On the outskirts of town, closest to the highway exit, is the ubiquitous commercial strip lined with fast food restaurants, chain hotels, supermarkets, discount stores like Wal-Mart and Target.

  Then there’s Stonebridge campus itself, a forested, self-contained enclave connected by a series of winding paths that meander past brick dormitories and academic buildings, a new sports facility, sprawling athletic fields.

  Adjacent to the campus is a grid of old streets with two-and three-story homes. Once, they were upper-middle-class family residences; today, most are student housing with bikes and furniture on porches, doors and windows perpetually ajar. Most could use a fresh coat of paint, a handyman, and some yard work. Those in best repair display Greek letters beneath the eaves.

  Today’s middle class resides on the opposite end of town, where winding streets like Tamarack Lane reflect architecture from the first half of the twentieth century: primarily Tudor and Arts and Crafts. Here, yards are well kept. Late summer perennials are in bloom, local election signs are already springing up on lawns sprinkled with the season’s first fallen leaves. SUVs and station wagons sit in driveways. There are wooden backyard swing sets and domed curbside mailboxes.

  Both residential areas are dotted with churches, parks, and playgrounds; they’re bridged by the central business district, with Main Street running its length. Stores and restaurants spill onto the perpendicular numbered streets along the way.

  There are no chains here, but plenty of locally owned bars, sub and pizza shops, and coffeehouses that cater to the college crowd. Those—along with a Laundromat, a coffee shop, and shops that sell books and postcards, T-shirts and Stonebridge memorabilia—are clustered on the north end, closest to campus.

  The southern end is home to banks and realtors, cafés and pharmacies, a children’s clothing store, a couple of small markets, a yoga studio.

  Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations is here, on the ground floor of a turreted mustard-yellow Victorian mansion that’s been converted to office space.

  Brynn makes the fifteen-minute walk over from the bus stop, pushing Jeremy’s collapsible canvas umbrella stroller in the cool September sunshine.

  “Come on, little guy, let’s go visit Auntie Fee,” she says with false cheer, and unstraps Jeremy from his stroller.

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “No!” Jeremy squirms in her arms.

  She’s forced to haul him up the wooden front steps, leaving the stroller behind. Well, if anyone wants to steal it, they’re welcome to it. It’s definitely the worse for wear after carting first Caleb, then Jeremy, around town.

  Brynn really should pick up another one at Target before this one gives out altogether. But money is tight this month.

  This month?

  When isn’t it tight?

  Well, it was less tight when they were a two-person household living on two incomes as opposed to a four-person household trying to make it on one.

  She supposes she could always put Jeremy in day care and get some kind of job…

  But she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to stay at home, fully available, the kind of mothershe had.

  Except that I’ll live to see my children graduate high school, and college, and get married, and have children of their own…

  She wants to witness the big milestones just as she’s been able to witness the little ones: first steps, first words, first teeth…

  I just want to be their mom. And Garth’s wife. That’s all I really need to be.

  Which is good, because that’s all I am. And I love my life just the way it is…

  There’s just something about being in Fiona’s presence that makes her a little self-conscious about the decidedly domestic path she’s chosen.

  She crosses the porch with a still-protesting Jeremy on her hip, wondering if maybe she should have called first, instead of just barging in here.

  Glancing at her watch, she notes that Fee will most certainly be in the office at this hour. She’s in the office at just about any waking hour—including some hours that the rest of the world may not necessarily count aswaking .

  “Shh, Jeremy.”

  Opening one of the tall double entrance doors, Brynn steps into the dim hall that was once a grand foyer. High ceilings, ornate moldings, and a sweeping staircase bear testimony to the building’s past; several closed, placard-bearing doors to its present.

  “It’s dark,” Jeremy informs her in a small voice.

  “I know, it’s okay. See? Here we are.” Opening the door fronted by Fiona’s name, she steps into one-half of the former double parlor. It’s easy to picture the tall, double-hung windows, hardwood floors, and marble fireplace looking exactly the same in the late-1800s. The reception area, like Fee’s adjacent office, is tastefully decorated with nineteenth-century reproduction wallpaper and fabrics, and antique furnishings.

  A skinny blonde looks up from the tall potted fern she’s watering beside one of the two windows.

  “Hi, I’m Brynn, a friend of Fiona’s.”

  “Oh…hi.” The girl looks so uncertain that Brynn knows immediately that her days here are numbered.

  Fee has absolutely no patience for indecision.

  That’s why Sharon, who, during their college years had been the private secretary for the dean at Stonebridge, was the perfect office manager for her. The older woman doesn’t have a wishy-washy bone in her body. If she likes you, you know it on sight. Same thing if she doesn’t like you. Brynn, she always liked, and the feeling is mutual.

  Toying with the watering can, the new girl asks, “You don’t have an appointment…do you?”

  Brynn shakes her head, feeling almost sorry for the girl. She’s painfully skinny and inappropriately dressed in a gauze skirt and thick, flat sandals. Her long forehead and plain, egg-shaped face are unnecessarily accentuated by straight, wispy, straw-colored hair parted in the middle.

  “I need a cup,” Jeremy announces, eyeing the Poland Spring cooler.

  “Is it all right if I get him a drink of water?” Brynn asks.

  Again, the girl is riddled with incertitude.

  Brynn shifts Jeremy to her other hip and fills a paper cup anyway.

  He takes a big gulp, squirms, and demands, “I want to get down.”

  “No, Mommy’s going to hold you,” she tells him firmly, acutely aware of the stained glass lamp and porcelain bowl of potpourri on a nearby table.

  I shouldn’t have brought him,she realizes, and on the heels of that thought,but I had no choice.

  What she wouldn’t give to have a doting grandma nearby, as most of her friends do. But her father and stepmother are a world away in every sense, and Garth’s parents are retired in Florida. For Brynn, getting out of the house without one or both the kids is an impossible weekday challenge.

  She hands her son the empty paper cup to play with and decides she’d better get down to business before Jeremy’s limited patience runs its course.

  “You must be Fiona’s new assistant,” she tells the girl.

  “That’s right.”

  “What was your name again?” Brynn prods, fully aware that she never said.

  She isn’t rude…just young. And clueless.

  You poor thing,she thinks sadly.Fiona’s going to eat you alive.

  “Oh, I’m Emily.” Of that, at least, she seems certain.

  “Nice to meet you. So is Fiona here?”

  “I’m not supposed to disturb her unless it’s an emergency.”

  “Is she alone in there?”

  Emily nods. “But—”

  Brynn starts for Fee’s closed door.

  “No, wait—”

  “It’s okay,” Brynn tells her, as she reaches for the knob with the hand that isn’t wrapped around Jeremy. “You’re not disturbing her. I am.”

  Settling into a booth in the Cedar Crest Coffee Shop on the northern end of Main Street, Isaac Halpern accepts the laminated menu from a pretty student waitress. She blatantly checks him out.

  With his traditional good looks—clean-cut dark hair and blue eyes, a strong, but not too strong, nose, and a tall frame that’s both lean and muscular—he does get his share of attention from women.

  Especially back home in Manhattan, where straight, single, successful men are as valuable a commodity as rent-controlled real estate.

  “Know what you want?” the waitress asks with a toss of her long black hair.

  “I haven’t even looked at the menu yet.”

  She shrugs. “Most people already know.”

  “Just give me a minute, okay?” he asks, and she drifts away.

  The menu is stained with brownish splashes and there is a grain of dried rice plastered to the laminate. Terrific.

  Holding it gingerly, Isaac scans the lengthy list of offerings beneath the heading:

  Breakfast Served 24 Hours

  Eggs, omelets, French Toast, pancakes, bagels, cereal, fruit, sides of anything you can imagine…

  Pretty much the same menu as in any diner back in New York, but at less than half the price for everything. Pretty much the same setup, too—long counter along one wall, a row of booths along the other. Most of those are empty, and only a few of the stools at the counter are occupied.

  But this is a college town; this place is ten times busier at two in the morning after the bars close than it is now.

  Just a stone’s throw from here is the Zeta Delta Kappa house, its gray shingles freshly painted this semester with red trim. Those are the official sorority colors, the red representing the sorority mascot, which is the cardinal.

  Why a cardinal?Isaac asked Rachel once, when she was poring over her secret sorority notebook, cramming for the pledge quiz.Why not something more exotic, like a pink flamingo, or a peacock?

  Because cardinals stand out more than anything else, and they’re cheerful, and they’re everywhere,she replied with her usual Rachel decisiveness.When was the last time you looked out the window and saw a pink flamingo? There’s nothing better than spotting a beautiful, cheerful splotch of red in the trees on a gray winter morning.

  There hasn’t been a gray winter morning since she said it that Isaac hasn’t searched—to no avail—for a cardinal.

  “Did you decide?”

  He looks up. The waitress is back already, pad poised, hair still hanging around her face. Shouldn’t she be wearing a hairnet, or a ponytail, or something? That she isn’t doesn’t bode well for the cuisine.

  Yeah, he should tell her he changed his mind and get out of here.

  Instead, he hears himself say, “I’ll just have a Western Omelet and whole-grain toast. And coffee.”

  He isn’t the least bit hungry, but he’s here; he should eat.

  And whyareyou here?

  Not here in the coffee shop; here in Cedar Crest.

  I’m here because…

  Because…

  God, I shouldn’t be here. What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I keep coming back here every September?

  This was a bad, impulsive idea.

  Not the first in his life, though, and it surely won’t be his last.

  All because of her.

  Rachel.

  The waitress departs. As if on cue, his cell phone begins to vibrate in the back pocket of his jeans; he hurriedly grabs it and flips it open. The number displayed in the caller ID box is a familiar one.

  “Hey,” a female voice says. “It’s me.”

  “Hey. How’s San Francisco?”

  “Foggy. How’s New York?”

  He hesitates.

  “Sunny,” he says, because it was supposed to be; he caught the local weather forecast on Z100 before leaving for Massachusetts.

  “Did you remember to feed Smoochy this morning?”

  The cat. Damn.

  “Yes,” he lies.

  That tabby is so fat he can probably survive off his own body fat for weeks. Still, Isaac should have remembered to feed him. If anything happens to the cat, Kylah will be heartbroken. And furious with him. Particularly when she finds out her pet’s well-being was sacrificed for this little annual expedition to New England.

  No, notwhen .

  Not evenif .

  She won’t find out. She’s safely on the West Coast, he’ll be home in New York before she is, and the world’s fattest feline will be fine.

  “I miss you,” she says with a sigh.

  “I miss you, too. How’s the conference going?”

  “You know. Same as they always go. It’s all a big blur of name tags and handouts and bad food and watered-down drinks. I can’t wait to get home tomorrow. Don’t forget—my flight gets in at six and I’m coming straight home, so…”

  “I’ll be there.”

  And he will. Because he can’t stay here in Cedar Crest indefinitely.

  But he’ll be back again.

  And again, and again…

  For as long as it takes.

  About to protest the abrupt intrusion, Fiona looks up from her desk to see not the hapless Emily, but Brynn, framed in the open doorway.

  Her heart sinks.

  She isn’t in the mood. True, she was just sitting here, craving a cigarette and brooding about the very thing Brynn is undoubtedly here to discuss, but…

  But I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet. Not until I’ve decided how I’m going to approach this whole mess.

  Looks like she doesn’t have a choice, though.

  “Hey.” Fiona stands and feigns an affectionate smile at Jeremy, whose lower face appears to be covered in some kind of sticky sludge. Lovely. “What are you guys doing here?”

  Brynn just sends her a level look and closes the door behind herself just as Emily pops up, hovering nervously and looking apologetic.

  I’ve got to get rid of her,Fiona thinks wearily.I’ll fire her first chance I get…

  And replace her with whom?

  “Listen, we need to talk about this thing,” Brynn is saying in a low voice.

  “Did you get ahold of them?” Fiona asks.

  Of course Brynn knows who she’s talking about. Cassie and Tildy.

  “No, I couldn’t.” She sinks onto the visitor’s chair beside the desk with Jeremy on her lap.

  “Did you try?”

  Brynn shakes her head.

  “Brynn, you said you’d call them last night.”

  “I know I did, but by the time I got the kids ready for bed, Garth was home, and—”

  “You didn’t tellhim, did you?”

  “Are youkidding me?”