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      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I’m indebted to Cher Johnson, Mary Kirk, Arlene Lieberman, Suzanne Schmidt, Laura and Pete Schmitz and Joann Scanlon for reading various drafts of Keeper with enthusiasm and insight.

      Veterinarian Holly Gill, emergency room physician Martha Gramlich, Outer Banks nurse Betsy McCarthy, Outer Banks artist Chris Haltigan, stained glass artist Jimmy Powers, lighthouse enthusiasts David Fischetti, Hugh Morton and John Wilson and National Park Ranger Warren Wrenn all shared their expertise with me and graciously endured my endless questions. Also, The Keeper’s Log, issued by the United States Lighthouse Society, proved to be an invaluable source of inspiration.

      I’m grateful to Peter Porosky for altering my vision and to my former editor, Karen Solem, for her faith, patience and wisdom.

      CHAPTER ONE

       Christmas 1990

      It rained the entire day. It rained with such force that the shrubs next to the emergency room parking lot lay flat to the ground and the new roof sprang a leak. One of the nurses set a bucket on the floor of the waiting room to catch the water, and within an hour the rain had filled it to the brim.

      Olivia Simon watched the downpour through the broad windows of her office. The rain sapped her concentration, and the journal on her desk was still open to the article she’d started hours before. There was something unnatural about this rain. It sucked the oxygen from the air and made it hard to breathe, and it pounded above her head like marbles falling on a sheet of tin. Just when she thought she could no longer tolerate the noise, it stopped. In the silence, Olivia watched the sky turn light and shiny, like the inside of an eggshell. Then suddenly, it was snowing.

      She walked into the reception area, where Kathy Brash and Lynn Wilkes had been playing pinochle for the last abysmally quiet two hours.

      “It’s snowing,” Olivia said.

      They lifted their rained-dazed eyes to hers, then turned their heads toward the windows.

      “Unreal.” Lynn stood for a better look, her white coat scraping a few cards from the table.

      “It’s beginning to be an annual tradition on the Outer Banks,” Kathy said. “Last Christmas we actually got snowed in.”

      Olivia looked at her watch. Five-thirty. She couldn’t afford to get stuck here tonight.

      Lynn took her seat again. “Want us to deal you in, Olivia?”

      Olivia declined, and returned to her office. She couldn’t make herself join them tonight. She was too antsy, too preoccupied. She needed to get home.

      She sat behind her desk and dialed her home number.

      “It’s snowing,” she said when Paul answered.

      “Yeah, I know.” He sounded irritated. She was getting accustomed to the curt tone he used with her these days. “When are you getting out of there?”

      “Soon. Just a half hour more.” She’d had no choice but to work today. Of the four emergency room physicians, she had the least seniority. She wished she could tell Paul that it had been worth her while coming in today, worth their being apart when, God knows, they needed the time together. But all she had seen in eleven long hours was a scraped knee and a case of severe post-turkey indigestion. On days like this, she found herself missing the chaos of Washington General, where she’d worked for the past ten years, where her seniority had given her some control over her schedule. It scared her these days, being away from Paul. When she wasn’t close enough to touch him, she was afraid he might disappear.

      They’d spent last Christmas with his family in Philadelphia.

      Paul had written a poem about her and stitched it into a sampler sometime during the long hours she was at work and he was not. The sampler hung in the study, and now each time she looked at it she wondered how the warmth Paul had felt for her one short year ago could have disintegrated so quickly.

      “Turkey’s falling off the bone,” he said now. “Should I take it out?”

      Olivia started to answer, but just then the police radio in the hall outside her office coughed to life.

      “Hold on, Paul.” She held the receiver away from her ear and listened as Kathy sat down in front of the radio.

      “Kill Devil Hills Emergency Room,” Kathy said.

      “We’ve got a gunshot wound to the chest.” A male voice broke through the static. “Female. Mid to late thirties. Pulse one-fifty and thready. B.P. seventy-five over forty.”

      “What’s your ETA?” Kathy asked.

      “Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. It’s fucking snowing