Once Rick had gone home, Lacey left Bobby on the porch and went upstairs to check on Mackenzie. She found her sitting at her computer, madly typing an e-mail to her friends.

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing!” Mackenzie shouted when Lacey asked if she was all right.

“I just wanted to be sure you weren’t—”

“I am fine,” Mackenzie insisted. “I just decided it was time to see what it was like from the top of the lighthouse, but I got hydrophobia up there. That’s all.”

Lacey struggled not to laugh out loud. “All right,” she said. “I’m glad you’re fine.”

She went downstairs again and, as she walked through the kitchen, she could hear Bobby talking to someone on the porch. Maybe Clay or Gina had arrived home. It wasn’t until she pushed open the screen door that she realized he was talking on his cell phone. He was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, his bare feet propped up on the railing and Sasha by his side, and he glanced at Lacey when she stepped onto the porch.

“Gotta go,” he said into the phone. “I’ll try to call you later.”

She felt intrusive as she sat down in the other chair, but he quickly slipped his phone into his shirt pocket and looked over at her.

“How is she?” he asked quietly, and she wondered if he’d heard any of her conversation with the girl through Mackenzie’s open window, which was right above the porch.

“Embarrassed, I think.” Lacey kept her voice low. “She says she had an attack of hydrophobia in the lighthouse.”

Bobby laughed. “Better keep her away from the ocean, then.”

“Well,” Lacey said, “this has been a really rocky start to your visit. Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea or soda?”

“What I would really like is to go all the way to the top of the lighthouse,” he said, pointing toward the tower. “It’s so cool, the way the stairs jut up in the air. Is it safe? Can we climb it?”

“Sure.” She stood up, and Sasha leaped joyfully to his feet.

“You stay here, Sasha,” she said, and the dog lay down again with a great sigh.

She and Bobby descended the porch steps, and they were quiet as they walked toward the lighthouse. The tide was high, and Lacey rolled her capris above her knees before wading through the swirling, knee-high water to get to the steps. Bobby’s jeans were so tight that he could only roll them partway up his calves, and they were already wet from his earlier foray into the lighthouse. He didn’t seem to care, though, and he plowed right into the water.

Once they were climbing the interior stairs, Lacey told him about the Fresnel lens. “It was salvaged from the ocean bottom last summer,” she said, “and they’re going to display it next to the keeper’s house in a little building that will look like the old lantern room.”

“Just last summer?” he asked. “I thought the storm was a long time ago.”

“It was, but no one had the motivation to salvage it until Gina—my sister-in-law—moved here. It’s a long story, but she was the one really responsible for raising it.”

“You work out, huh?” he asked suddenly. Apparently his mind was not on the lighthouse at all. She was a few steps above him and suddenly grew self-conscious about her body. What part of her had given away the fact that she worked out?

“I have for years,” she said, “although having Mackenzie here has put a dent in my schedule. What made you ask?”

“You’re not the least bit breathless climbing these stairs,” he said.

“Neither are you.” She’d noticed that. Most people needed to stop at least once to catch their breath on the circular stairway.

“I try to stay fit,” he said, as if his cut and corded arms had not already given him away. “Is there a Y around here?”

“I can get you a guest pass to my gym,” she said.

“That would be great,” he said. They had reached the landing closest to the top of the lighthouse. “This is where I found Mackenzie,” he said, as they crossed the landing to start the next flight of stairs.

“Wow.” Lacey was impressed. “I can’t believe she made it up this high.”

In another minute, they reached the top of the stairs. “Careful here,” she said to him. “Hold on to the railing when you turn around.”

“Whoa,” he said, reaching quickly for the railing. “I guess I have a touch of hydrophobia myself.” He turned carefully and sat down next to her on the top step, several feet above the jagged edge of the tower. “Oh, man,” he said. “It’s like being suspended in the air up here.”

“I know.”

He twisted his neck to the right, then the left to take in the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. “Do you ever see the horses from up here?” he asked.

“Oh, I hate to tell you, but the horses are gone.” She explained how the wild mustangs had been moved farther north to protect them from the ever-increasing traffic. “You can only see them now by paying for an all-terrain-vehicle tour.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” He shook his head. “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”

“Right.”

“Would it bother you if I smoked?”

She shook her head. “Not outside. Just please not in the keeper’s house.” Rick would not want smoke in his cottage, either, but she would leave it to him to set his own rules.

He reached into the rear pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crushed pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. He had to walk down a few steps to light the cigarette so that the breeze wouldn’t blow out the match. Sitting next to her again, he exhaled a stream of smoke.

“I’ve been trying to quit,” he said, then laughed. “But I’ve been trying to quit for five years, so I guess that’s a load of bullshit, huh?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’d say so.” She wanted to lift the sleeve of his T-shirt to see his tattoo. The part that showed beneath the hem of the sleeve looked like small blue squares.

“Thanks for arranging a place for me to stay,” he said. “I figured I’d have to sleep in the bus. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

She remembered the mattress in the back of the bus. He used to park the VW in the lot at Jockey’s Ridge and four or five of them would sit on that mattress and get high in the hot, smoky air. Bobby would eventually kick everyone out except Jessica, and Lacey would try to block from her mind what was happening inside the bus while she and her other friends sat on the sand, waiting. If Bobby still had a mattress in the van, she at least hoped it was not the same one he’d had in 1991.

“Well,” she said, “I hope it works out okay. Rick’s pretty easygoing, but his cottage is tiny.”

“He seems like a nice guy.” Bobby took a drag on his cigarette. “How long have you been seeing him?”

“Just a month, and it’s not serious,” she said. “I’m avoiding seriousness these days.”

“How come?”

She shrugged. “He…the feelings just aren’t there, at least not yet.” She laughed, stretching her arms out in front of her. “I guess I still have this romantic notion that I could find a man I’d love enough that nothing else would matter. A till-death-do-us-part kind of guy. Someone I’d lay down my life for.”

“Have you ever felt that way about anyone?” he asked.

“Not even close,” she said. Her relationships with men had involved too little emotional intimacy and way too much sex. She squirmed at having revealed so much to him. “So, how about you? Have you ever felt that way about anyone?”

He nodded. “I felt that way about my ex-girlfriend, Claudia,” he said. “I still do.”

“You’re still in love with her?”

“Not in love. I just love her. She’s a special friend.”

“You’re lucky,” she said.

“Well, who knows.” He watched as the ash fell from his cigarette into the depths of the lighthouse. “Maybe it will work out for you with Rick.”

“Maybe,” she said, although she doubted it.

“What’s the light like at his place?” Bobby asked.

“The light?”

“Right. Is there good natural light to work by? I brought my work with me since I didn’t know how long I’d be staying.”

“Oh,” she said. “The light might not be great. The cottage is pretty deep in the woods.”

“I’ll work it out,” he said.

“I’d love to see your scrimshaw.” The image of three-masted schooners etched into whale teeth came back to her.

“I brought most of my stuff, actually.” He took another drag on his cigarette and exhaled, and the breeze stole the smoke away before she could even see it. “This is the season when I usually exhibit at craft fairs and I’m going to miss a few. So I thought I’d bring my wares with me in case I could sell at any of the venues around here.”

“There’s a craft fair next weekend in Manteo,” she said. “You were supposed to sign up months ago, but I’m sure I can get you a booth.”

“That’d be great, Lacey. Will you be exhibiting there?”

“Yes.”

“I want to see your work, too,” he said. “I remember your mother’s. I always thought it was so sad she’d died, you know, with all those ideas and creativity and talent inside of her. I’m glad you carried on the tradition.”

“I’m not as good as she was,” she said, annoyed at her self-deprecation the moment the words left her mouth. “Or at least, I’m different. I work mostly in her old studio in Kill Devil Hills, but I use the sunroom here, sometimes. Do you remember the studio?”

He took another pull on the cigarette. “I do,” he said. “The guy with the ponytail, right?”

“Tom Nestor.” She wasn’t ready to tell him that Tom was the man who’d turned out to be her father.

“I think it’s very cool that we both ended up being artists,” Bobby said. He was smiling to himself, his gaze on the horizon. He held his cigarette in his mouth while he reached down to reroll one wet leg of his jeans, and removed the cigarette without taking another drag. “So, how’s it been, having Mackenzie here?” he asked.

“I don’t like her.” The words slipped out before she could think. “God. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds honest,” he said.

“It’s so strange.” Lacey watched a speedboat as it bounced across the water in the distance. “I usually like everyone,” she said, “but she really is a little twit. I’m honestly thinking about letting Nola have her. She wanted her at first. Planned to fight for custody and everything. But I don’t think Nola’s having much more luck with her than I am.”

“Nola, ugh.” Bobby shivered with what was—perhaps—mock horror, and Lacey had to laugh. “I’d tried to forget about Jessica’s mommy dearest,” he said.

“She’s not that bad.” Lacey felt strange defending Nola, but she was coming to feel sorry for the older woman. They were both in the same bind.

“What makes Mackenzie a little twit?” he asked. His cigarette had reached the point of needing to be crushed out, but he held it between his fingers, letting it burn itself out instead of crushing it on the lighthouse stairs. “You said on the phone that she was obstinate and that she stole from you. What else?”

“Like that’s not enough?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Is there more?”

“Well, if I say black, she says white. She’s very negative.” She would not tell him about Mackenzie’s most recent escapade: just that morning she’d found her vibrator in the center of the kitchen table, pointing up toward the ceiling, and knew that the girl had gone through her night table. She was glad she’d been the one to find it and not Clay or Gina. “I caught her lifting false eyelashes at the Kmart, and who knows what else she’s stolen that I haven’t discovered.”

“False eyelashes?” Bobby laughed. “At least she’s original.”

“You think it’s funny now, but just wait till you have to deal with her yourself.”

“You never shoplifted when you were a kid?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said with some indignation. “I know you did, though.”

He smiled at her, that crooked smile that she simply could not look at for more than a second without her legs turning to jelly.

“You were a good kid, weren’t you?” he asked. “I mean, deep down. You really were. That’s why—”

“That’s why what?”

He rubbed his hands over his thighs. “I liked you a lot back then,” he said. “More than I liked Jessica, at first. But there was something so vulnerable about you. So trusting. I just felt like you were too young and innocent for me to corrupt.”

He’d liked her more than Jessica? She wanted to ask him for details about his attraction to her, but stopped herself. What did it matter now?

“You were right about me,” she said. “I was trying to act tough, but I was actually a pile of mush inside.”

He looked suddenly serious, turning his head from her slightly, and she saw a tightness in his jaw.

“What?” she asked him, knowing something dark had come into his mind.

He gave her a quick, apologetic smile. “I have to tell you the truth, Lace,” he said. “I’m not convinced I’m Mackenzie’s father.”

She felt him backing out. She could hardly blame him. She would back out herself if she could.

“Jessica said you were,” she said.

“I understand,” he said. “But…my girlfriend—my ex-girlfriend—Claudia and I wanted to have a child. We tried hard for a couple of years and were tested and everything. I have lazy sperm. That’s what the doctor said. It upset me more than it did her, I think. I really wanted a kid.”

“Well, maybe your sperm wasn’t so lazy when you were seventeen.”

“A possibility,” he acknowledged.

His phone suddenly rang, the sound a simple, quiet brrring coming from his shirt pocket. He made no move to answer it. “They can leave a message,” he said.

She waited for the ringing to come to an end, then spoke again. “So what are you saying?” she asked. “Do you want a DNA test?”

“No. Not unless you insist on it.”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why not?”

“I’m afraid if I have the DNA test that I’ll discover she’s not really mine, and I don’t want to know that. Is that crazy?”

“Uh…yeah.” She smiled. “She’s so difficult. You only talked to her for a few minutes. You don’t know. Why would you take on a problem kid if you didn’t have to?”

“You know who she reminds me of?” he asked, without answering her question.

“Who?”

“You. The way you were back when I knew you.”

Lacey frowned. “She’s nothing like me,” she said.

His smile looked secretive now, as if he knew something she did not, and it annoyed her a little.

“Why do you think she is the way she is?” he asked her. “Belligerent, as you say. Obstinate and oppositional.”

“I think that Jessica was not the best mother.” Lacey was sorry for maligning her friend, but she was beginning to believe it was the truth. “She always sounded like a good mom when she’d tell me about the things she was doing with Mackenzie, but now that I know Mackenzie—” she shook her head “—I think Jessica spoiled her. She let her get away with too much.”

He sighed, squinting at the horizon as if the early evening light was too bright for him. “I think you’re smarter than that, Lacey,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

She felt him turn to look at her, but she did not meet his eyes. He was too close; his eyes would be too blue. “Do you remember what it was like when your mother died?” he asked.

“All too well,” she said.

“So, how’d you feel back then.”

“Alone. Unbelievably sad. Scared.”

“What were you afraid of?”

She hesitated, remembering. “How uncertain and unsafe the world was,” she said. “What was going to happen to my family. What would happen to me, now that I was the responsibility of my father, who seemed to barely notice I existed.”

“And if someone who didn’t know you—know the real Lacey—was witnessing your behavior back then, how would they have described you?”

“Like I said, I pretended to be tough and rebellious, so no one could see the scared kid inside me.” Suddenly, she understood. It was so simple, and the realization brought tears of sympathy to her eyes. “Mackenzie’s just scared,” she said, daring to look at him.

His face was serious and sad, and he nodded. “She’s got to be terrified,” he said. “And it’s even worse for her than it was for you. You still had your father and brother and friends and house and neighborhood and school, and she has nothing familiar around her at all. Just this stranger—practically a stranger, anyway—who came and took her away.”

“So what do I do?” she asked.

“I’m not great at this, either, Lace,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m still a work in progress myself. But whenever I find myself disliking the way someone acts, I try to think about their motivation and I can usually see that it boils down to fear. That helps me feel a little more sympathetic towards them.”

“Well, I can try to do that,” she said, but she thought of her vibrator standing at attention on the kitchen table and knew it was going to be a challenge for her to equate Mackenzie’s incendiary behavior with fear.

The cigarette was cold and dead now, and Bobby pulled out the pack of Marlboros again, this time slipping the butt beneath the plastic wrapper before returning the pack to his pocket.

“There’s something else I have to tell you,” he said.

“What?” The breeze kicked up and she caught her hair in her hand and held it against her shoulder.

“When I was twenty-four,” he said, “I was in a car accident myself. It was my fault. I was drunk on my ass, and I killed the parents of two little kids.”

“Oh, God, Bobby.” She felt disgust and sympathy, in equal measures.

“I spent some time locked up, which was the best thing for me because it forced me to get sober and it gave me time to think. When I got out, I tried to contact the grandparents of those kids to see how I could help, but they didn’t want any part of me. So, when you called and told me Jessica was killed by a drunk driver, I just felt like…like this is my chance. Do you get it? I don’t really care if Mackenzie’s mine or not. I don’t care if she’s a little bitch. I just want to help.”

She nodded slowly, letting herself truly look at him for the first time since climbing to the top of the lighthouse. He was not the same person he’d been years ago, and it wasn’t just his lack of hair and his muscular frame that were different. “You’ve changed so much,” she said.

“Not really,” he said. “I’ve just grown up. Haven’t you?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said.

He looked at his watch. “The sun’s going down,” he said. During the time they’d been sitting on top of the lighthouse, afternoon had shifted to evening.

“I love watching the sunset from up here.” She let go of her hair to circle her knees with her arms. Although the sun was actually setting behind them, from this vantage point, it colored the entire world.

He looked toward the horizon again, where the clouds were beginning to turn a deep purple. “I’d better get going,” he said. “I’ve got the directions from Rick, but it doesn’t sound like an easy place to find after dark.”

“It’s not,” she said, standing up. She felt her hair blow wild in the breeze and caught it in her hands again.

“Sit,” he said, giving her shoulder a little nudge as he got to his feet. “Stay up here and enjoy your sunset. I can find my way down.”

“All right,” she said, taking her seat again. “Thanks for coming, Bobby.”

He looked down at her, the fiery light of the setting sun in his eyes. “You have grown up, Lace, whether you know it or not,” he said. He bent down and brushed his lips across her cheek. “You’re a beautiful woman, you know that?”