in the cold! This seems like the longest winter ever. First warm day we have, I’m taking off my shoes and not putting them on again until next fall.

Even though I spent all morning with Mama, we hardly talked at all. It is so hard for me to spend time with her. There is a wall between us. I want to hug her and tell her how much I love her and instead, ugly things come out of my mouth. Or nothing at all. We used to sing sometimes when we baked or cleaned together in the house. I can’t imagine that now. It’s not the war or anything like that. It’s ME. I feel like I have a mean guard up and can’t let it down for a minute around her. Can’t be soft. I don’t know why. Except that I am almost fifteen years old. I overheard Mama complaining about me to a friend at Trager’s Store when she didn’t think I was listening, and the friend said, “Oh, it’s just that she’s a teenager, Mary. She’ll grow out of it.” I hated being lumped together with all the teens in the world, but maybe she’s right. Though I can’t imagine growing out of this. Sometimes I miss having Mama’s arms around me, but when she touches me, I stiffen up, so who can blame her for not trying anymore? I can’t help it, though. Everything she ever says to me is “Don’t do this” and “Don’t do that.” There’s nothing much else to talk about.

Anyhow, we baked four pies and ten dozen cookies. It being so cold out, I didn’t want to leave that warm kitchen, but then I thought about the choice I had. Stay in the house with Mama, or take the pies to the Coast Guard boys. I didn’t have to think about that too long! I loaded the pies and cookies into the big wooden wagon we keep in the storage shed near the privy, hooked it up to my bicycle and took off down the Pole Road. None of the roads are paved around here. Even the Pole Road, the one used by the electric people to bring in equipment, is just a mess of sand and ruts and crazy curves and turns, but it’s the smoothest road there is for bicycle riding and carrying pies. If I was going to the Coast Guard building by foot, I would have just walked along the beach, although earlier this week we were told not to go out there because the bodies were washing up from that ship that sank last week. Most cars use the beach, too. They just follow each other’s tire tracks and go real slow, but one has to be dug out every once in a while. Ever since the U-boats started attacking us, the sandpounders (that’s what they call the Coast Guard boys) patrol the beach, watching for ships in distress and keeping a lookout for spies and for submarines letting Nazis off on the beach. The drivers of the cars have to give the patrollers a password to be able to go on. The patroller gives the driver a new password for him to use at the next stop, in another three miles, and people make their way up the beach like that. I wanted to have a password, too, when I go walking along the beach, but everybody knows me and they just say, “You go on ahead, now, Bess.”

I had to pedal real carefully because of the ditches and tree roots in the road, and I didn’t want to spill anything out of the wagon. It was so cold, I put my scarf right across my face to keep the wind out. Once I got there, though, I knew the trip had been worth it.

About half the boys were at the Coast Guard station, the other half out patrolling the beaches or maybe training their dogs or working at some other thing. When I walked in the door and took off my coat, I could see every head turn in my direction and smiles come to their faces, and I know it wasn’t just that I was pulling a wagonful of sweets. This is a new experience for me, having boys stare. My body feels different around them. My breasts are not all that big, but those boys stare at them all the same, even though I sure don’t dress to show them off. (I still had a sweater over my shirt, for Pete’s sake!) I could feel how my hips moved beneath my dungarees and how long my legs were. I’m nearly five foot eight now, the tallest girl in my school, although I guess with only thirteen girls from seven years old to seventeen, that’s not saying much. I’m taller than most of the boys at school, too. That’s why these older boys (men, really) from the Coast Guard look so good to me. Most of them are taller than me, some by quite a bit. My hair is brown, and up until last year I always wore it in braids, but lately I’ve been leaving it loose. It’s long and wavy and I can tell the boys like it that way.

So, some of the boys come up to me and started talking. Some of them talk so funny it takes me a minute or two to start understanding them, like last year when Mrs. Cady had us read a Shakespeare play out loud. My favorite accent is the one the Boston boys have. Teddy Pearson, who is from near there, said that Hitler should be “tod and fethahd.” I didn’t understand what he’d said until I was home in my bed that night, and I laughed out loud when I figured it out. Anyhow, they were all talking to me at once, asking me how I was, what kind of pie I’d brought, did I want to go out with them that night. You’d think they hadn’t seen a girl in months! If Mama could see how them boys act when I walk in the door of the Coast Guard station without her or Daddy, she would never let me go there alone again.

Jimmy Brown, another of the Boston boys, is my favorite of all of them at the station and not just because he’s the sandpounder who patrols the beach near Kiss River. Today, like always, he pretty much ignored me. That’s probably why I like him—he’s a challenge! Doesn’t drool over me and my pies when I walk in. He sat in the corner whittling something out of a piece of driftwood, looking up with those dreamy blue eyes every once in a while, smiling just a bit, though more at how crazy the boys were acting than at me, I think. So I chatted with all the boys, and with Mr. Bud Hewitt who came out to see what the racket was about, and all the while I had one eye on Jimmy Brown (he looks like Frank Sinatra!) whittling in the corner.

I would like the work they do. I wish they took women into the Coast Guard. I know the beach better than any of them, and would love to be out there at night, watching for danger. Mr. Hewitt told me that if I was a boy, I’d be the first person he’d recruit for the beach patrol. After all, some of those boys had never even seen the ocean before, much less know the beaches and the woods around them! I mentioned this to my parents one time and Mama just laughed at me, but I heard that she used to actually work with the lifesaving crew. She says that’s only a rumor, but even my father told me it was the truth and said that she doesn’t want me to know about it because it might give me ideas.

On the way home from the Coast Guard station, I bumped into Dennis Kittering. I was surprised to see him. He’s usually on the beach, not on the Pole Road, but he said he was just exploring a bit. I told him where I’d been and he said, “Why didn’t you bring me any pies?” I said, “I bring pies to the men who are fighting for our country. What exactly are you doing for the country?” Right away, I could have kicked myself. I forgot about his bum leg. He couldn’t go into the service because he has that one leg shorter than the other. I apologized and he smiled at me and said not to worry about it. He said he was teaching for his country, that’s what he was doing. Educating the next generation. Teaching them why the war was happening, helping them see why we should never let things get so bad again. I felt doubly awful when he said that. We stood there for a few minutes, with my bicycle and wagon between us, talking about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and that was fun. The truth is, there aren’t many people around here who understand much about the books I’m reading. Dennis thinks I’m real smart and that I should be a teacher when I grow up. That’s actually my plan. He says I need to get a better education than I’m getting here, though, if I want to be a teacher. I don’t know what it is about Dennis. He is nice and smart and mostly kind, but he irritates me to no end when he acts like he knows everything and I sometimes end up in a tiff with him. He corrects my grammar all the time, and when he criticizes my education, saying I can’t be getting a good one here with just twenty-three students of all grades and ages jumbled up together in one classroom out in the middle of nowhere, I get mad. I don’t like that he comes here all the time, saying how much he loves it and all, and then puts us Bankers down.

I made a stupid mistake and told him how I’d like to be a sandpounder and he laughed at that and said, “The sandpounders are men who have little else to offer the world. They are just a bunch of trigger-happy hooligans with guns, ready to shoot at anything that moves.” That really made me mad, although I’ve heard other people say the same thing about the patrollers. They just don’t know those boys and how serious they take their duty. Anyhow, see what I mean about sometimes getting into a tiff with Dennis?

He asked me if I want to go to church with him tomorrow. He goes all the way up to Corolla for church, where they have a Catholic service. I told him no, thanks. I always go with my parents to the Methodist church down in Duck. I don’t understand much about Catholics. Last summer, Dennis was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that was open a little at the neck and I could see he was wearing a necklace made of brown cord. I asked him about it, and he pulled it out and showed it to me. It had these two rectangles of wool attached to the cord, one that goes on his back and one on his chest, and they have pictures of Jesus and Mary on them. I don’t remember what the necklace is called, but he said he wears it all the time, that it makes him feel closer to God. Anyhow, when I said yesterday that I was going to the Methodist church, I was afraid he was going to start mocking my religion like he does my education, so I told him that I had to go home, I was late (which was true). I’ll take him a pie next weekend, to make up for being so rude to him.

I just realized that I’m starting to feel uncomfortable around Dennis. It’s not just the way he criticizes us Bankers, but it’s also that I know he looks at me different this year. He tells me I’ve gotten real pretty and actually said if I was a bit older, he would ask me to marry him! “You have potential,” he said. “I’d like to marry you and take you to High Point, where you could get a real education.” I admit I am flattered by all he says, but also I feel creepy, like I don’t want to be close enough to him for him to touch me. I think that’s why I wanted to keep my bicycle between us on the Pole Road. There was no one else around and it made me a little nervous. He’s not bad-looking. He wears glasses he looks nice in, and I like his dark hair. But he is ancient, eight years older than me, and I am definitely not interested in him as a boyfriend. Besides, I don’t like how “Bess Kittering” sounds. (I love how “Bess Brown” sounds, though!)

Mama scolded me when I got home. I stayed too long at the Coast Guard station, she said. I am supposed to just drop the pies off and leave, not stay and expect those boys to entertain me. I told her I was late because I met Mr. Kittering on the way home and we got to talking, and that made her even angrier. She thinks Dennis is strange to come out here every weekend. She’s never even met him, only seen him from a distance, and I told her how nice he is, how I like to talk about books with him, but she just kept yelling at me. I think Mama must have been born an old lady.

Chapter Eight

THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH IN THE SKY WHEN CLAY pulled into the short gravel driveway of the small cottage, which, like many other soundside cottages, was set on stilts above the water. Getting out of his car, he could see that the front gutter was a bit askew and a section of the deck railing was missing. He would have to spend a day over here soon working on those repairs and the other inevitable problems with this house that were not immediately visible. The old cottage took a great deal of his time—much like the old man living inside it. But these days, he loved nothing better than to fill up his time to the mind-numbing brim.

Standing on the front porch, he rapped his knuckles against the frame of the flimsy screen door, leaning close to peer inside the small living room of the cottage. Henry quickly appeared in the living room, obviously champing at the bit to get out of there. Clay pulled the screen door open, and the dapper old man stood in front of him, dressed in his usual white shirt and dark tie. He had to be the only Outer Banks resident who wore a tie every single day, Clay thought. With the exception of Henry’s three-day hospital stay after having his appendix removed, Clay couldn’t remember ever seeing him without one. Or without his hat.

“Hey, Henry,” he said, resting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“Got ants in my pants.” Henry placed his straw fedora on his head and stepped onto the porch. He flexed his knobby, arthritic hands. “Need a good game of chess at Shorty’s,” he said, and Clay knew he’d been waiting all day for this outing. He wished now that he’d stopped his work on the cistern to pick him up earlier.

“What happened to the railing there?” Clay pointed to the spot where the two-by-four was missing.

“Woke up one morning and it was gone.” Henry shrugged his shoulders. “’Twas the day after I caught twenty-two crabs, so I think their pals must’ve up and took it to get back at me.” He chuckled. Henry could crab without even leaving his house. All he needed to do was walk around the deck and scrape the crabs off the pilings with a net. Even at seventy-nine, Henry could make some of the best crab cakes Clay had ever tasted.

“You be careful there,” Clay said, pointing to the railing again. “I’ll come over soon to fix it.”

Henry liked to boast that he lived in a house as old as he was. In theory, he was right. The house had been built sometime in the twenties. But it had suffered a massive fire in the forties, and flooding off and on over the years, with a bit of the house being replaced here, another bit there, until very little of the original structure still stood.

The old man still had a bounce in his step, and he walked ahead of Clay toward the car. He was lively and sharp-witted—and he was now Clay’s responsibility entirely.

Henry Hazelwood was Terri’s grandfather, and she had taken on his care as he’d aged. Her father, Henry’s son, had died four years ago, and her mother lived in California, so she had been the only relative nearby. She’d adored Henry, though, and had never complained about that obligation falling on her shoulders. Clay liked Henry, too, but at the age of twenty-nine, he had expected to be creating a family of little rugrats, not caring for an old man. He was all Henry had, though, and letting him down was not part of his nature. Henry’s eyesight was going, and he’d been wise enough to give up driving a couple of years ago. That meant that Clay frequently had to take time off from work to drive him to doctor’s appointments, the grocery store, and most important to the old man, Shorty’s Grill, where he could play chess and visit with his old friends, Walter Liscott and Brian Cass.

The one thing about Henry that Clay simultaneously loved and hated was that he reminded him of Terri. Both Terri and her father had had a slant to their eyebrows above steel-gray eyes, and those features were mirrored in Henry’s face. Clay saw his wife there every time he looked at his grandfather-in-law.

“What did you do this morning?” Clay asked once they were in his car and crossing the island to the beach road.

“What do you think?” Henry asked him.

“Crabbed?”

“What else?” Henry chuckled again. “Snared my dinner. And how about you?”

“Oh.” Clay sighed. He was always caught off guard when Henry asked him about himself. “I worked on the cistern.”

“Sounds like a better use of time than catching crabs,” Henry said.

Clay smiled. “Can’t eat a cistern, though.”

Henry chuckled, and they both grew quiet. Henry was a man of few words. Any conversation between them was usually short and to the point, and that was fine. They had never, not once, talked about Terri. That was fine, too. Clay didn’t talk to anyone about Terri.

He had rejected his father’s suggestion that he see a therapist after Terri died. What could a therapist do? He—or she—couldn’t bring her back. Clay kept his dark thoughts and deepest feelings under wraps, throwing himself into his work, killing time more than filling it. The world thought he was doing fine. He stayed active and he made sure his spirits seemed up around his friends. Lacey was probably the only person who knew he wasn’t the jovial sport he pretended to be. He was around her too much to keep up the act, and he knew she was struggling to find a way to save him, the way she would save a stray kitten. Or a wandering lighthouse historian.

At breakfast that morning, he could see his sister looking from Gina to him and back again, hope in her conniving blue eyes that he would find the newcomer attractive. Well, he did find her attractive, but that only added to his problems, and he hoped Lacey wouldn’t try to push him too hard. He supposed she needed to focus on some new deficiency in him since she’d failed at getting him back into search and rescue work. He felt sick at the mention of those words: search and rescue. Literally sick. The other night, he’d had to turn off the television when a newscaster mentioned a search and rescue team involved in an earthquake in some other part of the world, the wave of nausea sending him to bed. Lacey had been in the room at the time, and she’d said nothing when he turned off the TV and went upstairs. A few months ago, she would have followed him up, trying to get him to talk. But she was learning. She no longer badgered him to open up about his feelings. One of these days, she would give up trying to save him. He was destined to be her one failure.

“Looky there!” Henry pointed in the direction of a new fish market on Croatan Highway. “We’ll have to try that one.”

“Looks like a good one,” Clay said.

Henry had lived on the Outer Banks forever, since being stationed there during the Second World War. He’d fallen in love with a Banks girl and married her, a union that produced one child, Terri’s father. The Outer Banks had grown up around him, but he never complained the way a lot of the old-timers did. He never talked about what things had been like in the old days, or grew crotchety over how crowded it was in the summer or griped about the tourists who acted as if they owned the place. He actually seemed to like the overgrowth of buildings and stores and restaurants that disturbed many of the natives. He’d spend hours in the supermarket, still amazed by all the choices, reading the labels on the frozen foods, which he loved. Clay had learned to bring a book with him when he took Henry shopping; otherwise, he would go out of his tree with boredom. Henry loved his TV dinners, but he had to have fresh seafood as well, so Clay took him to the fish market a couple of times a week. Now that Henry had spotted this new store, he knew it wouldn’t be long before he found himself leaning against the interior walls, reading his book, while Henry took his time sniffing the fish.

Clay had learned of Terri’s death on a Tuesday in late November, and his own shock and horror had been compounded by his need to tell Henry. Henry had already lost his wife and only son. To lose his beloved granddaughter as well seemed a cruel injustice. And Clay couldn’t tell him. It had been Lacey who went over to the rickety soundside cottage to give Henry the news. Clay never asked his sister how the old man took it; he didn’t want to know. All he knew was that, for the next few weeks, every time he picked up Henry to take him someplace, the elderly man’s eyes would be as red as Clay’s own.

They pulled into Shorty’s crowded parking lot. Shorty’s was a dive—there was no other word for it—and somehow the tourists knew to stay away. A few ventured in, those people who thought they’d find a taste of the old Outer Banks in the ramshackle building, but most of them were there only a few minutes before realizing they would never truly fit in. Especially not in the back room.

The back room, which was in reality on the side of the building, was a hangout for fishermen, weathered old-timers and young men with too much time on their hands. There was a battered pool table on one side of the room and chess and checker boards and decks of cards scattered across the tables. Two dartboards hung on the walls. The windows were filmed with years of smoke. An occasional woman or two could be found in the back room. They usually hung around the younger men, playing pool, displaying varying degrees of cleavage as they leaned low over the table and maybe a tattoo of a rose on one shoulder. It was those women, their skin tanned to the color and texture of leather, who were often the smokers.

Kenny Gallo, whom Clay was to meet for a beer, was not yet in the restaurant, so he walked with Henry into the back room to deliver the old man to his friends. A couple of women were playing pool with a guy who had only recently become a regular, a dark-haired young man of about twenty who was elaborately tattooed all the way from his knuckles to the place where his arms disappeared beneath the sleeves of his black Grateful Dead T-shirt. The women looked up when Clay entered the room. He felt their eyes stay on him as he and Henry moved toward Walter Liscott and Brian Cass and the chessboard. He was as indifferent to their attention as he was accustomed to it.

“You’re late.” Brian looked up at Henry, his rheumy blue eyes annoyed. Brian could be as prickly as a sandspur. His thick white hair stuck up on one side of his head as though he’d slept on it, and he tapped the chessboard with a long, bony finger.

“Oh, shut up,” Walter said to his friend. “He’s here now, so what does it matter?”

“My fault,” Clay said, even though Henry had not been expected at any particular time. He pulled one of the chairs from a neighboring table and set it adjacent to the chessboard so Henry could sit down. “I was late picking him up,” he said.

“Sit down yourself, Clay,” Walter said, as he always did. The wheelchair he sat in was pulled up tight against the table. Walter had used the chair for the past four years. Something about his legs and diabetes. When it was apparent the chess-loving old man could no longer get around without the chair, Clay and Kenny had built a ramp up to Shorty’s back door so he could get in. Walter’s meticulously carved and painted decoys provided much of Shorty’s decor, so it seemed only fitting that the restaurant should remain accessible to him, of all people. The decoy on which he was currently working now rested on the table, next to the chessboard.

Clay glanced back toward the main room. Still no sign of Kenny. “Just for a minute,” he said, dragging another chair to the table.

“Do ya see that asshole?” Brian nodded toward the guy with the tattoos, speaking far too loudly.

Clay didn’t shift his gaze from Brian’s face. “What about him?” he asked, trying to whisper.

“He’s got a new one Brian can’t get his mind off.” Walter laughed.

“It’s on his back,” Brian said. “He held up his shirt when them girls came in.”

“Don’t talk so loud,” Henry said.

Brian leaned toward Henry. “I’m talking loud so you can hear me, old man,” he said.

“I hear you fine,” Henry shot back. “And so can everyone in the next room.”

“It’s a mermaid,” Walter said.

“What is?” Henry asked. He was studying the board. He would be playing the winner.

“The new tattoo,” Brian said. “A mermaid with the biggest jugs you ever seen.”

Clay had to laugh.

“Ah, you and your jugs,” Walter scoffed.

The conversation continued that way, three old widowers baiting and badgering each other as they had for years. It was clear they loved each other deeply, yet they never spoke of anything weightier than the shifting of the tides. Three old men who had fought and fished and lost loved ones together. Brian’s wife of half a century had died only a couple of years ago, and his eleven children and twenty-seven grandchildren were scattered around the country. Walter had been widowed for a decade. His two children badgered him regularly to move to Colorado where they lived, but he could not bring himself to leave the Outer Banks. Women were supposed to outlive men, Clay thought, but the old regulars in Shorty’s back room hadn’t gotten the word. Must be something in the salt air that kept men alive out here. It was only when Clay left their table to walk back into the main room that the realization hit him: there had actually been four widowers sitting around that chessboard.

He found Kenny waiting for him at one of the small tables, and he sat down across from his old friend. The waitress brought them beers without even waiting for them to order. They were well known here.

“How was work?” he asked Kenny, taking a swallow of beer.

“Good, but man, I’m losing more hearing in this ear every day,” Kenny said, rubbing his left ear with his hand.

“Well, you know the cure for that,” Clay said. Kenny did much of the diving for the marine repair business he owned, and hearing loss was part of the job. He’d be deaf in another ten years, but Clay knew that wouldn’t stop him. Kenny was happier underwater than he was on land.

“I’d rather go deaf and have my cock fall off than give up diving,” Kenny said.

Clay laughed. “You have a way with words, Ken.”

He spent more time with Kenny these days than any of his other buddies. Most of his friends were married, and he felt their pity when they were with him. He saw them glance at each other when one of them committed a faux pas by talking about getting in trouble with his wife if he got home late or whatever. They treated Clay as if he was fragile. The worst part of it was, they were right. He did wince, if only inside, when they talked about their wives. He was jealous, resentful, angry and hurt, all those things they thought him to be, but he let none of it show. Being with Kenny was much easier. Kenny was not ready to give up bachelorhood. He could talk to Clay about diving or windsurfing the way they always had, with no mention of a wife at home who might try to put a damper on their fun. Still, Kenny liked women, and they liked him. He was a notorious flirt, burly, bearded and blond. It could be disconcerting talking to him, since he so rarely looked Clay in the eye. He was too busy following the movement of every woman within sight.

Now that he was done with the cistern repair and had delivered Henry to his friends, now that he was just sitting and relaxing, one particular woman crept back into Clay’s mind. For a moment, he thought of telling Kenny about Gina. About how beautiful she was, how he was both drawn to and repelled by her at the same time. But he couldn’t do that. It would break one of the unspoken rules of his current relationship with Kenny: talk about sports or diving or fishing—anything but women.

They had been friends in high school, but had taken different paths when it came to careers. Kenny, reluctant to leave the Outer Banks, took over his father’s marine repair business after graduation from high school, while Clay went to Duke to study architecture. It would have been logical for their educational differences to separate them, but they remained friends. Kenny was not educated, not in books or in life—he still called women “girls,” for example, and he would probably get off on the jugs on tattooed guy’s back—but he had brains that Clay respected, and he was a better, smarter diver than Clay would ever be.

The young man with the tattoos left the back room and started walking through the main restaurant, probably on his way to the rest room, but he stopped short as he passed their table, his eyes on Clay.

“Hey, you’re Clay O’Neill, right?” he asked. He wore a diamond stud in his left ear, and his dark hair was very short.

Clay nodded. “Yes.”

“I’m Brock Jensen,” the man said, holding out his hand.

Clay shook his hand, and for the first time got a good look at his arms. The tattoos were designs rather than drawings, swirls and curlicues and arrows and waves, and they covered so much of his skin that it made Clay’s arms burn just to look at them.

“I know your sister,” Brock said.

“Lacey?” Clay asked, as if he might possibly mean Maggie. Lacey rarely came to Shorty’s.

“Yeah. I met her at an Al-Anon meeting. She said she might be able to help me find a job.”

“What kind of work are you looking for?” Kenny asked.

“Construction.”

Construction jobs were a dime a dozen here, especially for someone who looked like this guy. He was slim, but powerfully built. The dark swirling lines on his biceps shifted with the slightest movement of his arms.

“Shouldn’t be hard to find a construction job,” Clay said. There were people he could put him in touch with, but he frankly didn’t feel like helping him out.

“Try this place.” Kenny pulled a pen from his T-shirt pocket and wrote something down on a napkin. He handed it to Brock, who glanced at it, then nodded.

“Hey, thanks, dude, I will,” he said, then looked at Clay. “And tell your sister I said ‘hey.’”

“Sure,” Clay said. Neither he nor Kenny spoke again until the man had left the main room and was out of earshot.

“Brock?” Kenny laughed. “Give me a break.”

Clay laughed as well, but he felt uneasy. Houses and stores were being built and remodeled up and down the Outer Banks. That guy could walk onto any construction site and be working within two minutes. He didn’t need anyone’s help. Clay had a feeling that help in finding a job was not all this guy wanted from his good-hearted sister.

Chapter Nine

GINA SAT IN THE HIGH-CEILINGED WAITING room of Dillard Realty, with its faux sea-worn paneling and beach motif. She was nervous, on the verge of panic, and sitting still was a challenge. She’d told Mrs. King, a woman she had never met but had come to despise nevertheless, that she would be in touch with her no later than today. She’d thought that surely by now, three days after her arrival in Kiss River, she would have things figured out, but she was no closer to resolving her dilemma than she had been before this trip east. She had completely lost Sunday because she’d spent the day crampy and nauseated, most likely from the fast-food hamburger she’d eaten after leaving Alec O’Neill’s house on Saturday. A fitting ending to that most unproductive visit. It was ironic that Alec suspected her of hoping to make an easy million by raising the lens. It was money she was after, but she knew she would not get that money from ownership of Kiss River’s Fresnel lens.

She wondered if Alec and Lacey would talk about her today at the animal hospital. Might Lacey have any influence over him? Gina doubted it. He’d been stubborn, his mind made up. Whether because of his suspicions about her or some other reason she couldn’t fathom, he had been no help at all, and now her hopes were pinned on the real estate agent, Nola Dillard.

She’d simply walked into this office and requested to see Mrs. Dillard. She probably should have called first, but she was too afraid of hearing the woman say she wasn’t interested in helping her, and over the phone, Gina would stand little chance of persuading her. Persuasion was not her forte, anyway. Yes, she could talk a bunch of seventh-graders into sitting down and paying attention, not a skill to be taken lightly, but that was about the limit of her influence.

She’d been waiting nearly half an hour when a woman stepped into the reception area and marched directly over to Gina, holding her hand out toward her like a spear.

“Are you Gina Higgins?” she asked. She was a tall woman in her mid-fifties, with white-blond hair held back with a clasp and tanned skin so smooth and tight it could only have come from the gifted hands of a plastic surgeon.

Gina stood to shake her hand. “Yes,” she said. “Would you have a moment to give me?”

Nola Dillard looked at her watch. “About fifteen minutes,” she said. “I have to show a house in South Nag’s Head at four.”

Gina followed her down a hallway to a large office with a huge mahogany desk, expensively upholstered chairs and the same silvery paneling as the reception area. Several plaques and award statues graced the walls and bookcase behind the desk. Nola Dillard was an obvious success as a Realtor. There was also a photograph of a young woman with glimmering blond hair holding a little girl of about three on her lap. The woman had her chin pressed lightly to the top of the child’s head, and mother and daughter, for that was what Gina supposed them to be, wore broad smiles. The picture made Gina ache with longing to hold her own daughter.

“Are you interested in a house?” Nola said as she took a seat behind her massive desk.

“No, actually.” Gina pulled her gaze away from the photograph to look at the Realtor. She sat on the edge of her chair, her damp palms cupping her bare knees. “I’m interested in the Kiss River lighthouse.”

“Kiss River?” Nola looked surprised, her gray eyes wide. “Interested in it in what way?”

“I’d like to see the lens rescued from the bottom of the ocean and displayed someplace where the public could enjoy it,” Gina said.

“Ah.” Nola leaned back in her chair, nodding. “Are you the friend Lacey was trying to find a rental for?”

Gina nodded. “Yes. I’m staying at the keeper’s house for now.”

“I see. I guess Lacey told you that I had been on the Save the Lighthouse committee long ago. Before the storm.”

“Her father … Dr. O’Neill, told me, actually.”

“Really?” Nola looked surprised by that. “I didn’t think he cared about Kiss River anymore.”

“Well, I don’t think he does,” Gina said. “That’s why he told me to contact you.” Not quite the truth, but not exactly a lie, either.

Nola swiveled her chair back and forth, her eyes on Gina. “I happen to be one of the few Outer Banks natives who would love to see the lens raised,” she said, then smiled. “Of course, I have a vested interest in attracting more tourists and keeping them happy.”

“Will you help me then?” Gina tightened her hands on her knees. “I know I need to find someone to fund the project, but I’m an outsider and I really need the support of someone who isn’t.”

“Where are you from, hon?”

“Washington State. I’m an amateur lighthouse historian there, and I wanted to see some of the lighthouses in the East. I was shocked to discover that no one had bothered to raise the Kiss River lens.”

“I agree with you one hundred percent,” Nola said.

Gina let out her breath in relief. Nola Dillard seemed the type of woman who could get things done.

“I could contact the travel bureau for you,” Nola continued. “Put you in touch with someone there. If you’re willing to take on the administrative work involved, they would probably help you out with the money.”

“That would be wonderful!” Gina smiled. Finally, she was getting somewhere. “Alec O’Neill was so adamant about not getting involved, I had just about given—”

“I thought you said Alec told you to get in touch with me,” Nola interrupted her.

Gina knew by the tone of the Realtor’s voice that she had suddenly stepped onto thin ice. “He gave me your name,” she said.

“Does he want the lens to be salvaged?”

Gina hesitated. “No,” she said in a rush of honesty. “But I think it’s just that he—”

“I can’t help you then, hon,” Nola interrupted her again, folding her arms across her chest.

“Why?” Gina’s voice was a near wail.

“Oh, I think Alec is probably right,” Nola said. “The lens should stay where it is. That’s what most people want. I just got caught up in the idea for a moment.”

“Please, Mrs. Dillard,” Gina said, disturbed by the emotion in her own voice, but Nola didn’t seem to notice. She was already standing up, looking at her watch again.

She smiled at Gina with real sympathy. “Alec’s a friend,” she said. “I’ve never completely understood his change of heart about the lighthouse, but I’m not going to go against his wishes. I’m sorry.”

Gina was slow to get to her feet, and Nola put a gentle arm around her shoulders as they walked out of the office and down the hall.

“How’s Lacey doing?” she asked. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Well, I’ve only known her a few days,” Gina said, aware of the flat tone of disappointment in her voice, “but she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” Lacey had nursed her and her upset stomach the day before, buying her ginger ale and crackers, making her chicken soup from scratch for dinner. “Today’s her birthday.”

“The first of July,” Nola mused. “That’s right. A couple of weeks after my daughter’s birthday. Lacey was my daughter Jessica’s best friend when they were growing up.”

Gina thought back to the picture on the bookcase of the young woman and little girl. She knew exactly how that child’s hair would feel against the woman’s chin.

They had reached the waiting room, and Nola turned to face her. “I’m sorry about the lens,” she said.

“What should I do?” Gina asked her.

“Have you talked to Walter Liscott or Brian Cass?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Alec said they were very old, though, and—”

“They’re getting up there in years, but they’re not dead,” Nola said with a laugh. “And age has its benefits. They have a lifetime’s worth of contacts.”

Gina nodded. “I’ll talk to them,” she said without much hope. “And if you change your mind, you know where I am.”

There was a new rattling coming from the underbelly of her car as she drove back to Kiss River. The rutted lane to the keeper’s house had probably shaken something loose. Between that and the broken air conditioner, she wondered if the car would ever be able to take her back to Washington.

She parked in the sand-covered parking lot near the keeper’s house, then opened the car door but didn’t move from her seat, not quite sure what to do next. She had the house to herself this evening. Lacey and Clay and even Sasha were at Alec O’Neill’s tonight, celebrating Lacey’s birthday. She had not been invited, and certainly hadn’t expected to be. Frankly, the last person she felt like spending more time with was Alec O’Neill. She’d looked forward to the evening alone, yet now she found herself missing Lacey’s caring company, and that worried her. The closer she got to Lacey, the harder it would be to lie to her. She had to remember to keep some distance from her hosts. She had no room in her for the responsibilities that came with friendship. There was no one she could talk to about her plight anymore, no one she could open up to. They would think she was crazy. And maybe she was, if only just a little. Desperation could make you that way.

At breakfast, she had given Lacey a birthday card with a note inside promising her a massage whenever she wanted one. It was the one gift she could give that would cost her nothing.

“I’m a good masseuse,” she said after Lacey had thanked her. It was true. She had taken a few courses several years ago, because massage was the one thing that had eased her mother’s pain during the last few months of her life.

“I’m so sorry you can’t come with us tonight,” Lacey had said. She had been standing in the middle of the kitchen after breakfast, the card and note in her hands while Clay opened the back door, ready to leave for his office. Gina could tell that Lacey felt guilty about leaving her alone.

Gina had put her hands on the younger woman’s arms and looked her firmly in the eye. “You’ve barely known me three days, Lacey,” she said. “I’m just your boarder, not part of your family, and that’s fine. You and Clay go and have a great time tonight. You’re going to have an ulcer, worrying so much about people.”

Lacey gave her a hug. Clay, who was halfway out the door, turned to add his usual succinct two cents. “Ulcers are caused by bacteria, not worry,” he said. He walked outside, Sasha running ahead of him, and Lacey followed the two of them, leaving Gina hugged, chastened and deserted all at once.

She knew that Clay was a widower. Lacey had told her his interior-designer wife had died in an accident in November and that he was still not over it. They’d had a fantastic marriage, she’d said. Gina was not a believer in fantastic marriages, but she was not about to argue the point with Lacey, who obviously missed her sister-in-law. And Clay, although quiet and understandably humorless, was nevertheless treating her very kindly. He’d even let her use his computer to check her e-mail, something she had been anxious to do since leaving Bellingham, and he told her she could use the computer anytime she liked.

Sitting in her car in the parking lot, she thought about using it now to check her e-mail again, although she had done so just before noon. She glanced toward the broken lighthouse, and noticed that the ocean sounded calmer and quieter than she’d heard it since her arrival. There were a few more hours until sunset, she thought. She would go for a walk. Maybe she could find the Coast Guard station from Bess’s diary.

She left her sandals in the car and walked along the short path through the shrubs until she came to the lighthouse. Wading through the shallow water past the tower, she turned right onto the beach. The coastline was obviously quite different from the days of Bess’s diary and not at all easy to walk on. Now, the beach was very narrow, even disappearing in some places where the waves chewed at the green groundcover instead of sand, and Gina had to walk through water. The waves were little more than ripples slipping toward shore.

In the pages of the diary, the Coast Guard station seemed to be no more than a half a mile from the lighthouse, but Gina walked at least a mile without seeing a trace of it. She had seen no buildings, as a matter of fact. The slender thread of beach butted up against hardy-looking trees and shrubs. She’d seen no people, either, and the solitude was eerie, the only sound the lapping of the nearly flat waves against the shore and the occasional breaking of twigs in the woods to her right. She was glad she’d learned that the horses and hogs were gone.

Dead bodies had washed up on this beach, she thought as she walked. And a man had been murdered here.

Her gaze was drawn to the water a distance ahead of her. Someone was swimming in the ocean. As Gina grew closer, she saw it was an older woman, who was now coming out of the water onto the beach, wringing the sea out of her long gray hair.

The woman waved at her, reaching down to pick up a towel from the sand.

“Hi,” Gina called as she neared her. “How’s the water?”

“Glorious,” the woman said. “It’s so calm. I think I swam about two miles today.” The woman looked like a swimmer, with broad shoulders and powerful thighs. She tilted her head at Gina. “I come here almost every day and you’re just about the first person I’ve seen out here,” she said.

“I was looking for the Coast Guard station.”

“Coast Guard station?” the woman said. “You mean a life-saving station?”

Gina recalled that the Coast Guard stations had originally been home to the life-saving crews. “Yes,” she said.

“The nearest are up in Ocean Sands or down in Sanderling,” the woman said, toweling off her arms.

Gina was confused. “I thought there was one right about here.”

The woman shook her head, then a spark came to her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I know the one you mean. I’ve read about it, and it was along here, you’re right. But it was lost in a storm in the sixties, I think. That was before I moved here, so I’m not sure exactly when. A lot of erosion along here since then.” She waved her hand to take in the beach. “It’s changed a lot even since I moved here.”

“Ah, that figures,” Gina said, disappointed. Storms, storms, storms. She was coming to realize that weather was the source of devastation around here. “Well, thanks,” she said with a wry smile. “I guess I can stop looking now.”

“Sorry,” the woman said. She bent over to pick up her beach bag. Straightening again, she looked at Gina.

“You have a nice evening,” she said, then waved as she walked toward a path leading into the vegetation near the beach.

“You, too,” Gina said.

She watched the woman disappear into the trees, then turned and headed back toward Kiss River.

She walked along the beach, her feet slapping in and out of the shallow waves, feeling alone. When she reached the lighthouse again, she stood in knee-high water, staring out at the sea. She thought of that woman on the beach, walking out of the water. Gina could swim, but she had never before been in the ocean. The Pacific off the coast of Washington was far too cold to swim in. Her eyes searched the water in front of her. What if the lens was just below the surface? Maybe it would not even need to be raised to suit her purpose.

She’d brought no bathing suit with her, since swimming had certainly not been part of her plan when she drove east from Washington. But she had on shorts and a T-shirt and no one was around to see her make a fool of herself. Slowly, she started walking into the water. It was nearly high tide, probably not the best time for a search, but the sea was rarely this calm. She would do this methodically, she told herself. She’d walk in an arc around the ocean side of the lighthouse, expanding the arc each time she changed direction. The idea suddenly seemed amazingly simple. The lens weighed three tons. Even if it had broken apart when it fell into the sea, the pieces should still be large enough for her to find.

She walked quickly at first, whisking her hands through the water in all directions, hoping to feel something hard and smooth. Then she had to slow down as the water grew deeper. Occasionally, her feet stumbled over chunks of brick and mortar, but nothing resembling glass. Finally, she was deep enough that she was half swimming, half treading water, trying not to think about sharks and riptides. She’d never experienced either of them, but had certainly heard enough about both hazards. A couple of times, she held her breath and dipped her head below the surface of the water, opening her eyes to look around her, but she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet away from her in any direction and the salt burned her eyes.

She’d been in the water a long time when she turned to look behind her and was stunned to see how small the lighthouse had become. A little jolt of fear shot through her. She was far out into the sea, but still, it was not that deep here, perhaps only a couple of feet above her head, and she calmed herself with that thought as she swam toward shore, a heavy aching in her chest. She had covered a lot of territory out here. She had touched every speck of the sea bottom with her feet and found nothing. The lens, with its tie to both her past and her future, had simply disappeared.

Chapter Ten

Thursday, March 19, 1942

THE MOST SHOCKING AND HORRIBLE THING happened to me today. I am not even sure I can write about it because words just can’t tell how awful it was, but I think it might make me feel better if I write it down, so I will try. It’s midnight now and I can’t sleep, anyway. I’m afraid if I go to sleep, I’ll have nightmares.

I like to climb trees. I always have. Mama scolds me about it, saying that I think I’m so grown-up and all, but I am still just a little kid who climbs trees. Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever outgrow that, or even if I want to. I plan to climb trees with my own children someday. Anyhow, I like sitting up in the trees above the beach just south of Kiss River. There is a wonderful tree there, not very tall, with its branches spread out almost like a platform about ten feet above the ground, and I usually sit up there after school, eating an apple or something and sometimes reading. And to tell the truth, I sometimes sneak out of the house and sit up there at night, because that is the stretch of beach that Jimmy Brown patrols and I like watching him. I would die if he ever knew I was there, but the trees are thick and I am sure he can’t see me at night, even if he turned his flashlight on me.

So today, after school, it was really warm out and not as windy as usual and I couldn’t wait to get up in my tree. So I took the book I’m reading now (The Grapes of Wrath) and went up in the tree. On the beach below me were pieces of wood, nearly covering every inch of sand, and I knew they were probably from one of the ships that had been sunk out to sea. I knew that bodies sometimes washed up with that salvage, though I’d never seen any. Just as I was thinking how glad I was about that fact, I saw some blue and white cloth off to the side of the wreckage. I stared at it, and soon I could make out that it was someone’s shirt, and that someone was still in it!

My first thought was to get Daddy, but I thought I’d better check on the person before I ran off, just on the off chance he might still be alive and need help. I was so scared my knees were actually shaking, but I climbed down the tree and walked out to the beach, trying to find places to put my feet amongst the pieces of wreckage from the ship. The man was lying facedown in the sand and a distance from the wreckage. His shirt was blue and white stripes and his pants were brown. And he had on shoes and socks. I will remember every detail about him until the day I die. I knew he was dead. I knew it. Yet there was this little part of me that thought I had to make absolute sure. So I carefully tucked my foot underneath his ribs and rolled him over. And then! Oh my God! His throat had been cut! The blood was brown and it was all over his shirt and in a wide, revolting gash across his throat. His head had nearly been cut off, I think. I screamed, and then I started running. Not toward home and Daddy, but toward the Coast Guard station. I had to stop once because I thought I was going to retch, but I managed not to. I couldn’t get that man’s face out of my mind.

At the Coast Guard station, I immediately found Mr. Hewitt and told him what I’d discovered. We (me, him and Ralph Salmon, who is another one of the Boston boys and nice, but no Jimmy Brown) climbed in the Coast Guard jeep and headed back down the beach. There was wreckage all along the beach. It looked so different from usual that it took me a minute to figure out when we reached the right spot. While we were bouncing over the sand, I kept asking Mr. Hewitt the question that was driving me crazy. If the Germans torpedoed the ship, which they would have done from a distance away, how did they also manage to cut the man’s throat? Mr. Hewitt didn’t answer me. He was driving, just looking straight ahead of him at the beach, a frown on his face and his lips tight, and I guessed he was trying to figure out the same thing.

I sure as heck didn’t want to see the man again, and Mr. Hewitt told me I should wait in the jeep. I didn’t want to look like a chicken, though, so I said I was going with him. We had to climb over all sorts of boards and things and Ralph got a nail through his shoe, but lucky for him, it didn’t quite reach his foot.

Once we got to the man, I had to force myself to look at him, and Ralph actually did retch, going off in the woods (too close to my tree!) to do it. Mr. Hewitt got down on his haunches next to the dead man. “This man was not on the ship,” he said to me.

“How can you tell?” I asked. I leaned over, my hands on my legs, like I was trying to get a good look at the man. I didn’t want Mr. Hewitt to think I was scared.

“The tide would’ve washed in the salvage just a couple hours ago,” Mr. Hewitt said. “Look how wet it is.”

I did look, and saw that the boards were still dripping water. I still wasn’t sure of Mr. Hewitt’s point, though.

“This fella’s clothes are completely dry.” Mr. Hewitt pointed at the man’s bloody shirt. “Even his shoes are dry. There’s no sign he was ever in the water at all. And his body’s not bloated the way it would be if it had spent some time in the water.”

Ralph came out of the woods then, but didn’t seem to want to get too close to us or the dead man. He sat down on the beach a ways away from us, green around the gills.

“This man has nothing to do with a torpedoed ship,” Mr. Hewitt reported. He fished around in the man’s pockets, coming up with a pack of Chiclets, but no wallet or other identification of any variety. “Take a good look at him, Bess,” Mr. Hewitt said to me. “You know everyone around here. Have you ever seen this man before?”

I looked hard at the man’s face, not letting my eyes fall to the grisly gash across his throat. I am certain I’ve never seen him before. He was young, and I know all the young men around here. Most of them are gone, anyhow, fighting in Europe. I shook my head and told Mr. Hewitt the dead man was a stranger to me. Mr. Hewitt stood up and looked at me then.

“You know what, Bess?” he said. “You’re quite a gal. You’ve got guts. Look at ol’ Ralph there, white as a sheet.” Ralph had gotten up and moved closer to the man, but not close enough to get a good look. When Mr. Hewitt said that, Ralph started blushing. At least he finally had a little color other than green in his face! He laughed, though, and I knew he took Mr. Hewitt’s words as teasing, even if there was some truth behind them.

I asked Mr. Hewitt what he was going to do. He said he’d get in touch with the sheriff who would check the missing person’s reports and maybe they could find out who this fella was.

“He was killed here,” Mr. Hewitt said. “Right here on this beach. Otherwise there wouldn’t be all this blood on the sand.”

Killed right there! Practically right below my tree. Mr. Hewitt was right. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it, but the sand was soaked with the same brown blood that was on the man’s shirt. I did start to feel sick then. I am not sure I’ll ever be able to relax in the branches of my tree again.

“He looks German to me,” Ralph said suddenly. It was practically the first words he’d said since we left the Coast Guard station.

Mr. Hewitt laughed. “And what does a German look like?” he asked.

Ralph pointed out the man’s blond hair and eyebrows. I knew he was thinking the dead man was a German spy. Everyone thinks every stranger around here is spying for the Germans. Otherwise, how would those U-boats be able to know exactly where our merchant ships are nearly every minute of the day? But Mr. Hewitt just laughed.

“You just described yourself, Ralph,” he said. “Blond hair and blond eyebrows.”

“I’m no Kraut!” Ralph said. He looked really upset.

Mr. Hewitt ignored him. Instead, he said to me, “We’ll escort you home now, Bess.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’m not afraid.” Although the thought of walking back through the woods did put a chill up my spine.

We argued about it for a bit, then finally they walked me partway. Mr. Hewitt told me to make sure I tell Daddy about the man, since it happened so close to the light station. “And you be careful,” he said. “I don’t know how or why this fella met this fate, but one thing’s for sure and that’s that there is a murderer on the loose out here.”

I headed home. It was strange, but I hadn’t thought about that until he said it. That there was a murderer on the loose. I guess I’d been so caught up in thinking about the man somehow coming from a torpedoed ship and so surely a victim of the Germans that I hadn’t stopped to think. But Mr. Hewitt was right. There’s a murderer out here.

For the first time since I can remember, Daddy locked the house up tight before we went to bed. Mama kept hugging me hard, and I knew they’d be keeping an eye on me tonight, and I wouldn’t be able to sneak out to watch Jimmy Brown on his patrol. That’s all right. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go out on the beach in the dark again.

Chapter Eleven

THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS HOUSE IN the middle of the night that Clay found unsettling. When he’d wake up in the dark, the thunderous pounding of the ocean would be right outside his window, as though the sea had moved closer to the house during the night. But if he got up to use the bathroom or go downstairs for something to drink, he would find the interior of the house eerily still. It was as though someone—or something—was lurking in the dark corners.

Lacey had taken a vacation in April, leaving him alone in the house for a week, and although he would admit it to no one, he’d been glad to have Sasha with him. If he’d had the house entirely to himself, the hushed darkness might have driven him even further around the bend than he already was. Too much history in this house, and the ghosts all came out at night.

On Tuesday night, he woke up at one in the morning, needing to use the bathroom. Shutting his eyes, he tried to drift off again, but knew it was no use.

Sasha stirred in the corner of the room as he got out of bed, but the dog only uttered one of his low, doggie moans, and went back to sleep. Clay stumbled into the hallway, expecting the house’s nighttime silence to envelop him, but instead, he heard a sound coming from his sister’s room. He stopped for just a moment, worried that she was sick, but then quickly identified the murmured cries of passion and the rhythmic creaking of her bed. He hurried past her room to the bathroom.

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