Theyre talking about courses theyre taking and guys theyre dating and the upcoming rush. Every trite word theyve said for the past hour and a half has been clearly audible from this shadowy bench in the deserted park across the street.
The Zeta sisters have no idea that someone is eavesdropping tonight.
Watching.
Remembering.
Really, all that has changed in ten years are the names, the faces, and the voices.
Flash back ten years and a day, and Rachel could easily have been among the girls on the steps, gossiping, laughing.
Flash back just ten years, thoughten years ago this night and No more Rachel.
Across the street, the screen door creaks open.
Come on, girls, lets call it a night.
Thats the housemothers voice. Sara Puffy Trovato, still sounding exactly the same after all this time.
Still bantering, the girls gradually disperse into the house. Finally, the door closes behind the last pair. The porch lamps are turned off.
All is still.
Its easy to picture the girls retreating to their rooms now to finish course a.s.signments, read magazines, watch TV, or check e-mail. Eventually, one by one, theyll change into their pajamas, turn out the lights, climb into bed.
Chances are, theyve all heard of Rachel Lorent. They might be aware that this is the tenth anniversary of her disappearance.
Maybe, as they lie in the dark, the current Zeta sisters are even secretly worried that something will happen to one of them.
Maybe they should be.
CHAPTER 3.
Whoa! Garth, dressed in khakis and a cream-colored T-shirt under a lightweight brown blazer, stops short in the doorway. Brynn, I didnt know we were having company at breakfast this morning!
Startled, she looks up from the pancake shes about to flip on the hot skillet.
Oh. Her husband is just teasing, of course. The only other occupants of the kitchen are their two sons.
Brynn manages a faint smile as Garth feigns confusion, asking, Who is that big schoolboy at the table? And wheres Caleb?
Daddy! Its me! Caleb, dressed in a b.u.t.ton-down and khakis, his hair neatly slicked to one side, pipes up proudly. Im the big schoolboy!
Wide-eyed, Garth says, No, you cant possibly be Caleb. Hes just a little guy, like this. He ruffles Jeremys hair.
It is me, Daddy. Really! Caleb shoots a glance at Brynn, one that says, Poor Daddy is clueless!
Normally she gets a kick out of playing along with Garths antics, but today, she simply doesnt have the energy or inclination for anything beyond the basic requirements. It was all she could do to get the boys dressed and hurriedly go through the motions of taking a shower herself, not even bothering to blow-dry her hair. Sh.e.l.l regret it later when she tries to get a comb through the still-damp waves hanging loosely around her face.
She was about to dole out cold cereal when Caleb reminded her that last night she promised them pancakes this morning. Right. That was before she opened her mail and her world turned upside down.
But mommy guilt set in and here she is, dishing up a hot breakfast when all she wants to do is crawl back into bed and hide.
No way, Garth is persisting as he takes down a mug and pours himself a cup of coffee. You cant be Caleb.
Yes way! I go to school now, remember? Caleb asks earnestly.
Brynn flips another pancake and sees that the bottom is scorched. She turns down the burner, then looks over her shoulder and sighs in dismay.
In his booster seat, Jeremy is finger painting the table with maple syrup.
Oblivious to the mess, Garth scratches his head, studying his older son. Hmm can it be?
Mommy! Tell him!
It really is Caleb, Daddy, Brynn obliges as she grabs a sponge from the sink and descends on Jeremys sticky masterpiece. Hes in kindergarten now, remember? He rides the bus and everything.
Yes, and thanks to his mom, hes got exactly five minutes to finish his breakfast before he has to be down at the bus stop.
Brynn, who wakes with the sun daily and never bothers to set an alarm, overslept. Shes been scrambling to catch up for the last forty-five minutes.
What a way to start the second day of school And Calebs imminent departure is the least of her worries today.
Did you want pancakes? she asks Garth, realizing shes scorched three of the four on the skillet.
Do youhave pancakes?
I was making these for you, but She shrugs and indicates the smoking pan. Sorry.
Its okay. Ill just stick with coffee. Ive got to take off a few pounds anyway.
No, he doesnt.
Tall and lean, with hair and eyes the warm shade of a well-loved baseball mitt, Garth Saddler looks the same as he did the first time Brynn laid eyes on him.
Not that she recalls much about their first official connection. It wasnt love at first sight, or even remote interest at first sight. She walked into the lecture hall on the first day of her final semester at Stonebridge, and there he was, standing quite unremarkably down in front, pa.s.sing out copies of the syllabus.
He had a professorial beard back then, obscuring enough of his handsome face that it took awhile for Brynn to notice him.Really notice him.
It was Tildy who pointed out his masculine appeal one brisk day as they were crossing the campus and spotted him jogging past. Look, theres Dr. Saddler. Wow, how hot is he?
Brynn checked him out and saw that her sorority sister had a point. He looked a lot different with his muscular legs bared in running shorts, his sweat-dampened hair standing on end, than he did b.u.t.toned-up and intellectual in front of the cla.s.s.
I have him for that morbid Soc course Im taking, she told Tildy.
Death and Dying? I took it last semester. It was awesome. And so is he.
It wasnt long afterward that Brynn realized Garth Saddler was, indeed, pretty awesome. She even got the feeling the attraction was mutual.
But he didnt ask her out until the semester was over and she had her diploma in hand.
That, he told her, would have violated the rules.
College rules? she asked.
No, mine.
She didnt expect to fall in love with him that first night. Nor did she plan to stay on in Cedar Crest that summer instead of returning home to the Cape.
But she did stay.
Not just for the summer. For Ever.
Things just fell into place for them, and she never looked back.
She worked nights as a desk clerk at the Amble On Inn nearby. So much for her newly minted bachelors degree in English. And so much for returning home to the Cape.
Any potential postgraduation plans she had in mindand she didnt have manyevaporated the moment Garth told her he loved her and wanted her to stay. By the time the fall semester began, she had moved into his apartment just off campus.
Do you think things are happening too fast between us? she asked him, more than once. Just to be sure this was all as much his idea as it was hers.
No, he said, but she wondered if he meant it.
Sometimes, he seemed taken aback at the way their lives had melded so swiftly and completely. But she never doubted that he loved her, or that she loved him. They belonged together.
They were married in July, a little over a year into their relationship.
When the Amble On Inn abruptly shut down that fall, Garth found her a secretarial job in the registrars office.
She quit that when Caleb came along eighteen months later, followed by Jeremy.
And the years have flown by, and here I am.
Hereweare.
Living happily ever after Until now.
No, dont start thinking that way,she warns herself, watching Garth stir Splenda into his coffee, and Caleb munching his pancakes, and Jeremy licking maple syrup from his fingers. Everything is going to be fine.
Which is precisely the same thing she a.s.sured herself fifteen years ago, when a routine X-ray showed a suspicious shadow on her mothers lung.
Mom didnt even smoke and Dad gave it up years ago, so it couldnt be cancer But itwas cancer.
Well, Brynn wasnt going to let it rob her of her mother But it did, in the s.p.a.ce of a few months.
It robbed her as well of the jovial, loving family man who loved chocolate with nuts, the Red Sox, doo-wop music, and his wife and children. Not in that order.
Her fathers heart and soul died with her mother, leaving in his outer sh.e.l.l a brooding, often-angry stranger. The house was silent and dusty, the fridge filled with expired condiments, no dairy or fresh vegetables.
That stage lasted only a few months, and was replaced with one that was, in Brynns opinion, far more disturbing.
At first, though, she was grateful whenever Sue Learner, her mothers longtime friend from her womens bowling league, came around with the proverbial ca.s.seroles and condolences. Sue was a former nurse pract.i.tioner; she had a nurturing, maternal air that Brynn welcomed. She poured out her grief to Sue, along with a flood of adolescent angst.
She finally figured out that Sue was hanging around the house not to comfort her late friends motherless children, but to seduce their widowed father.
Mom could never convince Daddy to go bowling, but somehow, Sue did. One of Brynns friends spotted them together late one night at Lucky Lanes. Brynn didnt believe it, but she questioned her fatherand he confessed.
That bombsh.e.l.l struck Brynn about twenty-four hours before he threw a far more explosive one: he was getting remarried. To Sue.
Its what your mother would want, he saidso often that Brynn wondered if he was trying to convince himself.
Personally, she doubted her mother had drawn her last breath fervently hoping that her good friend would move into her house, and her bed, before the granite slab was even laid over her grave.
Brynn, who, until that tumultuous loss, had wondered how she would ever go away to college without becoming terribly homesick, lived for the day when she could leave.
Once she did, she rarely looked back.
Are you okay, Brynn? Garth asks, and she looks up to see him watching her over the rim of his coffee cup.
Fine. Just tired. For emphasis, she tacks on a yawn that starts out forced, but winds up the real thing.
You didnt sleep well?
She shakes her head at the understatement. But then, Garth wouldnt know she tossed and turned all night behind their closed master bedroom door.
A lifelong insomniac, he rarely joins her in bed before dawn. Some nightslike last nighthe stays on campus working on his book until the wee hours. Others, he doesnt reach the bedroom at all, presumably sitting up in the den either writing or watching television, occasionally snoozing in his easy chair there when she emerges in the morning.
Early in their marriage, Brynn got up often to check on Garth or coax him to bed. Whenever he obliged, she felt like she was trying to sleep alongside a restless animal desperate to escape its cage. She gave up, years ago, the notion of climbing into bed beside her husband every night.
I guess its not surprising that you couldnt get much sleep last night. After all, yesterday was a major milestone. Garth tilts his head toward Caleb.
Definitely a milestone, she agrees.And not just in the way you think.
Last night, she should have climbed into bed warmed by the afterglow of her sons big, successful day.
Instead, she was tormented by visions that jabbed like icy fingers into her consciousness, keeping sleep at bay, forcing her to relive in horrifying detail the unthinkable events that unfolded exactly a decade before It was Brynn who unwittingly set things in motion.
Did you notice how b.u.mmed Rachel was at dinner tonight? she asked Fee as they left the library at dusk after a scant ninety minutes of studying.
Not really, Fiona returned predictably, her thoughts most likely on her boyfriendor herself. Why?
She just seemed down, even when Puffy brought out the cake and we were all singingHappy Birthdayto her.