“Wasn’t that Lillo we just passed?” Allie asked as she maneuvered the van down the two-lane road.
“You’re asking me?”
“Oh, don’t be such a grump, Mac. Maybe you just need glasses. If the place we’re going is like other eyeglass places, they get your prescription and have a pair ready by this afternoon.” She reached over and patted Mac’s thigh.
The gesture just made Mac feel like an old lady. “Or maybe I have a brain tumor.”
Allie glanced over at her. “Maybe, but at least going to the optometrist today can put us on the right path.”
“My path to doom. You’ll all leave and I’ll be kicked out of my house to die a lonely death on the streets of Lighthouse Beach.”
“You’re just being difficult, right? You’re not really afraid, are you?”
You’re damn straight I’m afraid, Mac wanted to tell her. I’ve been hanging on by my fingernails for years now. One little slip and . . . where would she be? Who ever heard of a lighthouse keeper who couldn’t see?
Not that it mattered. The lighthouse was as dead as she was blind. Two old gaffers past their prime.
“Me? Nah. Just damn inconvenient.”
“And what major plans did you have today that you’re having to give up?”
Nothing under the sun, thought Mac. It was just pitiful. “Take the right fork up ahead.” She had half a mind to take them all the way up the coast instead of into the town and the optometrist’s office.
Allie turned on the blinker.
“I mean the left fork.”
Allie changed the blinker. “Are you trying to pull a fast one?”
The girl was no dummy. “No. Just confused for a minute. You know how us old folks get.”
“Oh, stop it. Is that what you’re afraid of? People will think you’re losing it? Lots of people wear glasses. You should get out more.”
“Says the girl who’s afraid to take a ride on a man’s motorcycle.”
“I’m not afraid of riding a motorcycle.”
“Nope. Just afraid of the man.”
Allie stared straight ahead and Mac knew she’d hit the mark. Well hell, you didn’t need 20/20 vision to see what was going on with that girl.
“You’re a pretty wily one, aren’t you, Allie?”
Allie glanced over at her then back to the road. “I don’t understand.”
“You show up in Lighthouse Beach in the middle of the night, just one of the girls, saving a friend from certain disaster, supportive, quiet, and totally self-effacing. That’s a gentle word for ‘afraid to show your insides to the world.’”
“That’s not true.”
Allie’s voice caught. Mac chuckled. The girl was a terrible liar, poor thing. “Tell me. What do you do at that vineyard of yours?”
“It’s not mine. It belongs to the family.”
“Then what do you do at the family’s vineyard? Turn left up here at the stop sign.”
Allie slowed, stopped, and made the turn.
“Well?”
“I . . . since Gino’s death, I’ve sort of taken over running the business. They were really floundering and not using what resources they had. I computerized everything, hired marketers and publicists. I keep everything organized and running smoothly while growing the business.”
“Sounds like they really depend on you.”
For a second Allie didn’t answer. “I think they’d be happy to go back to the old ways.”
Mac could certainly relate to that.
“And I have my son. He’s really the joy of my life.”
“Keeps you pretty busy.”
“He does.”
“But still doesn’t fill the hole left by your husband’s death.”
Mac didn’t have to see her reaction. That startled whimper, quickly cut off, told her everything she suspected.
“If you need to pull over, do it. I don’t want to die because you can’t see the road.”
“I don’t need to. That was mean.”
“No, it wasn’t. It’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re not the first person to lose someone you love. You grieve and one day you move on. It doesn’t happen in a day, but you know what I mean. You can try to stay busy, you can try to stop living, you can try to bury yourself, but sooner or later life wins out.” Mac sighed. “Don’t wait until you’re too old to care.”
Allie’s head swerved toward Mac—and so did the van.
“Eyes on the road.”
Allie straightened the wheel and hunkered down.
“It’s a gift to have that kind of love, even if you couldn’t keep it. It doesn’t mean you can’t try again. Or just have a little fun along the way. Like a ride on the back of Nando’s motorcycle.”
Mac looked over at Allie, who was studiously ignoring her. She was like a crocus in spring just waiting for the thaw, waiting to come out and bloom.
And Nando might just be the heat she needed. Mac chuckled. She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t thought about those things in years.
“What?”
“Nothin’ . . . much.” Mac would love to see it: Allie learning to love again. Wouldn’t that be something. Stupid old woman, you better hope you can keep seeing anything at all.
Ned and Clancy finished up at six. Clancy was in a hurry to get to the keeper’s house and relax. He’d been doing double duty as physician and caregiver, had driven to the clinic and worked a full day.
Ned was tired, but he was antsy, too. He wondered what Lillo was doing. Whether she was feeling good about the morning or castigating herself for even giving it a try. With Lillo, he could pretty much guess it was the second.
He’d never known a woman so intent on ignoring her own best interests.
“You going after her?” Clancy asked, shrugging into his jacket.
Ned started. Leave it to Clancy to always know what he was thinking. “No. I’m afraid of making things worse instead of better.”
“Smart choice. If I see her, I’ll thank her and tell her I hope we’ll see her tomorrow.”
Ned started to tell him not to.
“You just have to learn how to handle these skittish ones,” Clancy continued.
“That sounds very chauvinistic.”
“Only in your mind. I was talking about patients, male or female, adult or child, human or animal. The skittish ones need a soft approach.”
“She needs a good shake.”
Clancy snorted. “I believe you already tried that approach.”
“With dire consequences. I remember.” How could Ned forget. He’d been so furious when she showed up in Lighthouse Beach a year ago. Her car packed to the roof with her belongings. She moved into the cottage and didn’t come out for six days.
He’d heard what had happened. He doubted if there was anyone in the medical community who hadn’t. But he hadn’t expected her to just turn tail and run home.
She might have stayed there for the whole few weeks Ned had been in town if he hadn’t forced his way in. Well, “forced” wasn’t exactly the word he would use: the sliding glass door had been unlocked.
He’d meant to help, but she looked so destroyed that he got angry all over again, not at her, not really, but about the whole thing. And angry at her, too. For letting what happened make her give up everything she’d worked for and was good at. He’d said some things meant to shock her into coming back to them, but it had only driven her away and gained him a black eye in the bargain.
They hadn’t seen much of each other since then. The last time he’d been in town she’d left; whether it was coincidental or on purpose, he’d never asked.
They’d gotten off to a bumpy start this trip. But it was like everything was bringing them together. And she’d showed up today. Maybe it was the beginning of her getting back to work. He mentally crossed his fingers. He didn’t know why it mattered to him. People quit medical school, residencies, practices all the time. It all got to be too much, too hard, or just too life-consuming. But he remembered her fire and her determination and her sacrifices. And her parents’ sacrifices.
“Don’t sweat it,” Clancy said, lifting his helmet off the peg. He paused at the door. “She’ll either come back to medicine or she won’t. It’s her decision to make, not mine, yours, or anybody else’s.”
“She’s got cataracts,” Allie announced as soon as they had all been introduced to Clancy and sat down to dinner.
Lillo watched Mac ignore them all as she lifted a pot roast onto a platter. No one said anything. She carried the platter over to the table and dropped it on the table in front of Clancy. Gravy sloshed over the sides.
Clancy lifted one side of his mouth. “I’m guessing that spill is your temper and not ’cause you’re blind as a bat.”
Mac turned on him. “That’s just why I didn’t want her to say anything.”
“Well, at least it isn’t a brain tumor. I’m starving.” He picked up the carving knife and attacked the roast with gusto.
“That’s great news,” Jess said. “Isn’t it just an in-and-out procedure?”
“Portland has a good outpatient center,” Clancy said. “Stay there overnight, get your post-op evaluation the next day, and you’re back here for lunch.”
“And who’ll watch the lighthouse?”
“Lighthouse can watch itself for a night or two.”
“Are you going to pay the insurance when some damn tourist or kid trespasses and gets hurt and sues the crap out of the town?”
“Oh, hang the lighthouse. Or get old Harry Packard. He can watch it and be glad of the work.”
Mac handed a bowl of potatoes to Jess to pass. “Harry Packard’s a drunk.”
“I’ll be here to watch Harry,” Lillo said, taking the bowl from Jess and helping herself.
Clancy rolled his eyes at her. She knew how he felt about her “decision,” as he and Ned insisted on calling her move back to Lighthouse Beach. It hadn’t been her decision. Her misfortune, her bad luck, her stupidity had been the factors that decided her fate.
Lillo put down the bowl. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble seeing? We could have taken care of this weeks, months ago.” She glared at Mac, angry that she didn’t trust Lillo with her problems, and even more, she was hurt that Mac couldn’t.
“You have your own life to deal with.”
“No, I don’t. I mean—” Lillo swallowed the sudden tightening in her throat. Would she never be trusted again? Hell, would she ever stop making everything about her? Mac was suffering.
“I don’t have anybody to drive me,” Mac groused.
“I can drive you,” Lillo said.
“Hell, I’ll drive you,” said Clancy, “providing that old bucket of yours still runs.”
“You won’t be here.”
“Why not? I can be here, I’m retired—basically.”
“That’s just why I didn’t want Allie to announce this to the world.”
“Oh, shut up, woman. Nobody’s feeling sorry for you. You’re too damn ornery to feel sorry for. If a friend wants to help you, let ’em.”
“Hear, hear,” said Diana.
“Absolutely,” Jess added.
“Fine, if just to shut you up.”
“Whew,” Allie said under her breath.
“You did good,” Lillo told her, just as quietly.
“Glad that’s settled,” Clancy said. “Diana, keep moving that bowl of mash around. I’m starving.”
“You know,” Ned said, “we could be at Mac’s right now, eating whatever she cooked, and it would be better than this.” He lifted a spoonful of the thin goulash and dribbled it back into his bowl.
“Why don’t you go on, then?” Ian said.
“Because believe it or not, I’d like to spend time with my old friend.”
“Or are you just afraid to sit down at the table with Lillo and have her bite your head off?”
“She came in to help today,” Ned said, pushing the goulash away and going to the fridge to look inside. “Totally empty. How do you survive?”
“Usually I go to the grocery. But I’ve been busy this week.”
“How are the foal and mother doing?”
“Nimbly called. They’re both on their feet and eating.”
“Which is more than I can say for us. You didn’t make this, did you?”
“No. Mrs. Kravitz did and it was good the first couple of times, but then I had to add water to it.”
“The mind boggles. How is the new CEO?”
“What CE— Oh.” Ian gave him a dark look and pushed his bowl away.
“I’m calling Sal and asking him to deliver some pasta and salad.” Ned pushed his chair back from the table. “But you’re not off the hook about the CEO.” He went into the hall to phone Sal, then came back to the kitchen. “Twenty minutes. Want another beer while we wait?”
“Sure.”
Ned opened two more beers, set one down in front of Ian, moved the bowls of diluted goulash to the sink, and sat down.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Ned asked.
“Nothing.”
“She’s been here nearly every day since they arrived . . . I’d say that’s something.”
“She won’t stay away.”
“Do you want her to?”
Ian studied his beer bottle. Turned it around so the other side was facing him. “No.”
“So you guys get along?”
“Not really. We just ride.”
“You know you’re getting harder to talk to every time I visit. You need to get out and practice, man, before you become some rusty old recluse with a long beard and crossed eyes who only converses with horses.”
“That’s pretty much me already, except for the beard and the crossed eyes.”
“Do you think that’s healthy? Why don’t you go into Portland and do some group? It helps. You know it does.”
“I know. I’m just busy.”
“Bullshit, but I know better than to argue. So tell me about the CEO.”
“Her name is Diana.”
Ned took a swig of beer to hide his grin. He’d learned over the past few years that if you wanted to get information from Ian, you had to wait for it.
“So Diana, what about her?”
Ian pushed his fingers through his hair, a gesture that surprised Ned. “Hell, I don’t know how to talk to her. Hell, talk to anybody, but especially to her.
“And I took her to the bluff and she said I didn’t seem like the kind of guy who liked kids.”
“What would she know? Those types are married to their career.”
“I thought she was questioning my expertise.”
“Was she?”
“No, she said I always did something, I forget what exactly. That I always took what she said in the worst way or something like that.”
“And you did.”
“Pretty much.”
Ned looked across the table. He’d known Ian for almost twenty years. He’d been full of fire and optimism with a belief in his ability to make the world a better place. Ned didn’t understand people like him. The Doctors Without Borders types who selflessly gave their time and expertise to people who as soon as they were healed from one thing were just as likely to succumb to something else—poverty, disease, or war.
Ian had learned that the hard way. And he’d reacted like any normal man would . . . and he had never forgiven himself for it. Ned saved lives, but he never put his own life on the line to do it. He didn’t think he had the temperament or even the guts to put his life on the line once, much less day after day, month after month, year after year.
“Go for it,” he said. It was a stupid idea . . . a CEO and a traumatized veterinarian. But could it do either of them any real harm?
“I’m not sure I remember how. Or even if . . . nah. They’ll be gone and things will go back to normal.”
“Hell, Ian.” Ned pushed his chair back and stood. Walked across the narrow space in the kitchen not taken up by the table. “You and Lillo, two of the most talented people I know, are sitting here, wasting away, because of shit that was totally out of your control.”
“The difference being,” Ian said as calmly as Ned was frustrated, “for Lillo, things were out of her control. For me, I was the one out of control. There’s a difference.”
Ned collapsed back onto his chair. “I get that. I just don’t get why she’s still so fucked up.”
“Count your blessings.”
Neither of them spoke for a while, just drank their beer, thinking their own thoughts. Ned had never been so glad to see a delivery guy in his life. He never knew how far to push Ian. He’d certainly pushed Lillo too far last year. Had he done more harm than good? Had he pushed her further into her isolation? He didn’t want to do that to Ian.
He loved them both dearly, and he just couldn’t figure out how to help either of them.
The rain came overnight like the reports said it would. It was a doozy. Rattling the windows of the cottage, the wind howling around the corners like something from a ghost story. The lights must have gone out sometime during the night because when Lillo dragged herself out of bed at eight o’clock, according to her phone, the kitchen clock said five thirty.
She made coffee and looked out the kitchen window. The rain was still coming down, hitting the puddles of the parking lot at an angle and setting off sprays of water. A day for curling up with a good book. Except that she had guests, didn’t have a good book at hand, and had meant to make herself go back to the clinic this morning.
Who said the road to hell was paved with good intentions? Well, if she was going to the clinic, she might as well get started. She was sick to death of having her life on hold. Self-imposed though it was.
For the last few months she’d actually thought she was getting her life back on track, learning to live with her failures and her hideous mistake. She didn’t dwell on it 24/7 like she had done during the first few months back in Lighthouse Beach, or for the months she’d tried to hold on before that, determined to make amends, to make it work, until she couldn’t try anymore. She’d thought she’d made progress, was on her way to living out the rest of her life, if not with happiness then at least without doing harm.
But that had all changed with Jess’s wedding invitation. She’d taken a chance and it had torn her tenuous existence right down the middle.
So what now? Did she go or did she stay? She hummed that line while she sipped coffee and watched the rain.
Then she crammed a change of clothes into her backpack; she’d need them by the time she walked to the clinic. She put on her rain slicker and boots, pulled up the hood, tucked her head in anticipation of the rain, and went outside. Stupid idea. Nobody but the desperately ill would venture out on a day like this.
The clinic was bound to be quiet today.
They wouldn’t need her.
There would be a lot of time sitting around doing nothing.
Clancy and Agnes and maybe even Ned would want to chat.
She could make herself busy. The files probably needed organizing.
But you could chat and file at the same time; filing wasn’t brain surgery.
She reached Main Street. She could turn right and give meaning to why she was standing out in the rain. Or she could be the coward that she was beginning to see she was and turn around and go back home.
While she was standing there a familiar Range Rover drove past. Stopped. Reversed. Stopped. The passenger window lowered.
Ian Lachlan leaned over the passenger seat. “Need a ride?”
Lillo nodded and got in.
They sat looking at each other for a few seconds.
“Where to?”
Lillo shrugged.
Ian waited.
Someone honked. Ian pulled the Rover to the side of the street.
“I just let Ned off at the clinic. Convinced him not to ride when he could get a lift.”
Another silence.
“Were you going there?”
Lillo shrugged. Started to thank him and get out, but he stepped on the accelerator and the Rover shot forward. He didn’t turn back toward the clinic but drove straight, up the road to his office and home, the place that had once been her home. She knew where they were going, she just didn’t know why.
It was a place she didn’t like to visit. Not because she was envious that Ian owned it now. She hadn’t wanted to return there; she was happy in the cottage. Ian’s house held many good memories. Too many good memories.
She didn’t really want to go there now. A few weeks ago she would have demanded he stop and let her out. Might have even jumped out of the car if he’d refused. But last week was a dim memory and what seemed like logic then no longer seemed to make sense now.
So Lillo sat back, letting the metronome sound of the wipers calm her, let her fate and Ian Lachlan take her where they would.
The house appeared dimly through the sheets of rain. Wavering and indistinct like a melting picture, a remote dream.
Ian stopped the Rover at the front steps and reached across her to open the passenger door.
She smiled. Was that his attempt at chivalry? Maybe he was afraid she wouldn’t get out and he’d be stuck with her. Would serve him right.
“The doors have been sticking lately,” he said, and got out of the SUV.
They ran up the steps to the porch, where they dropped their rain gear and went inside.
“I haven’t had time to do much with the decor.”
“No, you haven’t,” Lillo said, looking around. The once-cozy living room, crowded with the plush overstuffed furniture, the sofas and love seats, reading chairs and ottomans her parents loved, was gone. Today an old couch and a big club chair and ottoman were placed around the fireplace, now just a gaping box surrounded by quarry-cut stone and looking like it had never seen a stocking hung with care in its life. But it had. Many of them. Twice a year: once in December for the family and local friends and once for Christmas in July, when campers added their stockings to the collection.
She tried to imagine Ian as a little boy hanging his stocking, and failed.
“You want to change? The bathroom’s in—never mind; you know where it is.”
“Thanks. I’m fine.” She was beginning to wonder why she was here. Why he thought she’d want to come, and why she hadn’t stopped him.
“I can make tea—or something.”
“No, that’s okay.”
He shot his fingers through his hair. It was wet from the rain and it was left sticking up in shiny dark spikes.
He walked to the fireplace, back to the couch where Lillo had just sat down. He looked down at her. She looked up at him, wondering what was happening. Outside, the rain continued to fall, enclosing them in this slightly chilly, barren room.
He sat down. “Ned says you’re fucked up.”
She was so shocked that for a second she couldn’t even react. Then her first response was to slug him.
She did.
He didn’t even try to protect himself.
“Sorry,” she said. “A case of shooting the messenger.”
He nodded.
“Do you think I’m fucked up?”
“I guess that’s what some people would call it. I get it.”
“What would you call it?”
He shrugged, and for a moment Lillo saw utter defeat in that taciturn face.
“I don’t know, but you better get rid of it while you still can.”
“How? How do you get rid of your demons, Ian?”
“On a good day, one demon at a time.”
“And on bad days?”
“I’ve never wanted to cope more in my life and I don’t know how to get there, so I suggest you figure it out before it’s too late. And you end up like me.”
“I feel like maybe it’s already too late.”
He shook his head. “Don’t let it be.” He stood. “I have to see to the animals. Then I have to go out to Hansen’s for feed. Stay as long as you want. Or I can drive you home.”
She watched him go. Taking care of the animals, taking care of her in his own way. She knew he was right; she wished she could help him, but she knew she had to help herself.