The Lighthouse

He veered across the road, into the rest area. But he pointed the car away from where she stood, some distance to one side: he was suddenly afraid of losing control, of hitting her. He jammed on the emergency brake, got out, ran toward her. And then stopped, because she had run a few steps and then stopped herself. She stood rigidly, arms down at her sides, her face… the expression on her face..

“Jan, for God’s sake, where have you been?”

He shook his head; he couldn’t seem to find words. He put a hand out to touch her, but she moved away abruptly-not as if she were rejecting him; as if something had drawn her away.

It was the car. She half ran to it, around to the front, and bent and looked at the grille, the bumper. Thinks maybe I hit something else last night, he thought dully. Then he thought, much more sharply: Did I? He went there himself, looked himself-looked for dents, scrapes, broken headlights, broken signal lights. Looked for blood.

Nothing. There was nothing to see.

Alix faced him again, and some of the rigidity had left her; but the look on her face and in her eyes was still the same. Fear, and something else, something darker, primitive. She put both hands on his arms, as if re-establishing contact between them.

“Where were you all night?”

He found words this time, forced them out of the rusty cavern of his throat. “Down the road a few miles. A lookout… I spent the night there.”

“Another bad headache?”

“Yes. Alix, why are you here? How did you-?”

“I walked. I was worried about you.”

“This morning?”

“Yes. Jan, listen to me-”

“Nothing else happened at the light?”

“Not there, no. On the cape road, a mile or so from here.”

Something began to crawl inside him-a thin worm of dread. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“There’s been another murder. Mandy Barnett. Somebody ran her and her bicycle off the road last night and then strangled her.”

He couldn’t comprehend it at first; refused to comprehend it. All he said was, “No.”

“It’s true, I found the body. I’ve already called the state police. ”

He shook his head. “No,” he said again.

“Now you listen to me,” she said. She gripped his arms more tightly; he could feel the bite of her nails through his coat. “I want you to go out to the lighthouse. Right now, before the authorities come, before anybody sees you here.”

“And leave you alone? Why?”

“The way you look, that’s why. The way you’re acting. I don’t want them to see you like this.”

It was seeping into him now, the full awareness of what she had told him and what she was getting at. A sudden chill wracked him. “You don’t think that I-?”

“I don’t think anything.” She said it urgently, in a tone of voice he had never heard her use before. She kept looking out toward the empty highway, her head cocked to one side, listening. “I don’t want them to think anything either. I don’t want them to see you like this and I don’t want them to know you weren’t home last night.”

“You mean… lie to them?”

“That’s just what I mean. I’ll say you were at the lighthouse all night and you say the same thing. You were with me the whole time. Now go, hurry!”

She was pushing him toward the car as she spoke. He wanted to resist and yet he didn’t, he couldn’t. He opened the door, bent his body in under the wheel.

“Wash your face and change your clothes when you get there,” she said. “Try to get a grip on yourself.”

“I’m all right now. Alix, I didn’t, I couldn’t… ”

“I know. Just go, go!”

She slammed the door, and he started the engine and drove away from her, out onto the still-deserted highway. In the rearview mirror he watched her grow smaller, less distinct in the mist; it was as if pieces of her were being consumed by it, so that only diminishing fragments-part of her face, one blue-coated arm, the lower halves of her legs-remained. And then they, too, were gone, and he was turning past the sign that said CAP DES PERES LIGHTHOUSE, 3 MILES, CLOSED TO THE PUB-Llc, jouncing along the rutted cape road, alone again in the darkening gray.

I didn’t, I couldn’t…

Could I? he thought.

Did I?

Alix

She watched Jan closely as they talked with the state homicide detective, Frank Sinclair. He was sitting in the single chair near the woodstove, his head backlit by the side window. The comparative darkness of the room accentuated the paleness of the skin around his beard, made his cheekbones seem more prominent. His face was immobile as Sinclair posed his questions; only his eyes gave any hint of his inner upheaval.

She wanted to believe that Sinclair saw Jan’s agitation as nothing more than the normal reaction of a man who has been awakened from a supposedly sound sleep to the unsettling news of another murder. Jan was adept at hiding his true feelings behind his professorial facade-from others, at least. What she saw in his eyes were emotions much more complex than simple shock. And one of them was fear.

“Mrs. Ryerson?”