And about Rachel, even.

  In fact, I would never have kept that to myself for ten years if she were around.

  Ten years.

  It’s been even longer than that since her mother died. Is there ever going to come a day when Brynn isn’t unexpectedly blindsided by pain and longing?

  Maybe the grief isn’t as raw as it once was, but it’s still there.

  She finds herself thinking of Tildy’s father, so anguished as he passed up the aisle after the service yesterday, leaning heavily on Troy Allerson’s arm.

  People are supposed to lose their parents, painful as it is. That’s the natural order of things.

  But Jason Harrington will have to survive the loss of his wife and both his children.

  Just as Rachel’s parents—and siblings, especially her poor brother—had to survive their loss.

  Seeing Isaac yesterday brought it all back: the terrible days in the immediate, frenzied aftermath of her disappearance, when searchers were roaming the area looking for her. Brynn’s overwhelming guilt for hiding information that might have helped them find her…

  Unless she didn’t want to be found.

  Did Isaac suspect, back then, that Brynn and the others might know more than they were telling? Is that why he kept coming back to Cedar Crest, back to the sorority house?

  Could he be—?

  She cuts herself off hastily, telling herself there’s no way Isaac is the one who killed Tildy. What reason would he possibly have?

  What if he saw what happened with Rachel?

  What if he wants revenge?

  Brynn burrows into the quilt as if she can stave off the cold dread stealing over her once again.

  Isaac wasn’t even in Cedar Crest the night his stepsister vanished. He didn’t get there until the next day, just as her absence was coming to light.

  How do you know that?Brynn asks herself.

  Because he told me.

  She isn’t just frightened now, she is starting to feel nauseated again, and this time, it isn’t mere morning sickness.

  She remembers that she was on the porch of the sorority house with some of the other sisters when Isaac pulled up in his car. He told them he had just driven from Manhattan to see Rachel.

  He was immediately upset when Puffy told him she was missing. In retrospect, more upset, perhaps, than he should have been at that early stage. At the time, Brynn was more concerned with concealing her own guilt than with Isaac’s reaction, but she does remember that he wouldn’t accept the housemother’s theory that Rachel had just spent the night with a friend somewhere and was still hanging out.

  No, Isaac seemed to sense even then that something was very wrong. And, of course, Brynn, Tildy, Cassie, and Fionaknew that there was.

  Does he believe, even now, that Brynn knows something?

  Is that why he was looking at her so intently yesterday in the café?

  And what is it that he isn’t telling her about Rachel?

  He’s hiding something, too.

  She has no real evidence of that, just a vibe she sometimes gets about people. Usually people she knows well; Garth, in particular.

  I swear you can read my mind,he says sometimes.

  But not lately.

  Before he left for Arizona, he seemed preoccupied.

  Well, of course he was,Brynn tells herself.He was worried about me, and upset about Tildy’s murder, and the bird on the counter, and trying to finish the research material he was planning to present at the symposium…

  Who wouldn’t be preoccupied?

  Anyway, Garth’s frame of mind won’t be important until they’re back at home, where she’ll have to figure out how to deliver her pregnancy news.

  Right now, she’s more concerned with Isaac Halpern’s frame of mind.

  Why did he show up in Cedar Crest the day after Rachel’s birthday?

  He never said.

  And Rachel never mentioned that he was coming. Why not?

  She was so upset that night…Did it have something to do with Isaac?

  “If I could tell you, I would, Brynnie. But I can’t,”was Rachel’s response when she asked what was wrong.

  Now, Brynn would bet her life that it had something to do with her brother…

  And that he, like Brynn, knows more than he’s willing to tell.

  “God, what time is it?”

  Isaac looks up from the SundayTimes .

  Kylah has emerged from the bedroom. Her face is smudged with yesterday’s wedding-heavy makeup; her slept-on hair is still in a salon-sprayed bouffant. She’s wearing just panties and the gray T-shirt she pulled on after discarding her bridesmaid’s gown in a heap on the floor beside the bed.

  “It’s early. Go back to bed.”

  She shakes her head and stretches. “Is there coffee?”

  “Yes.” He sets aside the paper and walks over to the kitchenette to pour her a cup as she leans against the door frame, looking wan. “How do you feel?”

  “Not so good.”

  “Champagne mixed with beer and tequila shots will do that.” He hands her a steaming mug.

  She looks down at it and makes a face. “Are we out of milk again?”

  “No, but drink it black. It’ll help.”

  She sips it in silence as Smoochy materializes to rub against her shins, purring.

  “Are you hungry, baby?” she asks the cat.

  “I already fed him.”

  Kylah looks up at Isaac in surprise. Then she says, “Really.” As if she’s pondering that unexpected development.

  They both know he never bothers with the cat unless she asks him to. Now, Isaac realizes, she’s thinking that he’s trying to appease her. For yesterday. For taking off to Boston without explanation.

  And she’s right.

  He managed to make it to the wedding with time to spare. Despite everything that’s gone on, he somehow got caught up in the spirit of the occasion. He ate, drank, talked, and danced. He met Kylah’s extended family and was sure to charm all of them, especially her eighty-five-year-old grandmother, when he asked her to dance.

  He and Kylah even joked and laughed—and kissed—in the backseat of the cab home. Of course, she was drunk—too drunk to remember that she was angry with him. And Isaac was a little tipsy himself.

  The evening as a whole was a welcome reprieve, the first in a long time.

  But now it’s back to reality. If she demands an explanation, he owes her one.

  But he’ll tell her only as much as he told Brynn, and nothing more.

  It’s cold…

  Really cold.

  Cassie snuggles deeper into her down comforter…

  Only, she realizes, it isn’t her down comforter.

  As her memory of yesterday gradually returns, she remembers that she’s lying beneath a shiny-stiff quilted bedspread that smells faintly of wood smoke, as though someone had huddled beneath it around a campfire on a recent, chilly night.

  For the second time in as many weeks, Cassie opens her eyes on unfamiliar territory.

  This time, though, she isn’t shell-shocked.

  She probably should be.

  Hell, she should be scared out of her mind.

  She’s never even been to Portland or Kennebunkport before, let alone the backwoods of Maine, miles from civilization. It took her well over four hours to find her way up here; she’d have kept right on going if she hadn’t passed theVACANCY sign right around the time she realized she was burning daylight.

  It was a nerve-racking drive. And it took her a long time last night to settle into a sleep that was, in the end, surprisingly sound.

  Now, as she gazes around the rustic cabin, she feels only contentment laced with relief.

  I’ll be okay here for awhile. I can do this. I really can.

  The cabin is small: just one room, with a square window on each of the four log walls. There’s a woodstove she could have used last night, and electricity. No plumbing, though; you have to go down the path to the community bathhouse to use the toilet, wash, or take a shower. A minifridge is tucked into one corner, but that’s the extent of the kitchen appliances; any food preparation has to be done on the outdoor stone fireplace. She checked it out last night, beside the rushing stream just a stone’s throw from the door.

  Cassie plans to do some grilling there. She doesn’t mind, but if she did she’d have no choice anyway: there are no restaurants in a half-hour radius of this place. Louise, the wheelchair-bound woman who runs the camp, said there’s a small grocery store in the nearest town. But it’s a twenty-minute drive back down the winding road through the forest.

  Cassie has a feeling she’ll be heading that way pretty frequently; she paid for the entire month of October when she checked in. She used cash, of course, and entered a fake name on the register.

  “You’re lucky I got a last-minute cancellation,” Louise said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a vacancy on a holiday weekend. This is the last hurrah, though. Foliage is past peak, and the camp will be emptied out by this time Monday. I hope you like peace and quiet.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Then I won’t bother you. You can see that it’s impossible for me to get up that way these days, anyway.” Louise gestured at her useless legs propped on the chair’s footrest. “My housekeeping girl comes in every few days to clean the bathhouse and stock it with towels. Other than that, you probably won’t see anyone around.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Well, if you get lonely, feel free to come on down here and chat or play a hand of cards with me.”

  “I will, if I get lonely,” Cassie told her, knowing she won’t.

  “What are you doing up here by yourself, anyway?”

  “Writing a book.” She was glad she had come up with a believable story in advance. “It’s due to my editor next month and I needed to get away from everything to finish it.”

  “How exciting! I’ll make sure nobody disturbs you up there.”

  “Thanks.”

  The other cabins might still be occupied right now, but they’re all so far apart and secluded that Cassie has yet to see another living soul—human, anyway. There’s plenty of wildlife; she was unnerved by rustling in the undergrowth as she walked down to the bathroom last night at dusk, carrying the flashlight provided in the cabin.

  “That’s prime time to see a moose,” Louise mentioned. “So keep your eyes open.”

  She’ll keep her eyes open, all right.

  She has to remind herself repeatedly that she’s in no danger here; nobody is lurking, watching her, waiting to strike…

  Today.

  Today, she remembers, is her birthday.

  She’s thirty years old.

  And there’s no one around to wish her Happy Birthday.

  But that’s fine with me,she thinks staunchly.

  As long as there’s no one around, and no other living soul can possibly know where I am, I can be sure that I’ll live to see another day.

  Fiona is freshly showered and changed into a navy sheath, her hair pulled back in its usual chignon, when Pat arrives with Ashley.

  “Hi, Mom!” Ashley has on a pair of jeans and a denim jacket, her hair pulled back in a straggly ponytail.

  “Hi, sweetie.” Fiona hugs her quickly with one arm. “Hurry up and go get ready for mass.”

  “Can’t I go like this?”

  “What doyou think?”

  Ashley sighs and gives her father a fierce hug.

  “Thanks for a great weekend, Daddy! Can we do our sunrise hike next time I come?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Sunrise hike?” Fiona asks as Ashley heads for the stairs.

  “She’s been wanting to see the sun come up over the mountains,” he explains.

  She has? I never knew that.

  But then, there seems to be a lot Fiona doesn’t know about her daughter these days. That wouldn’t bother her if it wasn’t sometimes obvious that Pat does know those things…and more.

  Well, that’s how girls are, she tells herself. They adore their daddies and resent their mothers. Especially at this age.

  Then again, Ashley isn’t an adolescent yet.

  But she’s always been a Daddy’s Girl.

  And anyway, Fiona isn’t a sunrise-hike kind of mom. She has other things to offer her daughter. Things Pat can’t possibly give her. A sense of responsibility, financial stability, career ambition, personal style, a beautiful home, a solid work ethic…

  “Bye, Daddy!” Ashley calls from the top of the stairs.

  “Bye, sweetie.”

  Left alone with Pat, Fiona finds him watching her, looking concerned.

  “So, how was your weekend?” she asks, to fill the awkward silence.

  “We went to see that new Disney movie with the Reynoldses.”

  The Reynoldses.

  Fiona is blank.

  Of course, Pat notices. He seems to gloat a little as he clarifies, “Her friend Meg and her mom.”

  “I know.”

  “Then we played minigolf, and went out to dinner at Applebee’s.”

  “That’s nice.” Fiona finds herself surprisingly envious. Not that she particularly wants to hang out with Meg’s mother—she doesn’t have time for that. And she likes minigolf about as much as she likes Applebee’s. Still, her ex-husband shouldn’t be socializing more with Ashley’s friends and their parents than she does.

  She makes a mental note to invite Cynthia and Meg Reynolds to lunch sometime.

  “So, Fee…Howare you?” Pat asks, not in a casual way.

  “I’m okay.” Uncomfortable under his gaze, she decides it’s easier when he’s not being civil to her.

  “The funeral had to be hard.”

  “It wasn’t fun. And it wasn’t a funeral, it was a memorial service.” Why does she find it necessary to keep clarifying that detail?

  She knows why. Because she’s feeling ornery.

  And that’s partly because she feels that way whenever she’s around Pat, but, today, it’s mostly because James didn’t mention seeing her again when they said good-bye earlier. Nor did he protest when she told him she had to leave.

  “I have to get back home anyway,” he told her.

  “Aren’t you spending the weekend here?” she asked, disappointed that there wouldn’t be another opportunity to see him in the next day or two.