Kiss River

“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.