“Does she know about me?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t even know about the summer I lived here. I started to tell her about you once, long ago, but Olivia’s one of those people who wants to leave the past in the past.” Olivia’s own past had been so weighty, so painful, that it had absorbed nearly all their energy in the early days of their relationship. He’d had to undo all that had been done to her, and after that she wanted to put the past behind her. She knew only that he’d had a very serious relationship long before he met her. She wanted to know no more than that.
He walked to the back wall of the studio to study the breathtaking stained glass. “Your work is beautiful, Annie. You’ve come a long way.”
“I’ve changed, Paul,” she said. “I’m not the woman you used to know. Please don’t have any illusions that you and I can have a relationship again.”
“Just friendship.”
“No. It’s impossible.” She lowered her voice, and he knew someone else must be in the studio. “There was too much between us for us to simply be friends.”
He was close enough to her now to see fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He wanted to see her laugh, to hear her ringing giggle bounce off the glass.
“I’m working for the
Gazette,
” he said, “and freelancing. I’d like to do an article on you for
Seascape Magazine.
”
“No.”
“I’ve already spoken to the editor about it. Please, Annie. It would help me get my name known here.”
He started as a door creaked open behind him, and he turned to see a large, ponytailed man walk into the room from what must have been a darkroom. Annie stepped toward him. “Tom,” she said. “This is Paul Macelli. He’s a journalist who wants to do a story on me in
Seascape.
”
“Hello,” Paul said as he shook Tom’s hand. He would play her game. He would act as though they were strangers to one another if that was what she wanted.
“Well, you couldn’t pick a better person to write about,” Tom said. “She’s a real Jill-of-all-trades. Anything going on in the community, she’s a part of it, and you can see for yourself what a talented artist she is.” He talked on, telling him little details about her work that Paul began jotting down in a notebook, while Annie lowered herself behind the work table, looking up at both of them, her eyes resigned and unsmiling.
The interviews began. He let her talk about her son and daughter, about Alec. Those meetings fed the roots of his obsession. He sent the
Seascape
photographer to her studio and demanded he take dozens of pictures, far more than Paul would ever need for the article, so that he could keep them for himself. He could pretend the smile she showed the camera was meant for him, because he was seeing so little of it in real life. She wanted him again; he was certain of it. There was no other reason why she should be afraid of his being nearby. She had to want him.
He had no friends. A growing number of acquaintances, but no one to confide in, and he was bursting to talk. And there was Olivia, ready to listen.
Olivia. How had she tolerated him all those weeks, those months, when he was wrapped up in Annie, when he spoke of nothing else?
It had been a terrible sickness in him. From this distance he could see it for what it was: a pathetic obsession that was costing him his sleep, his self-respect, his marriage. A few days earlier, Gabe had called him at the hotel to tell him about the
Gazette
article in which Jonathan Cramer accused Olivia of mishandling Annie’s case. He’d thought about it all night and he knew Cramer was wrong. He only had to think back to the wreck of the Eastern Spirit to know how wrong he was. He would trust Olivia with his own life, with the lives of anyone he loved. Annie had stood a better chance of survival under Olivia’s care than she would have with any other physician in the state. He could see that now, from this distance, as surely as he could feel Olivia’s presence in this bookstore. He had been satisfied during those years he and Olivia lived up here. With Olivia, he had finally been a man in control of himself and his demons, and he’d been grateful to her for freeing him from his obsession.
For her trouble he’d repaid her with pain, with coldness, with cruelty. Now she was handling harassment by the paper he worked for, as though he was still hurting her even when he was not physically there.
He looked at his watch. She would still be up by the time he got back to the hotel if he left right now. He paid the bill and hurried out into the hot night air.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
OUR
The phone rang at ten-thirty-five. Olivia was lathering her hair in the shower, and she stepped out quickly, drawing a towel around her as she raced into the bedroom to answer it before the machine picked it up.
It was Paul’s voice, not Alec’s, that greeted her, and for a split second, she was disappointed.
“Are you back?” she asked.
“No. I’m in a hotel in D.C. I’ll get back tomorrow.” He sounded tired. A little tense.
“How are you?” she asked.
He was quiet for a moment. Then she heard a slight laugh, or maybe a cough. “Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally, I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’ve been out of my mind.”
The shampoo was beginning to drizzle down Olivia’s back. “What are you talking about?” She stretched the phone cord down the hall to the linen closet, where she pulled out a towel and draped it around her neck.
“I talked to Gabe at the
Gazette
and he told me about the flak on Annie’s case. I’m sorry, Olivia. I didn’t think the
Gazette
was capable of yellow journalism. Maybe if I’d been there I could have prevented it somehow.”
She walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. “You thought I was to blame too,” she said.
“For Annie dying? No, Liv, I know you too well to have seriously thought that. I did wonder how you could have done it, though. How you could work on her when I’d been so obnoxious about the way I felt about her, but I know you did your best. I’m sorry I ever accused you of anything less.”
She cradled the receiver between her palms. “It means a lot to me to hear you say that.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’ve been doing some thinking up here,” he said. “D.C.’s loaded with memories of you—of us together. I stopped in Donovan’s Books tonight.”
“Oh.”
The sights and sounds and warm-coffee smell of Donovan’s filled her head.
“I wish we’d never left here. Things were good for us here.”
“But we agreed we didn’t want to raise a family there, whether we had our own children or adopted or…”
“I know, I know.” He paused. She heard him let out his breath. “Can I see you when I get back?”
“Of course.”
“I mean, a date? We’ll go out someplace, get to know each other again.”
“I’d like that.” She matched the tenderness in his voice with her own.
“I should be there around five.”
“I work until seven.” She cringed, waiting for him to chastise her for allowing her work to interfere with her marriage again.
“Seven is fine,” he said, then he hesitated for a moment. “Liv? Why aren’t you fighting this thing with Cramer? It’s so unlike you to just sit back and take it.”
She ran her hand over her bedspread. He was right. She usually took her adversaries head-on, battling them just as she had battled every other obstacle in her life.
“My only recourse would be to ask for a medical review panel,” she said, “but I’m not sure I have the strength right now to go through that process.”
“
Do
it, Liv. I’ll be behind you all the way. I promise.”
She thanked him, surprised and somewhat guarded, unable to completely trust his words, his warmth. Yet by the time she’d hung up the phone, she’d made a decision, and despite the hour, she called Mike Shelley.
Mike listened quietly as she told him her plan. She could guess what he was thinking. A review panel would not only put her on the line, but the emergency room itself.
“Please hold off a day or two on taking any action, Olivia,” Mike said finally. “Let me think about it a bit.”
She got off the phone, feeling better, feeling less helpless than she had a half hour earlier. She stood in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door. Her hair was white with lather. She let the towel drop to the carpet and turned to look at her profile. There was no denying the slight protrusion of her belly. If Paul touched her, he would know. It had been enough to make Alec pull away from her.
Instead of putting on her nightgown, she dressed in a T-shirt and the only pair of jeans she could still zip closed. Then she walked outside to the storage closet and took a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench from the small hardware kit Paul had left her when he moved out. She carried them into the nursery, along with the radio and a glass of ginger ale, and settled in for a long and satisfying night of crib construction.
At the change of shift the following evening, Mike called Olivia and Jonathan into his office. Jonathan sat near the window, wearing the sour smirk that was a permanent part of his demeanor these days, while Olivia took the chair closest to the door.
Mike leaned forward, his forearms on his desk. “Jonathan,” he began, “I want you to retract your ‘cover-up’ statement to the press.”
“I’m not going to retract something I think is the truth.”
Mike shook his head. “Olivia is planning to request a medical review panel, and if that occurs, I will be telling that panel the truth as
I
see it, which is that
both
of you were right in the O’Neill case.” Mike spoke slowly, as if he expected Jonathan would have difficulty following him. “Olivia was right to take the action she did because she has the skill and the experience to perform that type of surgery. A case could be made for malpractice if she had
not
attempted to save Ms. O’Neill’s life in that way. But
you,
Jonathan, were also right. Do you know why?” He didn’t wait for Jonathan to respond. “You were right because you do
not
have the skill or experience to perform that procedure. It would have been malpractice if you
had
attempted it. So.” Mike sat back again, his eyes on Jonathan. “Is that what you’d like this community to hear?”
Jonathan’s eyes had narrowed. There was a thin bead of sweat above his upper lip. “You’re twisting the…”
“I’m twisting
nothing,
” Mike growled, leaning forward again, and Olivia was as surprised as Jonathan by the force of his reaction. “You make that retraction or Olivia is calling for a review panel to clear her name. And clear it she will, which isn’t going to make you look too good, is it?”
She felt Jonathan’s eyes on her, felt his burning, penetrating glare. “Don’t bother,” he said to her, standing up. “I’m resigning, effective immediately. Then you can tap abdomens till your heart’s content, for all I care.” He took off his stethoscope, and in a exaggerated gesture, slapped it down on the desk before storming out of the office.
Mike looked at the stethoscope, and Olivia thought he was trying not to smile. He raised his eyes to hers. “I apologize for not doing that sooner, Olivia. Please wait on the review panel until we see what the outcome of this is.” He nodded toward his phone. “Shall I call the
Gazette
and tell them the news?”
She changed her clothes in the lounge for her date with Paul, ignoring the rumors that were already crackling through the ER about what had taken place in Mike’s office. She dressed in a blue skirt that masked her expanding middle, and a white, short-sleeved sweater. When she stepped out of the lounge, she spotted Paul in the waiting room and felt a nearly forgotten flutter of longing for him.
He’d brought her a delicate blue tea rose in a silver bud vase, and she recognized it as the rare variety she had grown in the yard of their old house in Kensington. Her throat ached to see it, the remnant of a happier time.
“I cut it this morning,” he said as they walked out to his car. “Snuck into the yard before the sun was up.”
His out-of-character wickedness made her smile.
He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, glancing over at her once they were on the road. “You look good,” he said.
“Thanks.” She noticed he was wearing his wedding ring again. He was serious about this, about missing her, about getting back together. She studied his profile. He had a lovely chin with the suggestion of a cleft, and a fine, straight nose, but he really did not look well. He had lost a good deal of weight these last few months. His skin was sallow, his cheeks drawn, and she felt a little sorry for him.
She told him about her meeting with Jonathan and Mike, thanking him for his encouragement. “I’d gotten sort of paralyzed, I guess,” she said.
“What’s it been like for you since the story came out in the
Gazette?
”
She described the bilious letters to the editor that had appeared in the last two issues of the
Gazette.
Their irate tone and the mushrooming of negative sentiment toward her were humiliating. She told him about her stiffness at work and her sudden lack of faith in her own judgment, surprising herself with her willingness to talk to him so openly. Then she told him about the petition. “I expected to see your name at the top,” she said. “I figured the only reason you weren’t on it was because you were out of town.”
He reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Forgive me for ever thinking you wouldn’t do your best with her. It hurts me to see your name dragged through the mud this way, Liv. Really, it does.”
At the next stoplight, he pulled out his wallet and handed her a picture of Joe Gallo’s granddaughter. He told her about his conversation with Joe and how proud he had felt to be her husband, but she only half listened.
She would have to tell him she’d gone to Norfolk with Alec, that she’d done that talk show. He was sure to hear about it at the next lighthouse meeting, and it would be better if he heard it from her. Not now, though. She didn’t want to damage the closeness she felt to him here in his car.