Keeper of the Light. Diane Chamberlain

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       Windsurfing. Cutting through the water, far out in the sound, far from the shore. Far from the joyless reality that had become his life.

      A woman leaned forward from the front row to get a look at him. For a moment he thought it was the doctor he’d met at the studio. Olivia. He leaned forward himself to see her more clearly, and felt some disappointment that the woman was a stranger.

      Tomorrow was Saturday. He would go to the studio about the time she’d be done with her lesson. He would buy her lunch. He would finally ask the questions that had been haunting him for the last few long and lonely months.

      CHAPTER TEN

      The glass was cool beneath her fingertips. Olivia drew the glass cutter cleanly across the surface, mesmerized by the changing color of her hands. Tinted sunlight flooded the studio and fell across the work table in violet and teal and bloodred, at first making concentration on her task impossible.

      “You’ll get used to it,” Tom said.

      He was right. After a while, the colors seemed essential. Intoxicating.

      Tom handed her another glass cutter, this one with a beveled, oil-filled handle. “Try this one on that piece,” he said.

      She took the cutter from his hand and scored a perfectly straight line down the center of the glass.

      “You’ve been practicing,” he said.

      She beamed. “Nothing to it.” She had been practicing, setting up the glass at her kitchen table each evening after work. She’d had to force herself the first time—there were several articles she should have been reading in The Journal of Emergency Medicine—but then she got into a pattern, and she began to look forward to getting home in the evening, sitting down with the glass. She’d drawn her own geometric design on graph paper last night, and now she was cutting shapes to fit the design from scraps of colored glass.

      She had nearly finished scoring the third piece when Alec O’Neill arrived. He nodded to Tom before his eyes settled on her.

      “I’d like to talk with you,” he said. “Do you have some time after your lesson?”

      She took off the green safety glasses and glanced at her watch, although she had no other plans for the day. “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. He was wearing acid-washed jeans and a faded blue polo shirt, but at that moment he was bathed in a vermilion light from head to toe.

      “Twelve?” he suggested. “I’ll meet you across the street at the deli.”

      He disappeared briefly into the darkroom and then left again after telling her he’d see her soon. The stained glass panel on the door swayed for a moment after he closed it, and Olivia watched the wall near the darkroom change from blue to rose, then blue again.

      She reached for another scrap of glass, a piece she’d been eyeing since her arrival at the studio that morning. It was a deep green, with a light, rippled texture.

      “No,” said Tom. “Not that piece. It’s hand-rolled. Too delicate.”

      “But it’s so beautiful.” She ran her fingers over the cool, wavy surface. “I haven’t broken anything yet, Tom. Couldn’t I try it?”

      “All right.” Tom reluctantly let her set the glass in front of her on the table. “But pretend this piece of glass is Alec, all right? He’s about as fragile as a person can get. I don’t know what it is he wants to talk to you about, but keep in mind you need a light touch, okay?”

      She looked at Tom’s dark blue eyes. “Okay,” she said, and the word came out in a whisper. She slipped on the safety glasses again, then carefully set the cutter to the glass, licking her lips, holding her breath. But despite her caution, despite the lightness of her touch, the glass splintered raggedly in pieces beneath her multicolored hands.

      The tiny deli was crowded. People in bathing suits pressed up against the counter, and the smell of cold cuts and pickles mingled with the scent of sunscreen. Olivia felt overdressed in her flowered skirt and green blouse. She stood against the wall by the door, searching the crowd for Alec’s face.

      “Dr. Simon.”

      She followed the voice with her eyes, peering around the back of a woman standing next to her to see Alec at one of the four small tables near the windows. She squeezed her way through the crowd. Alec stood up and leaned across the little table to pull the chair out for her.

      “Thanks.” She sat down, catching her reflection in the window. Her straight, dark hair brushed the tops of her shoulders, and her bangs had grown long enough to sweep to the side. She remembered the black and white photograph of Annie, with her wide smile and glittering hair.

      “It’s crowded, but they’re fast here.” Alec turned to look up at the menu, written in chalk on a black slate board hanging above the counter. “What would you like?”

      “Turkey on whole wheat,” she said. “And lemonade.”

      Alec got up—sprang up—and walked behind the counter where he spoke to one of the young women who was making sandwiches, his hand on her shoulder. Olivia studied him from the safety of her chair by the window. He looked about forty and a little too thin, thinner than he had been that night in the ER. He was tan, but there were circles beneath his eyes she did not remember from that night, and hollows in his cheeks. His hair was very dark, yet even from this distance she could see the gray creeping into it at his temples. He moved with an athletic grace and she imagined he worked construction, something that put him outside all the time, that allowed him to use up his wired energy and kept him in shape.

      The woman behind the counter handed him their drinks and he nodded his thanks to her before turning to work his way back to the table. Olivia wondered if he ever smiled.

      He put her lemonade in front of her and took a long drink from his own cup before sitting down again. She had the feeling he did not sit often.

      He looked at her across the table. The sunlight hit his eyes and sharpened the contrast between the translucent blue and the small black pupils. “I asked you to meet me because I need some answers about what happened to my wife that night,” he said. She felt his denim-covered knees touch her bare ones and drew her chair back a little. “It didn’t seem important then, but I can’t seem to … I keep wondering …” He rubbed his temples with his long tanned fingers. “There are these gaps for me. I mean, I said good-bye to her on Christmas morning and that was it.” He dropped his eyes and leaned back as the waitress set their sandwiches down in front of them. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and Olivia knew he was very close to the edge.

      “Mr. O’Neill,” she said after the waitress had left.

      “Alec.”

      “Alec. I’ll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, but some of the answers might be hard to hear. Maybe this isn’t the right place.”

      He looked around him at the press of bodies. “I have an office near here,” he said. “I’m not working these days, but it’s open. We could take our sandwiches over there. Would you mind? Do you have time?”

      She nodded. “That would be fine.”

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