The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror (8 page)

“Did your father try to get her back?”

“No. He disowned her completely, would never even mention her name. I was twelve before I found out the truth. A kid on one of the neighboring farms told me. He laughed about it; I thought at the time that everyone must be laughing and I felt humiliated. Indirectly, that’s one of the reasons I became interested in lighthouses: I spent most of my time with books, after that.”

She wanted to say something comforting, but no words came to her. None except, “But that was such a long time ago. . . . ”

“No, listen. I know it’s irrational, but all my life I’ve felt that the people I cared most about were going to abandon me, just as my mother did. And they have: my father died when I was in college. The only other woman I’ve loved besides you broke off our two-week engagement to marry someone else. I can’t even keep a cat. They get sick and die or run off.”

“So you’re afraid I’ll leave you too, eventually.”

“Yes. Somehow, in some way. Tragedy of one kind or another has plagued me all my life, Alix.” He paused, looked away from her again. “I didn’t tell you about the murder, did I.”

A small chill settled between her shoulder blades; she sat up straighter. “Murder?”

“It happened during my senior year at Madison. There were several of us—all history majors—who shared a house near campus. Outcasts who couldn’t afford a fraternity or couldn’t get into one. In a way we formed a fraternity of our own. We had parties, of course. And there was a regular crowd of people who would come—most of them outcasts, too, I suppose.

“One Saturday night in October, one of the regular girls brought a friend to the party. Sandy. Sandy Ralston.
She
wasn’t an outcast; she was blond and quite beautiful. We all took a turn at trying to impress her. Maybe one of us or someone else at the party succeeded; maybe not. There were a lot of people there—loud music, plenty of beer. Everyone was at least a little drunk, and afterwards no one could remember when Sandy left, or with whom.”

“She was the one who was murdered?”

“Yes. She didn’t come home that night—she roomed with another coed—and when she still hadn’t returned or called by noon the next day, the roommate got worried and called the police. A search was organized; most of the fellows in my house joined in. She had been raped and strangled and her body left in a wooded area only a few blocks away.” He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was raw with emotion. “I was the one who found her.”

“How awful for you!” She reached over, put her hand on his arm. Almost convulsively, he set down his glass and twined her fingers with his.

“We were all suspects, of course, everyone who’d been at the party. We were questioned over and over again. None of us remembered much about that night—it was all a blur. At first we talked about it, but it wasn’t long before things got strained among us. We began to look at one another differently. Could one of us have strangled Sandy Ralston? Rob had been dancing with her about ten. Kevin kept bringing her beers. She talked to Neal for a while. And so forth. After a while, along with wondering if one of your friends was a murderer and a rapist, you began to wonder what each of them was thinking about
you.”

Jan’s fingers were gripping hers so hard he was hurting her. She pulled her hand free, as gently as she could. “Did they . . . did they ever find out who
did
kill her?”

“Yes. Inside of two weeks they arrested the fellow who had the room next to mine—Ed Finlayson. He claimed he didn’t do it, but they had a strong circumstantial case and eventually he was convicted and sent to state prison. All of us in the house wanted to believe in Ed’s innocence, but at the same time it was a relief to think the murder was solved; even before the trial we had more or less abandoned him. I didn’t even go to visit him in jail.”

He paused, and then said softly, “I’m not proud of the way I abandoned Ed. And I’ve often wondered if he wasn’t telling the truth. The others must have felt the same way, because by the end of the term our group had disbanded and we’d all gone our separate ways. Ashamed to face one another as well as Ed, I suppose.”

She came off the couch, knelt beside him, held his hand in both of hers. “Jan, you were young then. And afraid. It’s hard to do the right thing when you’re inexperienced and frightened.”

He nodded slowly, looking down at their clasped hands. “I know, and the incident in itself isn’t important. It’s that it’s part of a pattern in my life: people going away, people dying. And me letting down the people I care about, too. If I let you into my life, I’m afraid the same sort of thing will happen. And I couldn’t face that. . . . ”

He had always seemed so strong and self-sufficient; now that he needed
her,
she felt totally ineffectual. Every phrase that came to her mind seemed trite:
It will be all right. Maybe you should see someone, get some counseling. I won’t leave you, I won’t go away, I promise you I won’t.

And then something warm and wet touched the back of her hand. A tear. And when she glanced up at his face, others had squeezed out from under his glasses and were sliding down over his cheeks. Silently, very silently, he was crying.

His tears washed away her inadequacies. The pain was no longer only his, but a wrenching emotion she shared with him. She reached up, removed his glasses, set them aside. Then she pulled him off the chair, into a kneeling embrace with her face close to his, and held him until their tears mixed together in one healing, strengthening flow.

“I love you,” she said. “That’s all that matters. I love you, I love you.”

It was later that night, after they’d made love, that Jan had asked her to marry him.

Now she sat staring at the still-smoking woodstove, her wine untouched beside her. She had no regrets about marrying Jan. Good God, no. By and large they’d been happy. His periods of depression had been relatively few, and certainly no tragedy had befallen her or anyone close to them in the past eleven years.

Oh, there had been difficult times, but they were the kind that surfaced in most young marriages. When they’d been in such dire financial straits in Boston because funding had been cut back and Jan was on half salary and she could find no work. And later, when he’d been humiliated after discovering her father had finagled his position at Stanford for him. Her two miscarriages, and the realization they’d never have a child of their own. The formalized ordeal of his application for tenure.

But through it all there had been love to anchor them, love and Jan’s steadiness—a calm, often wryly humorous strength that had helped them weather the very worst of it. It was what Alix loved most about him, beyond his good looks, his quick intelligence, or his confident sexuality. It was a strength that came of self-knowing, an acceptance of what he was, his good points as well as his limitations. Other people whom Alix cared for and admired had the same quality—her father, her mother, her friend Kay—and she sensed that over the years she had developed a measure of it herself. She had even coined a term for it: character. A simple word that said much about an infinitely complex and desirable quality.

The strength was still there in Jan, but lately the ability to laugh at himself seemed to be vanishing. It hadn’t been long, only these past few months, when the depression had returned with such frequency and Jan had been subject to moody silences and brief rages. Only these past several months that he had begun a frantic work schedule, begun acting in other ways that puzzled and concerned her.

She consulted her watch again. Quarter of eleven. Where was he? Well, Hilliard was a place where everything but the taverns probably shut down with the setting sun, even on a Friday night, and taverns might not stock pipe tobacco; it wouldn’t be unlike him to have gone as far as Bandon, especially if he planned to start work early in the morning. Jan always worked better when he could smoke his pipe.

Restlessly, still fighting off the loneliness, she went upstairs to see what he’d accomplished tonight. She was eager to get on with her sketches, and if she read his pages now they might give her an idea for the next in the series of drawings. In his study she sat down and picked up the typescript that lay beside the old Underwood portable in a neat pile. But as she did, she noticed something on the desk next to Jan’s pipe rack: his oilskin tobacco pouch. Frowning, she reached out and felt it. Half full. Now why had he told her he was going out for tobacco when he still had plenty here?

Why had he lied to her?

Hod was shooting pool in the Sea Breeze with Adam Reese. Mitch was supposed to be there too—the three of them had taken to chalking up every Friday night—but he must have got hung up at home or something because he hadn’t come in yet. Didn’t look like he was going to, either. It was after ten o’clock.

They were playing Eight Ball, nickel a ball, dime on the eight, and Adam was winning. He kept hopping around the table, right foot, left foot, hippity-hop like a damn rabbit; he made Hod nervous. Little guy, not much meat on his bones, looked like a stiff wind would blow him halfway to Coos Bay—but Christ, he had more energy than anybody Hod had ever known. Never sat still a minute. Worked harder than two men, always off doing something, hippity goddamn hop.

Hod watched him move around the table, left foot, right foot, lining up a shot. “Three ball, side pocket,” Adam said, and stroked, and the three dropped clean. He hopped around on the other side of the table and stopped long enough to drink some of his beer. That was another thing about Adam: his capacity for suds. Hod had seen him put down close to a dozen bottles of Henry’s without getting a heat on and without having to piss. Little guy like that, it just wasn’t natural he could hold twelve bottles of Henry’s without having to take a leak at least once.

He came hopping over to where Hod was, lined up another shot, said, “Four ball, corner pocket, kiss off the six,” and stroked and made that one clean, too. Then he said, “So how about it, Hod?” in a low voice so the other three customers and Barney Nevers behind the plank couldn’t hear. “What do you say?”

Hod knew what he was talking about; they’d been talking about it the past hour, off and on. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s a hell of a fine if you get caught. I can’t afford a fine like that. And you can’t pay it, they put your ass in jail.”

“They got to catch you first,” Adam said. “Nobody’s caught me, have they?”

“First time for everything.”

“Shit, Hod, I’m trying to do you a favor here.”

“Sure, I know. I appreciate it, don’t think I don’t.”

“You got a family to feed. Wife and kids like venison, don’t they?”

“You know they do.”

“Well, then? We go out around two, maybe three o’clock, out on the cape. No game wardens around there at that hour.”

“Not so far, maybe.”

“I never saw one yet. Come on, Hod, what do you say?”

“Take your shot, that’s what I say.”

“Hod. . . ”

“I’m still thinking on it, all right?”

Adam shrugged and hopped around, lining up his next shot. Hod watched him and
did
think on it, and it still made him nervous. He had nothing against jacklighting deer, not on principle. These were lean times and a man had a right to eat, a right to feed his family the best way he could, and to hell with a lot of stupid-ass laws. He’d bought a side of venison from Adam once, traded him ten pounds of fresh sablefish fillets for some venison steaks another time; he didn’t mind doing business that way. But going out himself, running the risk of getting caught, getting fined . . . he just didn’t like the idea of it. What would Della and the kids do if he wound up in jail? Go on welfare? He had them to think of, four other mouths to feed beside his own. Four for now, anyway; Mandy probably wouldn’t be around much longer, the way she was carrying on now that she’d quit school. Get herself knocked up by that long-haired jerk from Bandon she kept sneaking off with, that was what would happen to
her.
What could he do about it? She wouldn’t listen to him or Della, you smacked her one and she just looked at you. He knew that look, he’d seen it often enough before. The old fuck-you look . . .

“ . . . shot, Hod.”

“What?”

“I said it’s your shot. You dreaming or what?”

“Thinking. I told you I was thinking, didn’t I?”

He lined up on the fourteen ball, an easy cut into the side pocket—and missed it. Shit. How could he miss a shot like that? Nervous, that was how. Adam hippity-hopping around like Bugs Bunny, all this talk about jacklighting deer, it was a wonder he didn’t miss every time.

He had left Adam wide open; he saw that and knew it was over. Adam tapped in the six, tapped in the seven with just enough English to give him position, and then tapped in the eight. “My game,” he said, grinning. “Beer’s on you, too, right?”

“Yeah, right.” They’d had a beer side bet on this one and Adam always seemed to win when they had a side bet. Not that Hod figured he was being hustled; Adam wasn’t
that
good. Just lucky. That was why he’d been able to go out jacklighting and not get caught. Pure luck. Hod didn’t have that kind of luck; first time
he
went out, game warden would be hiding in the bushes ten feet away when he fired his first round.