About the Author

DIANE CHAMBERLAIN is an award-winning author. Prior to her writing career, she was a psychotherapist, working primarily with adolescents. Diane’s background in psychology has given her a keen interest in understanding the way people tick, as well as the background necessary to create real, living, breathing characters.

Several years ago, Diane was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which has changed the way she works: she occasionally types using voice recognition software. She feels fortunate that her arthritis is not more severe and that she is able to enjoy everyday activities as well as keep up with a busy schedule.

When not writing, Diane enjoys fixing up her house, playing with her three-legged Bernese mountain dog and getting together with her friends and grown-up stepdaughters. Find out more about Diane and her books at www.mirabooks.co.uk/dianechamberlain

The

Lost

Daughter

Diane Chamberlain

www.dianechamberlain.co.uk

For John

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For helping me think outside the box, dig a little deeper and cope with life’s adventures this past year, I’m grateful to John Pagliuca, Emilie Richards and Patricia McLinn.

Many people shared their memories of Chapel Hill and Charlottesville with me. Thank you, Caroline and John Marold, Matt Barnett, Sara Mendes, Kerry Cole, Chris Morris and Carole Ramser. You Charlottesville folks made me hungry for a “grillswith!”

My friends at ASA came through with information on everything from infant seats to waitress uniforms.

Adelle D. Stavis, Esq. was my legal eagle.

Brittany Walls and Kate Kaprosy helped me understand CeeCee’s trials and tribulations as a new mother. Thanks for the laughs, you two!

Over lunch at the Silver Diner (where we hoped no one was listening in on our grisly conversation), Marti Porter gave me the clinical information and insight necessary to write the harrowing scene in the cabin between CeeCee and Genevieve.

My assistant, Mari Sango Jordan, helped with research and other tasks too numerous to mention, while her daughter, Myya, entertained my dogs so I could get some work done.

And a special thank-you to my editor, Miranda Stecyk, for being so sensible, smart and supportive.

Corinne

Diane Chamberlain

Chapter One
Raleigh, North Carolina

SHE COULDN’T CONCENTRATE ON MAKING LOVE. NO matter how tenderly or passionately or intimately Ken touched her, her mind was miles away. It was a little after five on Tuesday afternoon, the time they protected from meetings or dinner with friends or anything else that might interfere with their getting together, and usually Corinne relished the lovemaking with her fiancé. Today, though, she wanted to fast-forward to the pillow talk. She had so much to say.

Ken rolled off her with a sigh, and she saw him smile in the late-afternoon light as he rested his hand on her stomach. Did that mean something? Smiling with his hand on her belly? She hoped so but didn’t dare ask him. Not yet. Ken loved the afterglow—the slow untangling of their limbs and the gradual return to reality—so she would have to be patient. She stroked her fingers through his thick, ash-blond hair as she waited for his breathing to settle down. Their baby was going to beautiful, no doubt about it.

“Mmm,” Ken purred as he nuzzled her shoulder. Thin bands of light slipped into the room through the blinds, leaving luminous stripes on the sheet over his legs. “I love you, Cor.”

“I love you, too.” She wrapped her arm around him, trying to sense if he was alert enough to listen to her. “I did something amazing today,” she began. “Two somethings, actually.”

“What did you do?” He sounded interested, if not quite awake.

“First, I took the 540 to work.”

His head darted up from his pillow. “You did?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How was it?”

“Excellent.” She’d had sweaty palms the whole time, but she’d managed. For the past few years, she’d taught fourth grade in a school eight miles from their house, and she’d never once had the courage to take the expressway to get there. She’d stuck to the tiny back roads, curling her way through residential neighborhoods, dodging cars as they backed out of driveways. “It took me about ten minutes to get to work,” she said. “It usually takes me forty.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “I know how hard that must have been to do.”

“And then I did another amazing thing,” she said.

“I haven’t forgotten. Two things, you said. What other amazing thing did you do?”

“I went on the field trip to the museum with my class, instead of staying at school like I’d planned.”

“Now you’re scaring me,” he teased. “Are you on some new drug or something?”

“Am I remarkable or what?” she asked.

“You are definitely the most remarkable woman I know.” He leaned over to kiss her. “You’re my brave, beautiful, red-haired girl.”

She’d walked inside the museum as though she did it every day of the week, and she bet no one knew that her heart was pounding and her throat felt as though it was tightening around her windpipe. She guarded her phobias carefully. She could never let any of her students’ parents—or worse, her fellow teachers—know.

“Maybe you’re trying to do too much too fast,” Ken said.

She shook her head. “I’m on a roll,” she said. “Tomorrow, I plan to step into the elevator at the doctor’s office. Just step into it,” she added hastily. “I’ll take the stairs. But stepping into it will be a first step. So to speak. Then maybe next week, I’ll take it up a floor.” She shuddered at the thought of the elevator doors closing behind her, locking her in a cubicle not much bigger than a coffin.

“Pretty soon you won’t need me anymore.”

“I’m always going to need you.” She wondered how serious he was with that statement. It was true that she needed Ken in ways most people didn’t need a partner. He was the driver anytime they traveled more than a few miles from home. He was her rescuer when she’d have a panic attack in the supermarket, standing in the middle of an aisle with a full cart of groceries. He was the one holding on to her arm as he guided her through the mall or the Concert Hall or wherever they happened to be when her heart started pounding. “I would just like to not need you that way. And I have to do this, Ken. I want that job.”

She’d been offered a position that would start the following September, training teachers in Wake County to use a reading curriculum in which she’d become expert. That meant driving. A lot of driving. There would be six-lane highways to travel and bridges to cross and elevators she would have no choice but to ride. September was nearly a year away, and she was determined to have her fears mastered by then.

“Kenny.” She pulled closer to him, nervous about the topic she was about to broach. “There’s something else we really need to talk about.”

His muscles tightened ever so slightly beneath her hands.

“The pregnancy,” he said.

She hated when he called it the pregnancy. She guessed she’d misread his smile earlier. “About the baby,” she said. “Right.”

He let out a sigh. “Cor, I’ve thought about it and I just don’t think it’s the right time. Especially with you starting a new job next year. How much stress do you need?”

“It would work out,” she said. “The baby’s due in late May. I’d take the end of the year off and have the summer to get used to being a mom and find day care and everything.” She smoothed her hand over her stomach. Was it her imagination or was there already a slight slope to her belly? “We’ve been together so long,” she continued. “It just doesn’t make sense for me to have an abortion when I’m almost twenty-seven and you’re thirty-eight and we can afford to have a child.” She didn’t say what else she was thinking: Of course, we’d have to get married. Finally. They’d been engaged and living together for four years, and if her pregnancy forced them to set a date, that was fine with her.

He gave her shoulders a squeeze, then sat up. “Let’s talk about it later, okay?” he said.

“When?” she asked. “We can’t keep putting this off.”

“Later tonight,” he promised.

She followed his gaze to the phone on the night table. The message light was blinking. He picked up the receiver and punched in their voice-mail code, then listened. “Three messages,” he said, hitting another button on the phone. The light in the room had grown dim, but she was still able to see him roll his eyes as he listened to the first message.

“Your mother,” he said. “She says it’s urgent.”

“I’m sure.” Corinne managed a laugh. Now that Dru had spilled the news of her pregnancy to their parents, she’d probably be getting urgent calls every day. Her mother had already e-mailed her to tell her that redheads were more prone to hemorrhaging after delivery. Thanks a heap, Mom. She hadn’t bothered to reply. She hadn’t spoken with her mother more than a few times in the past three years.

“There’s one from Dru, too,” Ken said. “She says to call her the minute you get the message.”

That was more worrisome. An urgent message from her mother was easy to ignore. From her sister, less so. “I hope there’s not anything wrong,” she said, sitting up.

“They would have called you on your cell if it was so important,” he said, still holding the phone to his ear.

“True.” She got out of bed and pulled on her short green robe, then picked up her phone from the dresser and turned it on. “Except, I didn’t have my cell on today because of the field trip, so—”

“What the—” Ken frowned as he listened to another message. “What the hell are you talking about?” He shouted into the phone. Glancing at his watch, he walked across the room to turn on the television.

“What’s going on?” Corinne watched him click through the channels until he reached WIGH, the Raleigh station for which he was a reporter.

“That was a message from Darren,” he said, as he punched another phone number into the receiver. “He’s kicking me off the Gleason story.”

“What?” She was incredulous. “Why?”

“He said it was for obvious reasons, like I should know what the hell he’s talking about.” He looked at his watch again and she knew he was waiting for the six-o’clock news. “Come on, come on,“ he said to the television or the phone—or maybe both. “Give me Darren!” he yelled into the receiver. “Well, where is he?” He hung up and started dialing again.

“They can’t pull you off that story,” she said. “That would be so unfair after all the work you’ve done on it.” The Gleason story was his baby. He’d even attracted national attention for it. People were talking about him being a candidate for the Rosedale Award.

“Darren said, ‘Did you know about this?’ like I’ve been keeping something from him.” Ken ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh, don’t give me your damn voice mail,” he said into the phone. “Dammit.” She felt his impatience as he waited to leave a message. “What the hell do you mean, I’m off the Gleason story?” he shouted. “Call me!”

He tossed the receiver onto the bed, then pounded the top of the television with his fist as though he could make the news come on sooner through force. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “When I left the courthouse today, the jury hadn’t sentenced him yet and they were supposed to reconvene tomorrow. Maybe I heard it wrong. Maybe I missed the sentencing. Damn!”

Corinne looked down at the cell phone in her hand as she cycled through the list of callers. “I have five messages, all from my parents’ house,” she said. Something was wrong. “I’d better call—”

“Shh,” Ken said, turning up the volume as the brassy theme music introduced the news, and anchorman Paul Provost appeared on the screen.

“Good evening, Triangle,” Paul said, referring to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. “Just hours before Timothy Gleason was to be sentenced for the 1977 murder of Genevieve Russell and her unborn child, a shocking revelation shed doubt on his guilt.”

“What?” Ken stared at the TV.

Footage of a small arts-and-crafts-style bungalow filled the screen. The roof looked wet from a recent rain, and the trees were lush, the leaves just starting to turn.

“Is that …?” Corinne pressed her hand to her mouth. She knew exactly how the air smelled in the small front yard of the house. It would be thick and sweet with the damp arrival of autumn. “Oh, my God.”

Through the front door, a middle-aged woman limped onto the porch. She looked small and tired. And she looked scared.

“What the hell is going on?” Ken said.

Corinne stood next to him, clutching his arm, as her mother cleared her throat.

“Timothy Gleason is not guilty of murdering Genevieve Russell,” she said. “And I can prove it because I was there.”

CeeCee

Diane Chamberlain

Chapter Two

Dear CeeCee,

You’re sixteen now, the age I was when I got pregnant with you. Whatever you do, don’t do that! Seriously, I hope you’re much smarter and more careful than I was. No regrets, though. My life would have been so empty without you. You’re my everything, darling girl. Don’t ever forget that.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1977

“GOOD MORNING, TIM.” CEECEE POURED COFFEE INTO HIS cup. He liked it black and very strong, and she’d added an extra scoop to the pot that morning that had other customers complaining.

“The morning was pretty good to begin with,” he said, “but seeing you puts the icing on the cake.” He leaned back in the corner booth, where he always sat, and smiled at her. He had one of those smiles that turned her brain to mush. She’d met him on her first day of work a little more than a month ago, and she’d promptly spilled hot coffee on him. She’d been mortified, but he’d laughed it off and tipped her more than the value of his breakfast. She fell for him right then.

All she knew about him could fit inside a coffee cup. To begin with, he was beautiful. The sunlight poured into the corner booth in the mornings, settling in the curls of his blond hair and turning his green eyes to stained glass. He dressed in jeans and T-shirts, like most Carolina students, but his clothing lacked any University of North Carolina logos even though he was a student there. He smoked Marlboros, and his table was always littered with books and papers. She liked that he was studious. Best of all, he made her feel pretty and smart and desirable, which was something she’d not experienced before. She wanted to bottle the feeling and carry it around with her.

She pulled her order pad and pencil from her jeans pocket. “Do you want your usual?” she asked, but she was thinking, I love you.

“Of course.” He took a sip of coffee, then pointed toward the front of the coffee shop. “Do you know that every time I walk through that door, I’m afraid you won’t be here?” he asked. “As soon as I come in, I look for your hair.” He’d told her that he loved her hair. She’d never cut it, and it fell in dark waves to the small of her back.

“I’m always here,” she said. “It’s like I live here.”

“You’re off on Saturdays, though,” he said. “You weren’t here last Saturday.”

“And you missed me?” Was she flirting? That would be a first.

He nodded. “Yes, but I was happy to see that you had some time off.”

“Well, not time off, really. I tutor on Saturdays.”

“You’re always working, CeeCee,” he said. She loved when he used her name.

“I need the money.” She looked down at her order pad as though she’d forgotten why she was holding it. “I’d better put in your order or you won’t get out of here in time for your class. Be back soon.” She excused herself and walked toward the swinging door to the kitchen.

Inside, the aroma of bacon and burned toast enveloped her, and she found her fellow waitress and roommate, Ronnie, arranging plates of pancakes on a tray.

“You do have other tables to wait on, you know,” Ronnie teased.

CeeCee clipped Tim’s order to the carousel where the cook would see it, then twirled around happily to face her friend. “I’m useless when he’s here,” she said.

Ronnie hoisted her loaded tray to her shoulder. “He does look particularly hot today, I have to admit.” She backed up against the swinging door to push it open. “You should say you had a date last night or something,” she said as she left the room.

Ronnie, who was far more experienced in dating than CeeCee, was full of bad advice when it came to Tim. “Pretend you have a boyfriend,” she’d say. Or “Act indifferent sometimes.” Or “Let me wait on him so he misses you.”

Not on your life, CeeCee’d thought in response to her last suggestion. Ronnie was gorgeous. She looked like Olivia Newton-John. When they walked down the street together, CeeCee felt invisible. She was five-three to Ronnie’s five-seven, and although she wasn’t heavy, she had a stockier build than her roommate. Except for her hair, her features were forgettable.

She was smarter than Ronnie, though. More ambitious, more responsible, and far, far neater. But when a girl looked like Olivia Newton-John, guys didn’t care if she could solve a quadratic equation or diagram a compound sentence. Tim would care, though. She didn’t know that for a fact, of course, but the Tim she fantasized about would definitely care.

She checked her other tables, getting extra napkins for a bunch of frat boys who’d made a mess with their cinnamon rolls. The fraternity types were a turnoff. They reeked of stale beer in the mornings, they never tipped, and they treated her like a slave. Then she got tea for the elderly black couple seated in the booth next to Tim’s. The husband had very short-cropped gray hair and wore thick glasses. He had some sort of palsy; his hands and head shook uncontrollably. The woman, her own hands gnarled with arthritis, fed him his breakfast with a patience CeeCee admired.

Setting the teapot in front of the woman, she glanced at Tim. His head was lowered over a book and he was taking notes as he read. Maybe she was kidding herself about his interest. Maybe he was just a friendly guy. They probably had zero in common, anyway. She was barely sixteen and he was twenty-two. She’d graduated from high school only four months ago, while he was in his first year of graduate school. And his major was social work, while her only contact with social workers had been as the recipient of their services. This was like having a crush on a rock star.

But when she finally delivered his plate of bacon, eggs and grits, he set down his pen, folded his arms in front of him, and said, “I think it’s time we went out. What d’you think?”

“Sure,” she said, as though his invitation was no big deal. Inside, she was bursting.

She couldn’t wait to tell Ronnie.

“Miss?” The black woman in the next booth waved her over.

“Excuse me,” CeeCee said to Tim as she took a couple of steps to her left. “Are you ready for your check?” She pulled out her pad.

“I know we’re supposed to pay at the register, miss—” the woman looked at her name tag “—Miss CeeCee. But I was hoping we could pay you. It’s so much easier on us that way.”

“Oh, sure.” CeeCee added the figures in her head, jotting down the total. “It’s five seventy-five,” she said.

The woman dug through her patent-leather purse with twisted fingers. A gold wedding band, worn smooth, graced the ring finger of her left hand, locked in place forever by a knobby, swollen knuckle.

“Sorry, miss,” she said, as she handed CeeCee a ten-dollar bill. “Everything takes me so long these days.”

“That’s okay,” CeeCee said. “I’ll be right back with your change.”

The couple was standing next to their table by the time she returned. The woman thanked her, then slowly guided her husband down the aisle toward the door.

She watched them for a moment, then looked at Tim. He was cradled by the corner of the booth, coffee cup in his hand and his eyes on her. She started clearing the couple’s table, stacking the plates on top of one another.

“So, where were we?” she asked him.

“How about a movie?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, but her eyes were drawn to the seat where the old woman had been sitting. Two crumpled ten-dollar bills rested on the blue vinyl.

“Oh!” She grabbed the money, then looked out the window to try to find the couple, but the sea of students on the sidewalk blocked her view. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran out of the coffee shop and, after searching for a few minutes, found the couple sitting on a bench at the bus stop.

She sat down next to the woman. “You dropped this in your booth,” she said, pressing the money into her hand.

“Oh, my word!” The woman drew in her breath. “Bless you, child.” She took the bills, then caught CeeCee’s hand. “You don’t move, Miss CeeCee,” she said, reaching for her purse. “Let me give you something for your honesty.”

“Oh, no,” CeeCee said. “Don’t worry about it.”

The woman hesitated, then reached out and tugged lightly on her long hair. “God surely knew what he was doing when he gave you hair fit for an angel,” she said.

CeeCee was breathless by the time she returned to the coffee shop and began loading a tray with the couple’s dishes.

“What was that all about?” Tim asked.

“Two tens must have fallen out of her purse when she was getting money to pay me,” CeeCee said.

Tim tapped his pen against his chin. “So let me get this straight,” he said. “You need money and twenty dollars just landed in your lap and you gave it back.”

“How could I possibly keep it? Who knows how much they need it? Maybe a lot more than I do.” She eyed him with suspicion. “Would you have kept it?”

Tim grinned at her. “You’d be a great social worker,” he said. “You care about the underdog.” This wasn’t the first time he had suggested she’d make a good social worker, even though he knew she wanted to be a teacher. The world would be a better place if everyone became a social worker, he’d said.

He looked at the clock above the kitchen door. “Gotta get to class.” He slid across the seat. “How about we meet at the Varsity Theater at six-thirty?”

“Okay.” She tried to sound casual. “Later.”

He piled his books and papers into a sloppy stack, picked them up and headed for the door. She looked down at his table. For the first time, he’d forgotten to leave her a tip. It wasn’t until she lifted his empty plate that she discovered he’d left her one after all: two ten-dollar bills.

Chapter Three

You’re probably thinking about college now, CeeCee. You’ll need a scholarship, so I hope you’ve been a good student. I’m sorry I couldn’t provide better for you. College is so important. Fight to get there, okay? I always planned to go even if it meant I wouldn’t graduate ‘til I was fifty and now I’ll never have the chance. If you’re anything like me at your age, though, you’ll be more interested in boys than school. That’s okay. You don’t need to go right away. Just remember that college men are FAR more interesting than any boys you knew in high school.

If it turns out that you don’t go to college, remember you can still get an education from the people you meet. Every single person who comes into your life, from a doctor to a trash collector, can teach you something if you let them.

“IT’S RAINING.” TIM RAISED HIS PALM IN THE AIR AS THEY left the movie theater.

CeeCee felt a cool, fine mist on her face. “I like it,” she said, as she piled her hair on top of her head and covered it with her floppy black felt hat. She liked the rain; her hair did not.

“Now you look like Annie Hall.” Tim grinned at her as they started walking through the throng of students toward the diner two blocks away. They’d just seen Annie Hall, a perfect first-date movie. “You’re not goofy like she is, though.”

“She’s goofy in a cute way.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and you’re serious in a cute way.”

“Ugh.” The thought was deflating. “I don’t want to be serious. I want to be fun and …” What was the word she wanted? She raised her arms to the sky and twirled in a circle. “Madcap.”

“Madcap?” He laughed, grabbing her arm to prevent her from bumping into a group of students. “I actually like that you’re serious,” he said, letting go of her all too quickly. “You don’t take life for granted.”

He was right, but how did he know that about her? “You don’t really know me yet.”

“I’m observant,” he said. “Insightful.”

“And modest.”

“That, too.” He stopped briefly to light a cigarette. “So, how come you sound like a Yankee?” he asked as they continued walking.

“Do I? I thought I sounded pretty Southern by now. I was raised in New Jersey until I was eleven.”

“What brought you down here?”

She wasn’t ready to answer that question. He already thought she was serious enough.

“Family stuff,” she said with a shrug.

He didn’t press her, but the sudden silence that followed her answer felt awkward. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed older than he did in the mornings, a true grownup. She wondered if he felt the age gap between them tonight, especially with her spinning on the sidewalk like a ten-year-old. Maybe he wondered what the heck he’d been thinking when he asked her out. He even looked different than he did in the coffee shop. Better, if that was possible. She’d never noticed how tall he was. Sitting next to him in the theater, she’d been painfully aware of his long, lean, denim-covered thigh brushing against hers every time he shifted in his seat. Hold my hand, she’d thought over and over again. Put your arm around me. He did neither, much to her frustration.

“It’s unusual for a guy to be a social work major, isn’t it?” she asked to break the silence.

“You’d be surprised,” he said, letting out a puff of smoke. “There are quite a few in my program. I’m actually more interested in the policy aspect of social work than in working directly with people. I want to be able to influence policy.”

“Like what kind of policies?” She saw their reflection in a storefront window as they walked past. She looked like a little munchkin in a big floppy hat.

“Policies that empower people at risk,” he said. “Like that couple you waited on today. They’re old. One of them is obviously disabled. And they’re black. Three strikes against them right there. So, who advocates for people like that? Who makes sure they’re taken care of?”

Oh, God. He was so smart and so well educated and he was stuck with a ten-year-old munchkin for the evening.

“That’s what you want to do?” she asked. “Advocate for people?”

A group of preppies passed by, and Tim acknowledged one of the guys with a nod. “Yes,” he said, “but the policies I care about most involve prison reform.”

“Why?”

“I think we need better prisons,” he said. “I don’t mean prisoners should be living lives of luxury. That’s not what I’m talking about. I think we should rehabilitate prisoners, not just incarcerate them. And I think the death penalty is wrong and should be unconstitutional.”

“I thought it was unconstitutional.”

“For a brief period of time, it was. Just this past June, though, it became legal again in North Carolina.”

She didn’t think that was so terrible. “Well, if someone kills a little kid, for example, I think he—or she—should have to pay the same price.”

He stared ahead of him as they walked. She could tell he didn’t like her response, but she wasn’t going to sell out her own principles just to please him. He turned toward her, a look on his face she hadn’t seen before. Was it anger? Disappointment?

“An eye for an eye, huh?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“Well, where do I start?” Tim dropped his cigarette butt to the sidewalk and stepped on it, then dug his hands deep into the pockets of his blue windbreaker. “I believe that some of the people getting executed are actually innocent. Maybe they didn’t have a good enough defense because they were too poor to get a decent lawyer. And even if they are guilty, I think it’s wrong to take a life. Even the life of someone who murdered someone else. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“So, I guess you think abortion is wrong, too?” Ronnie’d had an abortion two months ago in August. CeeCee went with her to the clinic, and she cried while her friend underwent the procedure, not because she thought it was wrong but because she thought it was sad. Ronnie didn’t understand her tears.

“It was only ten weeks old, CeeCee,” she said. “Besides. It was going to be an Aquarius. You know I don’t get along with Aquarians.”

“Sometimes abortion’s a necessary evil.” Tim looked at her. “Why? Have you had one?”

“Me? I haven’t even had sex yet.” She cringed. Why had she told him that? What an idiot. But Tim laughed and reached for her hand, holding it at his side as they walked.

“You’re the coolest girl,” he said. “You just tell it like it is.”

The diner was packed with students and the whole building seemed to vibrate with their chatter. She and Tim pushed through the crowd toward a booth in the back, Tim stopping to greet people he knew. He had an acquaintance at nearly every table. It didn’t matter whether the students were jocks or stoners or preps or the heavy-lidded artsy types. He knew them all. The one thing all his friends had in common was that they were significantly older than she was. He introduced her to a few of them. The guys barely seemed to notice her. The girls smiled at her, but she sensed there was something underlying their cordiality. She hoped it was envy and not disdain.

“I love this atmosphere,” she said, once they were seated. This was the world she wanted to be part of. “All the students. It’s like I can—” she breathed in the scent of smoke and French fries “—like I can smell textbooks in the air.”

He laughed. “I take it back,” he said. “You are goofy after all.”

She took off her hat and watched him smile when her hair spilled over her shoulders.

“You deserve to be one of these students,” he said.

“Someday, I will be.”

“Is it just the money?” he asked. “I mean, were your grades good enough? Your SAT scores okay?”

She nodded. “I was this close to getting a scholarship.” She held her thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart.

“I’m sorry.” He wore a small frown. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s okay. Really.” She looked down at the menu, uncomfortable with his sympathy.

“When do you think you’ll have enough money to go to school?” he asked.

“Another year, if Ronnie will continue to live with me and split our expenses. We just share a room, and I know she really wants us to get an apartment, but she doesn’t care about saving money. I’ll have to get a better job. In a few months, I should have enough experience to work at a good restaurant and then I’ll get better tips.”

“I like your ambition,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “So, where do you live? You must live near the coffee shop, since you’re there every morning.”

“Just a few blocks off Franklin,” he said. “I share a house with my brother, Marty. My father owns it, but he lives in California, so he lets us use it.”

“Just your father? Are your parents divorced?” She hoped that wasn’t too personal a question.

The waitress, a blonde with stick-straight, shoulder-length hair, pouty pink lips and blood-red fingernails set glasses of water in front of them.

“Hi, Tim,” she said, but her eyes were on CeeCee. “How’re y’all doin’ tonight?”

“Good,” Tim said. “Bets, this is CeeCee. CeeCee, Bets.”

“You watch out for him, CeeCee,” Bets said with a wink. “He’s a dangerous man.”

“Thanks for the warning.” CeeCee laughed.

“Y’all ready?” Bets pulled two straws from her apron pocket and laid them on the table.

Tim raised his eyebrows at CeeCee. “Do you know what you’d like?”

She wasn’t ready to eat in front of him; she was bound to spill or get something caught in her teeth. “Key lime pie,” she said. That seemed safe. Tim ordered a barbecue sandwich.

“What did she mean about you being a dangerous man?” CeeCee asked, once Bets had left their table.

“She’s just yanking your chain,” Tim said. He took a drink from his water glass. “To get back to your question about my parents, they weren’t divorced. My mother died not too long ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, but it was a half-truth. They now had something in common: they were both motherless. She wondered if his mother had also died of cancer, but didn’t ask. She didn’t like it when people asked personal questions about her own mother. “Is your brother in school, too?” she asked.

“No, no. Marty’s not school material.” Tim drummed his fingers on the table as if he could hear music she could not. “He was in Vietnam,” he said. “He went there a nice kid of eighteen and came back a bitter old man.”

“So, he doesn’t work?” She unwrapped her straw and dropped it into her water glass.

“Yeah, he does. He’s in construction. Someone was crazy enough to put a hammer and a nail gun in his hands.” He laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head as if clearing it of the topic, then leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “So back to you, my mysterious CeeCee. You said you’re only sixteen. Did you start school early or what?”

“I started early and then skipped fifth grade,” she said. “I moved to a new school. Went from a good school to a crummy one and I was way ahead of what the kids were doing, so they skipped me.”

“I knew you were smart,” he said. “Where’s your family?”

She wondered how much to say. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, okay?” she said.

“Sure, okay.”

She played with the wrapper from her straw. “My mother is dead, too,” she began.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“She had breast cancer, even though she was only in her twenties, and we moved down here from New Jersey so she could be in a study at Duke. She died when I was twelve, and then I got kind of shuffled around.”

Tim reached across the table and rested his hand on hers. “In her twenties.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think that happened.”

His eyelashes were as pale as his hair and very long. She studied them to keep from doing something stupid, like turning her hand over to grasp his. “Neither did she,” she said, “so she never looked for a lump or anything.” She didn’t tell him that she would always have to be vigilant about her own health. She didn’t want him to start thinking of her as a woman who would lose both her breasts, the way her mother had.

“What do you mean, you got shuffled around?”

He hadn’t moved his hand from hers. As a matter of fact, he tightened it around her fingers, running his thumb over the skin above her knuckles. Her pulse thrummed beneath his fingertips.

“Well,” she said, “they put me in this place … I was never sure what it was, exactly … I called it juvenile hall because it was full of kids who were screwed up.”

“A residential facility.”

She smiled. “Right, Mr. Social Worker.”

“Go on.”

“I stayed there while they tried to find my father. My parents weren’t married and I’d never met him. It turned out he was in prison for molesting kids, so I guess it’s just as well that I never did.”

“I’d say so.” Tim nodded. “It must have been a huge disappoint—”

Bets picked that moment to show up with their orders, and Tim had no choice but to let go of CeeCee’s hand while she put his food in front of him.

“Here you go, hon,” Bets said to CeeCee as she set down the key lime pie. “You want some extra sauce, Timmy?” she asked.

Timmy? CeeCee squirmed. How well did Bets know him?

“We’re good,” Tim said.

“Okay,” Bets moved on to another table, calling over her shoulder, “Y’all enjoy, now.”

Tim pushed his plate an inch or so toward her. “You want a bite?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Looks good, though.” She played with her straw wrapper again as he bit into his sandwich.

“So,” he said, once he’d swallowed, “after they found your father, then what happened?”

“They put me in foster care.”

“Ah,” he said. “You’ve had some experience with social workers.”

“Plenty.” She drew the tines of her fork across the smooth, pale surface of her pie. “I was in six different foster homes. It wasn’t because I was a problem,” she added. “Just crazy circumstances.”

He nodded. He understood.

“The last one was the best. It was a single woman with some young kids who were really sweet. As soon as I graduated, though, I was on my own.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, taking a sip of water.

“It wasn’t all bad,” she said. “I met a lot of people. You can learn something from everyone you meet.”

“That’s a very wise statement.”

“Hey, Gleason!”

CeeCee turned to see one of the jocks walking toward their table. He was black, clean-cut and handsome, and probably seven feet tall. She’d see him around town from time to time, usually carrying a basketball. Sometimes she could hear him dribbling the ball even before she saw him.

“Hey, Wally, what’s up?” Tim set down his glass and slid his palm across Wally’s in greeting.

Wally shook his head in disgust. “That chick you saw me with the other night? She laid a bad trip on me, man,” he said.

Tim laughed. “Tell me something new.”

“You hangin’ at the Cave tonight?”

“Not tonight.” Tim nodded in her direction. “This is CeeCee,” he said.

CeeCee raised her hand in a small wave. “Hi,” she said.

“Out to lunch with that hair, girl,” Wally said, in what she assumed was a compliment.

“Thanks.”

“All right, boss,” Wally said to Tim. “Check ya later.”

They watched Wally walk away, his hand smacking the air as he bounced an invisible basketball.

“Do you know everyone in Chapel Hill?” she asked.

Tim laughed. “I’ve lived here a long time.” He picked up the sandwich from his plate. “You have to talk for a while so I can make a bigger dent in this thing,” he said. “Tell me about your mother. Were you close to her?”

He was definitely social-worker material. He wasn’t shy about the questions he asked. “Well.” She ran the tines of her fork the other way on the pie and admired the checkerboard pattern she’d created. “My mother was an amazing person,” she said. “She knew she was going to die and she did her best to prepare me for it, although you can never really be prepared. I guess you know all about that.”

He nodded as he chewed, his face solemn.

“At first, she was really angry,” she said, remembering how her mother would snap at her for the slightest infraction. “Then she’d sort of … you know, swing between being angry and being down. And then she got very calm.”

“DABDA,” Tim said.

“Dabda?”

“The five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.”

“Wow, yes, that fits,” she said. “What’s bargaining, though?”

“It’s like making a deal with God.” He wiped his lips with his napkin. “Dear God, if you let me get better, I’ll never do anything bad again.”

“I don’t know if she did that,” CeeCee said. It hurt to imagine her mother trying to bargain her way out of the inevitable. “I did, though.” She laughed at the realization. “I was always promising God I’d be a good girl if he’d make her better.”

“I think you were probably a very good girl.” Tim’s voice was gentle.

She looked at her uneaten pie. “I’d expected a miracle would save her right up until the end. You know what she did?” She couldn’t believe she was going to tell him this. “She wrote me letters before she died,” she said. “There are about sixty of them. She put each one in a sealed envelope and wrote on it when I should open it. There was one for the day after her funeral, and then one for each birthday, and then there’d be some that were sort of haphazardly dated, for years when she thought I’d need a lot of advice, I guess. Like for when I turned sixteen, there was an envelope that said ‘Sixteen,’ then one that said ‘Sixteen and five days,’ and then ‘Sixteen and two months,’ and so on.”

Tim swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and shook his head in amazement. “How phenomenal,” he said. “She was how old?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Man, I don’t know if I could be that strong in her shoes.”

She was glad she’d told him.

“So you still have dozens of letters from her to open?” he asked.

“Actually, no.” She laughed. “I opened every single one of them the day after her funeral.” She’d sat alone in the guest bedroom of an ancient great-aunt reading her mother’s words, many of which she’d been too young to understand, but not too young to treasure. She’d cried and rocked and hugged herself for comfort as she read them, feeling the loss deep in her bones. There was much in those letters she hadn’t understood. She’d skimmed over the advice about sex, too young even to be titillated by it. The words of wisdom on child rearing were meaningless to her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand them; she cherished every stroke of her mother’s pen. “I still have them, though.” The letters were under her bed in a box that had traveled with her from foster home to foster home. They were all she had left of her mother. “She always told me I could decide whether to be happy or sad,” she said. “When she got to the … what did you call that part of the acronym? Acceptance?”

“Right.”

“I guess that’s when she told me that she realized she could spend her last days being a miserable bitch—her words, not mine—or she could spend them being grateful for the time she and I had together. She made up this song about being thankful for the morning and the trees and the air. She said I should sing that song to myself every morning, and—” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed. She was saying too much, almost giddy with the relief of having an attentive listener.

“Why’d you stop?” he asked.

“I’m talking too much.”

“Do you sing the song?”

She nodded. “In my head, I do.”

“And it helps?”

“So much. I feel like she’s still there with me. So I try to be thankful for everything, including every hard thing that’s happened to me.” She looked down at her pie. She’d made a mess of it. “Whew,” she said. “I never talk this much. About my life, I mean. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I like getting to know you better. And I think you were lucky to have that mother of yours as long as you did.”

“I haven’t given you a chance to talk at all,” she said.

“We have time for that, CeeCee.” Tim stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as positive as you are.”

The compliment meant more to her than anything else he might say. If you were positive, you could do anything.

He offered her a ride home after they left the restaurant. She climbed into his white Ford van, the overhead light giving her a glimpse of the mattress in the back, and her knees nearly gave out from under her. She wanted him to suggest they go into the dark cavern back there. She wanted him to be her first lover. But when he pulled up in front of the Victorian boardinghouse, he got out of the van and walked around to open her door.

“I wish I could ask you in,” she said, as he walked her up the porch steps, “but we’re not allowed to have male visitors in our room.”

“That’s okay,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. It was a light kiss and she had to make herself pull away before she asked for more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. The porch light was reflected in his eyes, and he gave her hair a little tug, like the black woman had done at the bus stop.

She returned his smile with a wave, then unlocked the door and raced upstairs. She wanted to tell Ronnie about this perfect night, even though her roommate would never understand why she felt such a thrill over being able to talk to someone the way she’d talked to Tim. Look at all she’d told him! He even knew she was a virgin. She could tell him anything about herself and he would receive it all with compassion and understanding.

Next time, she’d give him a chance to tell her everything about his life, and she’d listen with the same attentiveness he’d shown her.

She was a completely honest person, though. It would never occur to her that he was not.

Chapter Four

I have no idea what kind of girl you are now, so I don’t know what to say to help you and I hate that I can’t be there with you. I get so angry sometimes that I won’t be able to watch you grow up!

Here are a few things you need to know. First, don’t have sex! But if you do, get birth control pills or condoms. You can get them at Planned Parenthood. Second, sex is not all it’s cracked up to be. The earth doesn’t move, especially not the first time, and any woman who tells you that it does is a liar. Third, don’t trust boys! Here are some lies they’ll tell you to get you to sleep with them:

1) I never felt this way about anyone before.

2) Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning.

3) My balls (testicles) will turn blue and explode if we don’t make love.

4) I promise I’ll pull out before I come.

I can’t believe I’m writing this to you, my little twelve-year-old baby! It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever be old enough to need this advice, but for what it’s worth, there it is.

THE ROOM SHE SHARED WITH RONNIE WAS NOT MUCH bigger than a closet. Their twin beds were perpendicular to each other, and two narrow dressers lined the wall, leaving barely enough room to walk across the floor. Two nights after her date with Tim, CeeCee came home after working a double shift.

“Any messages?” she asked, her attention darting toward the phone. She’d seen Tim at breakfast that morning, but the coffee shop had been crowded and there’d been no time to talk.

“Uh-uh, sorry.” Ronnie looked up from her bed, where she was painting her toenails. “But there’s a package for you.” She nodded toward CeeCee’s bed, where a small, square box wrapped in brown paper rested on her pillow.

“Weird,” CeeCee said. It was rare for her to get mail. She picked up the package by the cord tied around it. Light as air. Her name and address were printed in black ink.

“I shook it and it sounds empty to me,” Ronnie said. “How’d tonight go? I take it Tim didn’t stop in?”

“No.” CeeCee sat on her bed and kicked off her tennis shoes. Her feet hurt and she massaged her toes through her kneesocks. “Is he ever going to ask me out again?”

“I hope so.” Ronnie sounded genuinely sympathetic.

“Why can’t I just ask him?” CeeCee pulled one end of the cord, but it was tightly knotted. “Why do we always have to wait to be asked? Can I borrow your nail clippers?”

Ronnie tossed the clippers to her. “If he doesn’t ask you out again, he’s a cretin. You don’t want him.”

Yes, I do. She had constant fantasies about Tim picking her up after her shift, driving to a park, someplace quiet and private, and making love to her on the mattress in the back of the van. “I should never have told him I was a virgin,” she said.

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” Ronnie agreed. She’d screamed so loudly when CeeCee told her about her “I’ve never had sex” comment that their landlady rushed in, afraid they were being murdered.

CeeCee clipped the cord and ripped the paper from the package to reveal a flimsy white cardboard box. She lifted the lid and gasped.

“There’s money in here!” she said.

“What?” Ronnie set her nail polish on the windowsill and rushed to CeeCee’s bed. “Holy crap,” she said, peering into the box. “How much?”

CeeCee pulled out the wad of bills and started counting.

“They’re all fifties,” Ronnie said.

“Six hundred, six-fifty,” CeeCee counted, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seven hundred, seven-fifty.”

“Oh my God,” Ronnie said as the number grew. She grabbed the brown paper the box had been wrapped in. “Was there any name anywhere?”

“Shh,” CeeCee said. She was up to twelve hundred and her hands were starting to shake.

Ronnie watched in silence until CeeCee had counted one hundred fifty-dollar bills. Five thousand dollars. They looked at each other.

“I don’t get it,” CeeCee said.

“Maybe, like, your last foster mother sent it?” Ronnie suggested. “You said she was really nice.”

“Really nice and really poor,” CeeCee said.

Ronnie picked up one of the fifties, squinting at it as she held it up to the light. “Are there any marks or clues or anything on the bills?”

CeeCee riffled through the bills and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well,” Ronnie said, “when you were baring your soul to Tim the other night, did you happen to mention that you were penniless?” She was reading CeeCee’s mind.

“But why would he do this?” CeeCee asked in a whisper.

“That—” Ronnie gnawed her lip “—is a very scary question.”

She poured Tim’s coffee the following morning. “I got a package in the mail yesterday,” she said.

“A package?” He looked innocent. “What was in it?”

“Money.” She set the coffeepot on his table and whipped out her order pad. “Tim, tell me the truth. Did you send it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His blond, sun-lit curls gave him a soft, angelic look.

“It was five thousand dollars.”

Tim nodded as though impressed. “That would take you through a couple of years of college and then some, wouldn’t it?”

She slapped her order pad onto the table. “It’s from you?” she asked.

“CeeCee, settle down.” Tim laughed. “If it were from me, I wouldn’t tell you because I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I wouldn’t tell you because I’d want you to have it, no strings attached. If you and I broke up tomorrow, I’d still want you to have it. If I’d been the one to give it to you, that is.”

If they broke up? He considered them a couple? She didn’t allow the elation to show in her face.

“I’m getting angry,” she said, instead. “Tell me.”

“Look, CeeCee.” He patted her arm. “Whoever sent it wouldn’t have done it if they couldn’t afford it, right? So, you need it. Just enjoy it. Buy me supper with it tonight. And put the rest in the bank the first chance you get.”

They ate at a Moroccan restaurant, sitting on the floor in a small room all to themselves. Tim ordered a bottle of wine and, away from the eyes of their waiter, she drank from his glass. Soon the money was forgotten, and she felt relaxed and a little loopy. They told every old joke they could remember and sang songs from The Beatles’ White Album, which she knew because her mother had loved The Beatles. CeeCee told him about the time she saw The Beatles in Atlantic City at the age of five, because her mother’s friends had a bunch of tickets and they’d been unable to find a babysitter for her. It had been one of the most traumatic events of her early life. She couldn’t hear the music for the screaming of the fans, and everyone had stood on their chairs while she sat on the floor, her hands over her ears. Still, Tim was impressed. He’d never gotten to see them at all.

She tried to pay for their dinners, which had been the deal, but Tim brushed her offer aside. She wanted to tell him, No more tips, ever, and that she would pay for everything when they went out, but since he hadn’t acknowledged he’d sent the money, she couldn’t do that.

After dinner, he drove her to the house he shared with his brother, and she knew for sure that he’d been the one to send the money. The house—a tall, stately brick mansion surrounded by manicured lawns and boxwood hedges—was in the moneyed, historic heart of Chapel Hill. Once inside, CeeCee stifled a gasp. Tim obviously had someone to care for the grounds, but if he also had a housekeeper, she hadn’t worked in a very long time. Clothes, dirty plates and pizza boxes were strewn on the small antique tables and chairs in the otherwise elegant foyer. She spotted an overturned chair in the dining room on her left and a broken vase in the living room on her right. The odor of marijuana drifted down the curved staircase, along with the sound of the Eagles singing “Hotel California.”

“Maid’s day off,” Tim joked. “Hope you don’t mind a little clutter.”

A man, straggly haired and barefoot, walked into the foyer from the living room carrying both a beer and a cigarette. He stopped short when he saw them.

“What’s up, bro?” Tim asked.

The man looked at CeeCee, and she took an involuntary step backward toward the door. His eyes were bloodshot and he wore several days’ growth of beard. He looked like some of the homeless guys who sometimes hung out on Franklin Street.

“Who’s this?” He nodded toward her.

“This is CeeCee.” Tim put his arm around her. “And this is my brother, Marty.”

Marty’s nod was curt. “How old are you?” he asked. “Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Give her a break,” Tim said.

“I’m sixteen,” she said.

Marty let out a whistle and walked back into the living room. “Tim, get your ass in here,” he said over his shoulder.

Tim looked at her apologetically. “Kitchen’s in there.” He pointed toward one of the arched doorways off the foyer. “Help yourself to something to drink and I’ll be there in a second.”

The disaster in the kitchen made the foyer look like something out of Good Housekeeping. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. The long blue granite countertops were littered with pizza crusts and beer bottles and dirty ashtrays. Gingerly she opened the refrigerator, expecting to be greeted by the stench of rotting food. It wasn’t bad, though. There were bottles of condiments, a few blocks of cheese, a shelf full of beer and a single can of Coke. She took the Coke, popped it open, then tiptoed toward the door, straining to hear Tim and Marty’s conversation. Their voices were muffled, but she heard Marty say, “You don’t have time for this shit now. You gotta focus.”

Was he talking about Tim’s schoolwork? It seemed bizarre for someone as clearly out-of-it as Marty to lecture Tim about anything.

“… mess up the plan,” Marty said.

“Up yours,” Tim responded, and she heard his footsteps approaching the kitchen. She leaned back against the counter and sipped her Coke.

“Sorry about that,” Tim said when he came into the kitchen. “Marty can be a little paranoid sometimes.”

“That’s okay,” she said, but she wished Marty would go out and leave them alone. She didn’t feel comfortable with him in the house.

Tim took the can from her hand and set it on the counter. Then he put his arms around her, smiled his green-eyed smile and bent down to kiss her. She’d stood like this with a couple of boys before. She’d kissed them and even let them touch her breasts, but that had been it. Tim, though, was not a boy. This kiss was a first for her—a kiss linked by delicate electric threads to her nipples, and that made her instantly wet.

Tim seemed to know the effect he was having on her. “Let’s go upstairs to my bedroom,” he said.

“I’m not on the pill or anything,” she said.

“I’ve got condoms. Don’t worry.”

She took his hand and they walked back into the foyer and up the curved staircase, past the room that was the source of the blaring music and the sweet herbal scent of marijuana, and down the hall to Tim’s bedroom. It had once been a lovely room, she was sure. The wallpaper was a masculine blue stripe. The double bed and dresser and desk were all made from the same dark red cherry. But it was hard to notice the details with clothes and books strewn on every surface, and she didn’t let herself think about how long it had been since he’d changed his sheets. She didn’t care. He closed his door and locked it, then drew her down next to him on the bed, and she let the electricity in her body take over.

They cuddled together afterward. He’d left his closet light on, and she was just able to make out his features on the pillow next to her. He ran his fingers down her cheek and wound them in her hair.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you sore?”

“I’m better than okay,” she said. As her mother had warned her, the earth hadn’t moved. At least not when he was inside her. He’d already made her come three times by then with his expert fingers and amazing mouth, but once he was inside her, she didn’t feel much at all. Maybe it was the condom. If she hadn’t loved being so close to him in whatever way she could, she would have been disappointed.

There was a knock at the door and she tightened the sheet to her chest.

“Going out,” Marty said.

“Hold on.” Tim got up, the closet light catching the long line of his body. He unlocked the door and walked naked into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. “Did you take your meds?” she heard him ask Marty.

“You know, if you need to get laid, you’ve got the van to do it in,” Marty said. “You don’t need to …” The rest of his sentence was muffled. CeeCee thought of getting out of the bed and dressing quickly, but her body felt frozen beneath the sheet. Could that be all she meant to him? An easy lay?

After a few minutes, Tim came back into the room, lying down next to her with a sigh that told her the mood was broken and unrecoverable.

“He thinks I just want you for your body,” he said. “And I want you to know that’s not it. I like you. I liked you the first day I met you in the restaurant when you spilled coffee on me. I think you’re … adorable and I love being around you because you have such a great attitude. You’re a little naive when it comes to what’s happening in the world, and maybe that’s why you’re so upbeat most of the time. Ignorance is bliss and all that. I don’t care.”

She listened until she thought he was finished, relishing the compliments and embarrassed by the allusions to her naiveté.

“You’re right,” she said. “I hardly know anything about Vietnam, for example, except that there were a lot of protests about being there. And it messed up some guys. Like, what happened to Marty. What kind of medication is he on?”

Tim lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. “You heard our conversation?” he asked.

“Part of it.”

“He’s paranoid. He thinks every sound is something coming to get him. And he doesn’t trust people much. If you could’ve known him before, you would have liked him. You’d understand why I care about him. I’m just glad he came back alive. So many people didn’t. And he’s still smart. Smarter than my sister and me.”

“You have a sister? Does she live here, too?”

“Nope,” he said in a way that told her the subject was off-limits.

She sat up, hugging her knees through the blanket, and surveyed the dimly lit trash heap that was his room. She had to face it: she was in love with a slob. An idea popped into her head. A way to put a smile back on his face.

“I’d like to clean up your house for you,” she said. “I’m a fantastic organizer.”

“No way,” he said.

“I want to do it. Please let me.” It was the least she could do for someone who’d, in all likelihood, given her five thousand dollars.

He stroked her bare back with his fingers. “Are you going to apply to go to school in the spring?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Then the house is yours,” he said. “Do what you like with it. Just … stay out of Marty’s room.”

“I plan to stay out of Marty’s way,” she said.

“Good thinking.”

“Do you have some studying to do?”

“I need to do some typing,” he said. “But I don’t need to—”

“I’ll start right here, right now,” she interrupted him. “You don’t mind me doing things in your closet and your drawers?”

He laughed, reaching beneath the sheet to stroke the side of her breast. “You’ve already done some pretty good things in my drawers,” he said, and it took her a minute to get it.

She gave him a little shove. “You study and I’ll straighten up,” she said.

He got out of bed and pulled on his jeans. She followed close behind him, feeling his eyes on her body as she got dressed. When she looked up he was smiling at her. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to just sit here while you’re slaving around in my room looking cute as a button.”

“You won’t be just sitting there, you’ll be working.” She flipped on the overhead light, took his arm and guided him to his desk. “And I love doing this kind of thing. Honestly. When I left one of the homes I was in, my foster mother told the social worker she’d miss how I always straightened up after everyone.”

“I’d miss a lot more than that,” Tim said, taking a seat at his desk.

She bent over to kiss the top of his head. It was hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago she’d thought this relationship was over. Now she felt at ease, as though they’d been together for years. She hoped that’s what was ahead of them: years of being together.

She started with his clothes, tossing the ones that were obviously soiled into the overstuffed hamper and hanging and folding the others. Then she worked on his bookshelf, where papers and notebooks were piled helter-skelter. Tim typed at his desk. He was a good typist, and she worked to the clacking sound of his fingers flying over the keys.

After an hour or so, he pushed back from his desk and looked down at her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by piles of books and papers. She rested her hand on one of the stacks.

“These are things I don’t know what to do with,” she said. “And what’s this?” She held up a packet of papers she’d found stapled together. On the cover sheet was a line drawing of a man with his head over a block, an executioner standing next to him, ax raised and ready to fall. The picture gave her the creeps. Across the top of the paper, in large handwritten letters, was the word SCAPE. “What’s SCAPE?” she asked.

Tim looked at the sheaf of papers in her hand. He stared at it a long time as if trying to remember where he’d seen it before. Then his eyes met hers. “If I tell you something, can you keep it between us?”

“Tim,” she said, as if she couldn’t believe he’d ask such a question. “Of course,” she said. “Look at everything I’ve told you.”

He still looked dubious. Then he stood up and held out his hand for her. She got to her feet and walked with him from his room, down the hall and into a huge bedroom that she guessed had belonged to his parents. It was a relief to be in a room the brothers had yet to trash. The queen-size bed was a four-poster and the floor was covered by a red-and-beige Persian rug that stretched nearly wall to wall.

Tim sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up one of the framed photographs from the marble-topped night table. She sat next to him, and he put his arm around her as he held the picture on her knees. It was of three teenagers, two boys and a girl, grinning at the camera in a moment of simple joy. The boy on the left was Tim. His blond curls were longer and wilder, and his smile was different than it was now. More open. Less jaded by time and experience.

“That’s you,” CeeCee said.

“Right.” Tim pointed to the boy on the right. “And that’s Marty.”

The grinning young Marty bore the clean-cut, steel-jawed good looks of a soldier. “Wow, I wouldn’t have recognized him.”

“He’d just turned eighteen here,” Tim said. “Shipped out the next week. Andie—” Tim pointed to the girl standing between them “—and I were fifteen.”

“She’s your … this is your sister?” CeeCee asked.

For the first time since she’d asked him about SCAPE, Tim smiled. “My twin,” he said, his fingertips lightly touching the glass over Andie’s picture. His voice sounded swollen with love for his sister. “And that’s where SCAPE comes in.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

Tim let out a long sigh. “A couple of years ago, Andie was arrested for murder.”

CeeCee caught her breath. “Murder?” she asked. “Did she do it?”

Tim didn’t answer the question. “When she finally got her day in court last summer, the jury came to the conclusion that she did.”

CeeCee suddenly understood Tim’s concerns about prison reform. “Why did they think she did it?”

“Because they didn’t really know her. Andie couldn’t hurt anyone. And the thing is … Marty screwed things up for her. I don’t blame him for what he did, but he still feels like crap about it.”

“What did he do?”

Tim stared at the picture. “See, what happened was, this photographer was supposed to come take pictures of our house to do a spread for Southern Living Classics. You know, the magazine?”

She nodded, although she didn’t know the magazine at all.

“My parents were in Europe,” Tim continued, “so the guy was just going to photograph the exterior and do the rest when they got back. Andie was home, but she was studying in her room. We were both finishing up our sophomore year at Carolina. She’d— we’d—just turned nineteen. Anyhow, she said she didn’t even know the guy was here taking pictures, and the next day, one of our neighbors saw him dead in the backyard. He’d been stabbed about a dozen times with a kitchen knife. The neighbor said she saw Andie outside talking to him the day before.” Tim set the photograph back on the night table and stood up, running his fingers through his hair. “So, then things got all screwed up,” he said.

CeeCee tried to mask her horror. A man had been murdered in the yard behind the house she was sitting in. Stabbed a dozen times. She shuddered at the thought.

“The cops interviewed Andie and Marty and me separately.” Tim idly touched objects on the long dresser. Another photograph. A hand mirror. A silver cigarette lighter. “And we all said different things. I told the truth. I said I was on campus around the time they figured the guy was murdered, which I was, and that I’d met Marty for lunch. He’d just gotten back from Vietnam and was kind of a mess.”

Tim opened one of the top dresser drawers and pulled out an unopened pack of Winstons. CeeCee sat quietly as he lit a cigarette and let out a stream of smoke. He held the pack toward her and she shook her head.

“Marty lied, though,” Tim said. “He said he was home with Andie all afternoon, that she never went outside. He said it to protect her, of course.” He laughed mirthlessly. “This is so screwed up,” he said.

“And what did Andie say?” she asked.

“That she was home alone and never saw the guy. Her prints were on the knife, and she said that was because it was from our kitchen and she used it all the time. So, Marty got a slap on the wrist for lying and Andie got put in jail for a year and a half while she waited for a trial. My parents came home right away and got her a decent lawyer, but Andie’s story was screwy and the jury knew it. The prosecution made the case that it was premeditated. That Andie killed him for his camera equipment, even though they could never prove anything was missing. The thing is, Andie never believed she’d be convicted, so she never told anyone what really happened. She lied during the trial and lied to her lawyer because—” he took a long drag on the cigarette and looked squarely at CeeCee “—because she really did kill him, but thought things would go worse for her if she admitted it.”

“She did it?” The scene in the yard grew more vivid in her eyes. She saw the pretty blonde in the photograph plunging a knife into a stranger’s heart. Twelve times.

“She told the truth after she got convicted. It was … devastating. We were all in the courtroom when the verdict was announced. My mother started sobbing, and Andie stood up and shouted, ‘I want to tell the truth! I want to tell the truth!’ It was a little late for that.”

“What was the truth?”

“The guy raped her.” Tim raised the cigarette to his lips, his hand trembling. “He got her to let him inside to shoot some of the interior and then he—” Tim stopped himself. “Let’s just say he was a brutal son of a bitch. She went a little crazy after he left the house and she grabbed the knife and went out in the yard and let him have it. Got him back for what he did to her. I believed her. We all did. But her attorney didn’t and it was just too little too late. If she perjured herself once, she’d do it again. That’s what they figured.” Tim leaned against the dresser, his arms folded across his chest, and looked directly at CeeCee. “She got the death penalty,” he said.

Everything fell into place. “Oh,” she said.

“And our mother couldn’t take it. Mom always had problems with depression and she felt guilty that she and my father traveled so much and she hadn’t been there for Andie. Even though we were all old enough to take care of ourselves. So,” Tim said, and raised his hands in a helpless gesture, “I came home a few days after the trial to find my mother dead of an overdose.” He looked at the bed where CeeCee still sat, and she knew that’s where he’d found his mother. She stood up.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, overwhelmed. His family, apparently once prosperous and happy, had quickly turned to dust. A daughter sentenced to death. A brother gone crazy in Vietnam. A mother’s suicide. She wrapped her arms around Tim, pressing her cheek to his bare chest. “It’s all so horrible,” she said.

He returned the embrace and she felt his chin rest on the top of her head. “You still want to be here with me?” he asked.

“More than ever,” she said. She could comfort him. They could comfort each other. “Is Andie … is she still alive?” she asked.

“On death row,” he said. “And I still haven’t told you about SCAPE,” he said.

She leaned back to look up at him. “What is it?”

He put out his cigarette and drew her back to the bed again. “We—Marty and I and some lawyers—have been trying to get her sentence reduced. SCAPE is an organization of people who are against the death penalty. It stands for Stop Capital Punishment Everywhere. But it’s kind of an underground group.”

“What does that mean?”

“Did you ever hear of the Weather Underground?”

CeeCee shrugged. The name was familiar, but she didn’t know why.

“It was a group of people who believed things needed to be different and who gave up on conventional channels. So, in the case of SCAPE, we try to find ways to get rid of the death penalty. We protest and … that sort of thing.”

“Have you tried writing to President Carter?” she asked.

“It’s really not up to Carter,” Tim said. “The only person who could stay her execution is Governor Russell. We’ve written to him and tried to get in to see him. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s a hard-liner who’s glad to see the death penalty back. He’s an asshole. I think he sees Andie as someone he can use as an example. ‘See? Even women will pay if they disobey the laws of the land.’”

“There’s got to be something you can do,” she said.

He looked at her and for the first time since he’d started talking about Andie, there was a smile on his face. “I love your optimism,” he said. “And I think I’m falling in love with you.”

They were the words she was waiting for. “I know I love you,” she said.

Tim wound a lock of her hair around his index finger. “I can honestly say I’ve never felt this way about a girl before,” he said. “You’re young, and I thought that might be a problem at first, but you have such a way about you. You’re so positive and you make me feel more positive. Thank you.”

She nodded.

“And please keep this … this stuff about SCAPE between you and me.”

He looked worried and her heart filled with love for him. “I would do anything for you,” she said, and she meant it.

Chapter Five

Dear CeeCee,

It’s hard for me to give you more advice about boys and men without scaring you. How do I balance preparing you without frightening you? I guess I can only tell you about my own experiences.

When I was fifteen, I was raped. (This was not your father, so don’t worry about that!) I worked after school at this nursery (the plant kind) and he was a regular customer there, so when he offered me a ride home one evening, I took it. It was dark when we got to my house and I stupidly told him my parents weren’t home. He walked me to the door and the next thing I knew I was on the porch, flat on my back, his hand over my mouth. I couldn’t do a thing. He just stood up with a smile afterward and drove away. That was the angriest I’ve ever been in my life. If I’d had a gun, I would have killed him.

I never told anyone about this except you, CeeCee, because I was so ashamed of how stupid I was.

So I guess there are some good ones out there, but I never had the pleasure of meeting one of them. Just be careful and don’t do anything as stupid and trusting as I did, okay?

EVERY MOMENT SHE SPENT WITH TIM, HER LOVE FOR HIM deepened. In the coffee shop in the morning, she felt the sweet secret of their relationship in the air between them. Oh, Ronnie knew how much she loved him, but she didn’t know—and she could never understand—the bond that was growing between them. Ronnie was still into playing games with guys. She told CeeCee to flirt with other customers in the coffee shop to make Tim jealous. She told her to fake orgasms in order to boost his ego. The orgasm problem did worry her, but for the most part, she laughed off her friend’s advice.

She’d not been loved this way since she was twelve. Everything she did was appreciated, even applauded. They were lovers and best friends. He was helping her with her application for Carolina. The deadline was mid-January, but he said the sooner she applied, the better. She had to get her high-school transcripts and write an essay, among other things, and she felt him holding her hand every step of the way. She thought her acceptance would mean as much to him as it would to her.

She’d moved from organizing Tim’s room and closet to straightening the rest of the house. The once-filthy kitchen was now spotless, every pot and pan in its place. She’d polished the living-room furniture with lemon oil and scrubbed mildew from the tile in the bathroom. Tim told her she didn’t need to do any of it, but it gave her a sense of satisfaction. He did so much for her; she loved being able to give back, and she began to feel some ownership in the beautiful mansion.

Pictures of Andie were everywhere. She’d pick them up and study the girl’s eager smile, thinking, You had no idea what fate had in store for you. She would imagine Andie being raped by the photographer, and even though she knew the rape had occurred inside the house, in her mind it took place at night on the front porch—a front porch that didn’t even exist at the mansion. Tim told her childhood stories about his sister, how she brought home stray kittens and how, at age seven, she tried to sneak into his hospital room when he’d had his appendix out because no one would let her visit him. How she’d tried to climb into the coffin at their grandmother’s funeral. The love CeeCee felt for Tim began to expand to encompass his sister.

“Can I meet her?” she asked one night when he was telling her Andie stories in bed.

“I’ll look into it,” he said. “She’s in Raleigh and they limit who can visit, but I think you should meet her. Y’all would really love each other.”

Funny how love could double and then triple. She even felt some of it toward Marty. Marty began to see her as friend rather than foe, and the night he said that her fried chicken was the best he’d ever tasted, she knew she was winning him over. That same night, he’d brought his guitar into the living room and played a lot of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs that he knew all the words to, while she and Tim stumbled through the lyrics. He’d had a guitar in ‘Nam, Marty explained to her, and music got him through some rough times.

The day before Halloween, she bought three pumpkins and she, Tim and Marty sat in the kitchen, carving jack-o’-lanterns and nibbling roasted pumpkin seeds. At first she’d wondered if it had been a mistake to put a knife in Marty’s hands, but he was careful with his carving, and his design turned out to be the most intricate, if also the most frightening, of the three.

Her mother had liked to dress up to open the door to trick-or-treaters, so CeeCee made a Jolly Green Giant costume out of green tights, a green turtle neck and an abundance of green felt. She had the feeling that Tim thought she was going a bit overboard, but he still told her she looked adorable in her outfit.

On Halloween night, she put on her costume, lit candles in the jack-o’-lanterns, and set them out on the front stoop. When the first trick-or-treater arrived, though, Marty panicked.

“Don’t open the door!” He’d been sitting in the living room with Tim, but now he headed for the stairs.

“It’s all right, Marty,” Tim said. “It’s just a kid looking for a handout.”

“Don’t open it!” Marty stood at the top of the stairs, and CeeCee, cradling a bowl of chocolate kisses, saw real terror in his eyes.

“It’s okay, Marty,” she said. “I won’t open it.”

Tim looked at her with gratitude. “Sorry,” he said.

She went outside and blew out the candles inside the jack-o’-lanterns, then Tim turned out the front lights. Standing in the middle of the foyer in her Jolly Green Giant outfit, she looked up at Marty, who was now sitting on the top step like a little kid, elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his hands.

“Get your guitar, Marty, and come downstairs,” she said. “We’ve got some chocolate to eat.”

Four weeks after their first date, Tim called her when he got out of his evening class. It was nearly ten-thirty, and CeeCee and Ronnie were lying in their beds reading, but when he asked if he could come pick her up, that he had something important he wanted to ask her, she didn’t hesitate.

“I’ll wait for you out front.” She hung up the phone and hopped off her bed. “He said he has something important to ask me,” she said to Ronnie as she stripped off her pajamas.

“Oh my God!” Ronnie put down her magazine. “Do you think he’s going to propose? Today is, like, your one-month anniversary and everything, right?”

That had been CeeCee’s first thought as well, though she and Tim had never even mentioned marriage. The tone of his voice, though, told her that whatever he wanted to ask her was serious business.

“I don’t know.” She pulled a T-shirt over her head, not bothering with a bra. “I just can’t see him asking me to marry him right now.” Did she want him to? She wasn’t sure.

“You’re practically his wife already,” Ronnie said. “You do his laundry, for Pete’s sake. Maybe he figures he should make it legal.”

CeeCee ran a brush through her hair, bending low to see her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. “It’s probably nothing like that.”

“I bet it is.” Ronnie sat up on her bed, hugging her knees. “What will you say if he asks you?”

She gave her hair one final swipe with the brush as she thought about the question. “I’d say no,” she said finally. “I mean, I know he’s the right one, but I want to be out of college and supporting myself before I get married. I don’t want to be dependent on him.”

Ronnie held up the issue of Cosmopolitan she’d been reading. “You need to take a look at this article,” she said. “He’s rich. Let him support you.”

CeeCee opened the door, then turned back to her friend with a smile. “One day,” she said. “But not today.”

Chapter Six

Today you rubbed my back after I got sick. It felt so good. It’s like you’re the mother now and I’m the child. You’re a natural-born caretaker, CeeCee. How did I get so lucky to have you as a daughter?

SHE CLIMBED INTO TIM’S VAN AND LEANED OVER TO KISS him, and she knew right away that he was nervous. His smile was brief and false and he didn’t hold her gaze the way he usually did. Instead, he started driving.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I just don’t want to talk in front of your house.” He probably thought Ronnie would be watching from the window. “Should we go to your house?”

He shook his head and turned the corner into the parking lot of an old Baptist church. “Marty’s there,” he said, “and I want to talk to you alone.”

Oh, God. He was going to propose.

He turned off the ignition. “It’s getting kind of chilly out. Will you be okay if we just sit here for a while?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

The parking-lot lights filled the car and he looked pale, almost sick, in their glow. “I’ve got something heavy to talk to you about,” he said.

She couldn’t stop her smile. “Okay.” She would have to be very kind when she turned him down, very loving. She’d make sure he knew it was the timing that was wrong, not the proposal itself.

Tim rubbed his palms together as if trying to warm himself up.

“There’s a way you can help Andie,” he said.

Surprised, she swallowed the words she’d been ready to say. He was not going to ask her to marry him. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

“How?” she asked.

He looked at her squarely for the first time since she got in the car. “I’m not sure how to tell you,” he said, pressing his hands together. “I guess what I need to say first is that Marty and I have been working on a plan. But it’s illegal.” He watched her face for a reaction. “And it’s dangerous,” he added.

She clutched his arm. “What are you talking about?” She remembered the waitress, Bets, who told her Tim was a dangerous man, and she felt a quick, sharp fear that she could lose him. He could get arrested and locked away, the way Andie was.

“You don’t have to say you’ll do what I ask. Okay?” He covered her hand with his. “I mean, I love you, babe. I’m going to go on loving you whether you help me with this or not. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she said, “but—”

“Do you want me to tell you the plan or would you rather not know?”

“Well, I have to know what I’m saying yes or no to, don’t I?”

“If I tell you, you have to swear that you won’t breathe a word to anyone. Not Ronnie or anyone. So, if you might have a hard time doing that, please let me know now so I don’t—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “I promise.” They were planning to break Andie out of prison. What else could make him this jumpy and anxious? Maybe they’d ask her to drive the getaway car or something. If that was the only way to save Andie’s life, could she do it? “Dangerous” was an understatement. “If she’s on death row,” she said, “won’t it be nearly impossible to get her out?”

“What?” Tim looked confused. “Oh. No, that’s not it, CeeCee.” He let go of her and ran both hands through his hair. “You know we’ve tried every legal way to get her sentence reduced, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Now, we have to play hardball. Listen to me.” He took both her hands in his. “Marty and I are going to kidnap Governor Russell’s wife.”

“What?” She giggled. “Are you kidding?”

He looked away from her, not a hint of a smile on his face, and she knew he was not kidding at all. “I’m very serious,” he said.

“Tim.” She let go of his hand, reached up and turned his face toward hers. “This is crazy,” she said. “This is like something Marty would come up with. Is this his idea?”

“Mine, actually,” he said. “And it’s not crazy. We’ve got it all worked out.”

“I can’t believe you’d even think of doing something like this.”

“I won’t tell you anything more about it, then,” he said. “Just don’t say anything to anyone.”

“I told you I wouldn’t. But I’m not following you at all. How will kidnapping the governor’s wife help Andie?”

“We’ll let her go when he commutes her sentence.”

“Then you could end up in prison, too,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“What if he won’t do it?”

“I believe he will.”

“But you—”

“Look.” He raised his hands sharply in the air, suddenly angry. “It’s going to work, okay? I need it to work. So please, cool it with the ‘but this’ and ‘but that.’ It doesn’t help.”

It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her and she had to struggle to keep from crying. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He pressed his palms against his eyes, his breathing harsh. “Shooting holes in a plan you know nothing about … it doesn’t make it any easier on me, CeeCee.”

She bit her lip, unsure what to say. When he dropped his hands from his face, his eyes were red and wet.

“It’s my sister, damn it!” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “I have to help her.”

“I know,” she said, “and I know how much you love her.” She leaned forward to embrace him, wanting to absorb some of his pain. “What exactly did you want me to do?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it. We can get somebody else to do it.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket and lit one, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. “There’s this girl in SCAPE who’d probably—”

“Tell me what you wanted me to do,” she repeated.

He sighed, rolling his head back and forth as though the conversation was making his neck ache. “It’s like this,” he said. “Some relatives of ours have a cabin on the Neuse River near New Bern. Do you know where that is?”

“Sort of,” she said. “It’s a couple of hours from here?”

“Right. They don’t ever use it this time of year, so that’s where we’ll take the wife. Then Marty and I will stay in this other house in Jacksonville and communicate with Russell—the governor—from there. Once Russell says he’ll do it, we’ll go get the wife and return her to him. Unharmed,” he added.

“You’ll just leave the wife alone in the cabin? Won’t she—” She caught herself. She was shooting holes again.

“That’s where you’d come in,” he said. “You … or the girl from SCAPE or whoever … you’d stay with her.”

She tried to imagine herself, sixteen years old, trying to keep a grown woman under lock and key. “I don’t think I could do it,” she said.

“I know you don’t think you could.” He touched her cheek, and she was relieved that his anger had passed. “You don’t want to do it, and that’s cool. You’re just someone Marty and I knew we could trust. We need someone who’d make sure the wife stays safe and who’d take care of her. You’re really good at that kind of thing. I don’t know the girl from SCAPE all that well, but maybe she’ll be good at it, too. You care about Andie and Marty and me, so it just made sense to ask you.”

Guilt rested on her shoulders like a lead weight. He’d done so much for her. The girl from SCAPE, sure of her values and ready to fight for them, would be willing to help them when she didn’t even know them.

“Tim.” She leaned across the space between their seats to put her arms around him, careful to avoid the cigarette. “I wish you wouldn’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”

He let out a long sigh and she heard both frustration and disappointment in the sound. “It’s the only choice we’ve got, CeeCee,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “And we’re going to do it. With you or without you.”

Chapter Seven

The hospice counselor asked why I never cut your hair. I said it was your decision when to cut it. You’ve made good decisions from the time you were little. (With the exception of the time you flushed Teddy-Doodle down the toilet, remember that?) I think the important thing about making a decision is just to make it. Otherwise you can go nuts thinking about the pros and cons. It’s like when I decided to come to Duke for the breast cancer study. It was a big decision, uprooting you from your friends and trying a new drug and everything. My mind was saying, “Don’t do it!” but my heart said, “You’ve got to give it a try.” Was it the right decision? I don’t know. I’m dying, so I guess you could say it was the wrong one, but if I never did it I would probably be dying in New Jersey, wondering if I should have taken the risk. So, when it comes to making a decision, look at both sides, listen to your heart, then pick one and dive in.

IN THE COFFEE SHOP THE FOLLOWING MORNING, SHE SET Tim’s plate of eggs and grits in front of him, then leaned over to whisper. “I’d like to talk to you and Marty about—” she shrugged “—you know.”

Tim’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you considering it?” he asked.

“I have a lot of questions.”

“Sure you do.” Tim touched her hand briefly. “Come over tonight. We’ll get pizza and talk.”

“With Marty,” she said. “I need to know we all agree on the plan before I make a decision.”

“I’ll make sure he’s there,” Tim said. “And I’m sorry if I was hard on you last night.”

Ronnie had been awake when CeeCee got home the night before. She wanted to know if Tim had proposed. CeeCee shook her head with a smile, having planned on the question. “I can’t believe we thought that,” she said, making light of it. “He wanted my advice on getting a gift for an aunt.”

“Ew.” Ronnie winced. “Are you disappointed?”

“Relieved,” she said. “It’s not time yet.” But she was hardly relieved by Tim’s actual proposal. It was a lamebrain idea, wasn’t it? Or could it actually work? She stayed up much of the night thinking about his outrageous plan, making a list of her concerns and questions. She had to remember that Tim was one of the smartest people she’d ever known. He knew so much more than she did about how the world operated, especially when it came to politics and that sort of thing. He wouldn’t do something so risky unless he was certain of the outcome.

Two pizzas were being delivered as she arrived at the mansion, but she doubted she’d be able to eat a single slice. She watched Tim pay with a twenty, telling the delivery boy to keep the change.

Marty was already seated at the head of the massive dining-room table by the time she and Tim carried the pizzas into the room. Marty’s straggly brown hair looked like it needed washing, but he’d shaved for the occasion. His hands were folded on the table in front of him as if he were chairman of the board. “So,” he said. “I hear you might help us out.”

CeeCee sat down across the table from Tim. It was an incongruous scene, she thought. Formal dining room, crystal chandelier, heavy gold jacquard draperies that must have cost a fortune, eating pizza on paper plates, planning a kidnapping.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I still think it’s a crazy idea.”

Marty smiled his lunatic smile. “Sometimes you gotta bend the rules to get any action,” he said.

“You said you had questions,” Tim prompted her as he put a slice of pizza on her plate.

She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out the list she’d made the night before, flattening the paper on the table.

“Won’t the governor know it’s the two of you doing this, since you’ve been working to help Andie all along?” she asked.

“Unless he’s a complete asshole, which is certainly possible, yes.” Marty took a bite of pizza.

“So … then won’t you get locked up after you let his wife go?”

“Only if they find us,” Marty said, his mouth full.

She looked at Tim. “What does he mean?”

“We’ll go underground,” Tim said.

“You mean like … into hiding?”

“Yes,” Tim said. He was watching her for a reaction. “We’ll change our names. Change our looks a bit.”

“Tim.” She was incredulous. “Then how would I see you?”

Tim set down his pizza and reached across the broad table to take her hand. “Saving my sister’s life is the most important thing in the world to me right now,” he said, “but I don’t plan to lose you in the process.” His eyes could melt her. “You’ll know where I am. Just no one else will.”

“Do you promise?”

He nodded.

“You’ll know where we are if you can keep your mouth shut about it, that is,” Marty added. There was a threatening quality to his voice that reminded CeeCee of her initial discomfort around him.

“Of course she will.”

“But …” CeeCee was trying to see into the future. Her future. “Does that mean I’d always have to see you on the sly?” she asked.

“Not necessarily,” Tim said. “If you come to wherever I end up, we can have a relationship out in the open. I just won’t be Tim Gleason anymore.”

“But I’m applying to Carolina,” she said. “I have to stay here.”

“We should have you apply to a couple other schools, too, then,” he said.

“You two lovebirds can talk about this later,” Marty said. “Let go of each other so I can reach the pizza, okay?”

Tim let go of her hand and leaned back in his chair as Marty helped himself to another slice.

“There’s one thing, though,” Tim said. “A lot of people know that you and I are seeing each other. They’ll ask you questions after I so-called disappear.”

She hadn’t thought of that.

“So whether you agree to help out or not, you and I have to fake a breakup, okay?”

“No.” She felt like crying.

“It’s for your own protection, CeeCee,” he said. “We don’t want anyone to think you’re in on it. And it will all be an act.”

This was so complicated. She loved things the way they were. She loved seeing him in the coffee shop in the morning and spending her leisure time in the beautiful mansion. Whatever she decided, things would never be the same. Andie’s fate hung like a shroud over the brothers and she knew Tim would never rest until he’d done everything he could to save her.

“Okay?” Tim asked, when she didn’t respond.

“When do we have to act like we’re breaking up?”

“Soon,” he said. “This week sometime. Even Ronnie has to think we did.”

She nodded. She looked down at the piece of paper on the table. “If I helped out,” she said, “the governor’s wife would be able to identify me.”

“We’ll work up a real good disguise for you,” Marty said. “Get a blond wig. Or maybe a redhead.” He looked at her long wavy mane of dark hair. “Will that hair fit under a wig? Maybe you need to cut it.”

“No, man,” Tim interjected. “She’s not cutting her hair.”

“I can pin it tight to my head,” she said, though it would be a challenge.

“I think you’d be a fine-looking blonde.” Marty tipped his head to assess her. “And you’d wear a mask. Tell the wife a name other than CeeCee. She’ll never know who you really are.”

“Is there a phone at the cabin?” she asked. “How would I know what’s going on between y’all and the governor?”

“There’s no phone,” Tim said. “Which is why we can’t stay there for our negotiations.”

“So, how will I know—”

“You won’t, at least not right away. We’re going to give him, like, three days. My guess is it’ll only take a few hours.”

Marty laughed. “Who knows, though? The dude might like having some time away from his old lady.”

Tim didn’t smile. He glanced at her list. “What else do you need to know?” he asked.

“Would I have to keep her tied up or something?”

“No,” Tim said. “I mean, we might have to cuff her in order to transport her if she doesn’t … cooperate. Once she’s in the cabin, there are dead-bolt locks and you’d have the keys, so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“She could scream, though. Neighbors could hear her.”

“It’s a very isolated area,” Tim said.

“Ain’t nobody for miles.” Marty took a swallow of beer. “Might be bears, though. How d’you feel about bears?”

“Shut up, Marty,” Tim said. “You’re not helping.”

“What if I fall asleep?” She couldn’t believe she was asking questions as though she might actually agree to help them. “If it turns out to be two or three days, I’ll have to sleep sometime.”

“Well, yeah, you’ll need to sleep,” Tim said. “She might have to be handcuffed to something then. To her bed or something. You’re smart enough to be the judge of what you need to do.”

“She’d fight me, though, wouldn’t she?” She could just see herself getting into a fistfight with the wife of the governor of North Carolina.

“You’ll have a gun,” Marty said.

Tim shot his brother a look. Marty had crossed some kind of line.

“I don’t want a gun,” she said.

“We’ll give you an empty one,” Tim said. “Just to use as a threat.”

The fact that Tim had a gun bothered her more than anything. She didn’t want to lose sight of who he was: the man she was sure had given her five thousand dollars and who treated her like a gem and who loved her more than anyone had since her mother was alive. The serious graduate student who wanted to advocate for people who had no power of their own. Suddenly she gasped.

“Your degree!” she said. “If you do this … underground thing, how will you finish your degree?”

“Some things are more important.”

“But you’ve worked so hard.”

He smiled at her as if she were too young or too naive to understand. “It really doesn’t matter all that much, CeeCee,” he said. “It’s a piece of paper versus my sister’s life.”

Marty leaned toward her. “The government kills innocent people all the time,” he said. “Andie got fucking railroaded, and we’re not going to let her be one of them.”

“We won’t be in this alone, CeeCee,” Tim said. “Some other SCAPE people know what we’re planning and are behind us one hundred percent and are ready to help. They live underground, so I’m not going to tell you much about them yet. Not that you’d tell anyone,” he added quickly. “I know you wouldn’t.”

She shook her head.

“They live near this cabin we’re talking about, so we can stay with them ‘til we’re ready to move on the whole thing,” Tim continued. “We’ll make sure the cabin has food and everything you’ll need. They have an old car you can use, so the day of the.” He seemed suddenly hesitant to use the word kidnapping. “The day we do it, you’ll drive to the cabin and we’ll drive to Jacksonville where the house with the phone is and then meet you back at the cabin. Make sense?”

“How will you do it?” she asked. “How will you be able to get to her?”

“We know her schedule,” Marty said. “She teaches an evening Spanish class at Carolina. It’s dark when she gets out, so we’ll nab her in the parking lot.”

She pictured the scene: a woman walking alone to her car at night, two men jumping out of the darkness, muffling her screams with a hand over her mouth as they drag her into the rear of a van. “You’ll terrify her,” she said.

“Well, yeah.” Marty laughed. “Brilliant deduction.”

“We’ll make it as easy on her as we can, babe,” Tim said. “We won’t hurt her. Our whole objective is to prevent people from being hurt.”

She looked down at her plate, translucent with grease around her uneaten slice of pizza. Both men were quiet, as though they knew she needed a minute to absorb what they’d told her.

“When would you do it?” she asked finally.

“A few days before Thanksgiving,” Tim said.

“And what if the governor says he’ll commute Andie’s sentence and then goes back on his word once his wife is home?” she asked.

“He’d damn well better not,” Marty said in a threatening voice. “Or then we go to plan B and I don’t think you want to know about that.”

Alarmed, she looked at Tim. “What’s plan B?”

“He’s jiving you,” Tim said. “We’re not going to need a plan B. Plan A is foolproof.” He pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. “Don’t decide right now, CeeCee,” he said. “We’ll finish up here, then have a nice relaxing night. In the morning, you can see how you feel about it.”

After dinner, she and Tim went upstairs to his bedroom. They made love without uttering a word about the kidnapping, and she put it out of her mind as best she could, pretending that things would always be this easy between them. She lay awake after he’d drifted off, though, thinking. Other people were ready and willing to support Tim and Marty in their scheme. She found that reassuring; it made the plan seem less crazy. She thought of the photographs of Andie displayed around the house. Her beautiful smile. The brutal rape that had driven her to murder her attacker. She imagined how frightened Andie must have been during her trial as she concocted alibis to try to save herself. She’d failed miserably. Now it was up to her brothers to do whatever they could to save her. No one would be hurt. The objective was to prevent people from being hurt, Tim had said. And Andie’s life would be saved.

Listen to your heart, her mother had written. Make a decision and dive in.

And that was exactly what she planned to do.

Chapter Eight

I want you to know what happened between your father and me. I met him at a high-school dance my sophomore year and he swept me off my feet. He didn’t go to my school. I didn’t find out ‘til much later, but he was a dropout. He was a good liar and very handsome and charming. He had hair just like yours. Dark and wavy and kind of out of control and beautiful. As a matter of fact, he was kind of out of control and beautiful himself, and I think that’s why I fell for him. He was just so different.

When I got pregnant with you, I was afraid to tell him. I was almost three months along before I got up the nerve. I had this fantasy that when I told him, he’d ask me to marry him and then he’d take care of me. I went over to his house—he lived with his parents—and we were hanging around in the rec room playing Ping-Pong while I tried to figure out what to say. He was in the bathroom when the phone rang. No one else was home, so I answered it. It was a girl asking to speak with him. Her name was Willa, and I knew she was pretty just by her voice. When he came out of the bathroom, I told him about the call and his face lit up. He didn’t even try to hide it. We started playing Ping-Pong again, but I knew his mind was on Willa, because he was hitting the ball any old way. We finished the game and he said he didn’t feel well so maybe I’d better go home. I left, and I knew I’d never hear from him again. I was right.

ONCE SHE TOLD TIM AND MARTY THAT SHE WOULD HELP them, she felt as if she were on a roller coaster. The ride started out nice and easy, as the brothers perfected their plan with little involvement from her, but she knew it was going to speed up quickly and she would have no way to get off.

Her role now was to set the stage for her breakup with Tim, so she began fabricating problems to discuss with Ronnie.

“He got a phone call from another girl while I was there last night,” she confided to Ronnie as they dressed for work one morning. It was very early. Still dark outside.

“How do you know?” Ronnie pulled on her jeans, then peered over her shoulder to check them in the mirror, making sure they were flattering to her backside.

“I answered the phone,” CeeCee said. She tugged a wide-toothed comb through her hair. “There was this pause. Then a girl’s voice asked for Tim. He sounded happy to hear from her and went in another room to talk.”

Ronnie turned to look at her, hands on her hips. “Did you ask him who it was?”

“No.” CeeCee set down her comb. “I don’t want to be clingy.”

“You have a right to know.” Ronnie was indignant. “You’re in a serious relationship, not some fling. You should know everything.”

CeeCee flopped down on her bed. “He seems … kind of distant all of a sudden,” she said.

“CeeCee.” Ronnie sat next to her. “You’ve given him the idea you’re his, no matter what. It’s really time you act like other guys are interested in you. And that you’re interested in them. You’ve got to let him know he can’t take you for granted.”

“I don’t want to pretend I’m interested in someone else,” she said. “I just want Tim.”

She was surprised when tears filled her eyes. It was easy to imagine how she would feel if she lost him, because that was currently her biggest worry. How were they going to continue their relationship with him in hiding? She’d raised the issue a few times since their meeting with Marty, and each time he would hold her close, reassuring her that they would work it out.

“It’s too good between us to just throw it away,” he’d say. If she pressured him for details, he’d get annoyed. “I don’t know the specifics, CeeCee. I don’t even know where I’m going to end up yet. You’ll just have to trust me on this.” She did trust him, but she’d never been comfortable with uncertainty.

He told her that the breakup had to be public. “Did you take drama in high school?” he asked one night as he drove her home after a movie.

She shook her head. “Did you?”

“Yes,” he said. “So I figure, I’ll pretend I’m really pissed at you for something.” He glanced at her with his full-lipped smile. “I can’t imagine what you could do to piss me off, though.”

“I told Ronnie I thought you were interested in someone else.”

“Brilliant!” He nodded appreciatively. “Except it makes me look like a shithead. I want the breakup to be your fault.”

“Uh-uh,” she said with a smile. “It’s got to be yours.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve already asked enough of you, so I’ll take the heat. We’ll make it my fault. An old girlfriend’s come back into my life and being a typical male asshole, I’m leaving you for her.”

“What’s she like?”

“She looks kind of like Telly Savalas, but she has some kind of hold on me,” he said.

“What?” CeeCee laughed.

“She can be moody, too,” Tim continued. “And she’s hard to get, so I’ve always been intrigued with her. So, now that she wants me, I just can’t help myself.”

He seemed so absorbed with the fantasy that CeeCee felt uncomfortable. “This is all made up, right?”

“Oh, babe, do you think I could ever leave you?” Was there a trace of annoyance in the question? She was afraid she was starting to sound as insecure as she felt. “No other woman compares to you,” he said. “You’ve got the world’s most amazing hair and you’re smart and you’ve organized my entire house and won my brother over. Plus, you’re dynamite in bed.”

She blushed at that. She was not dynamite in bed; she’d still not had an orgasm with him inside her. Maybe she didn’t move enough or something. His fictional girlfriend was probably multiorgasmic. No wonder he wanted to go back to her. In her imagination, she named her Willa.

As planned, Tim came to the coffee shop two weeks before Thanksgiving. Instead of sitting in his booth, he asked CeeCee to walk outside with him. He looked appropriately troubled.

Ronnie was headed for the kitchen, and CeeCee caught her arm. “Tim wants to talk to me in private,” she whispered. “Could you cover my tables for a few minutes?”

Ronnie glanced at Tim. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” CeeCee shrugged. “Nothing, I hope.”

“Go ahead,” Ronnie said. “I’ll cover.”

She and Tim walked outside and stood on the sidewalk by the coffee-shop windows. Students walked past them in either direction, crowding them, brushing up against them, but they held their ground. This was to be a show, primarily for Ronnie’s sake.

“Just remember I love you,” he began.

She nodded. The sunlight gave him a halo of golden curls. She wanted to touch him but kept her arms folded rigidly across her chest.

“My old girlfriend’s come back,” he said. “And she made me realize that I was never really in love with you. I’m sorry. I need to break up with you.”

“I knew it!” She stomped her foot on the sidewalk. “I knew there was someone else.”

Tim started to smile at her false anger, but caught himself. “It only just happened,” he said. “It’s not like I’ve been with her all along or anything.”

“How can you do this to me?” she shouted, louder than she’d intended to. A guy walking past her told her to “settle down.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Tim said. He hadn’t shaved that morning; she could see the pale stubble on his cheeks.

“Well, you’re doing a good job of it,” she said. “What does she have that I don’t have?”

“It’s not you, CeeCee. It’s me,” he said. “You’re wonderful and I just … it’s completely my fault.”

“Damn straight,” she said.

“I’m really, really sorry.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but she raised her arms quickly to cast him off. “Can you cry?” he asked.

She put her hands to her face and let her shoulders heave.

“That’s better,” Tim said. “I’d like to think that losing me would tear you apart. Like losing you would do to me.” He pulled her toward him. “Okay, now I’ll comfort you tenderly for one last time.”

She buried her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Tim, I don’t like this,” she said.

“I know, babe.” He patted her back in the halfhearted manner of a lover who’s already moved on. “Me, neither. But you and I know what’s really still between us. Come over tomorrow night, okay? Just be sure to show up after dark so no one sees you. And come around to the back door.”

“Okay,” she said.

He pulled away from her. “Now look pissed off before you go back in,” he said.

“Pissed off isn’t good enough.” She wiped her dry eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going for complete devastation.”

“Don’t forget who loves you.” He winked at her.

“Ditto,” she said, and without thinking, she drew back her hand and let it fly, her palm connecting with his stubbled cheek in a slap that turned every head on the street.

He looked at her, wide-eyed with shock as he raised his own hand to his crimson cheek.

“Oh, my God, Tim, I’m sorry.” She tried to reach for him, but he backed away.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’ll put your things out on the curb for you.”

She watched him walk up Franklin Street, losing him quickly in the crowd of students. She looked down at her palm. What had gotten into her? And why had hitting him felt so good?

She was stoic once inside the restaurant, as she pretended to tamp down the raw emotions of a woman scorned. Ronnie was solicitous and comforting, and CeeCee knew that she and their manager, George, were talking about her behind her back. She hated being the object of their pity and she hated that they now viewed Tim as a selfish womanizer. But she knew this was only the beginning of her necessary lies.

Chapter Nine

I wish I could see you now, at sixteen. You’re an amazing twelve-year-old, so I can only imagine you’ll get more amazing as you get older. Yesterday, when the nurse tried to keep you out of my room because I was so sick, I could hear you talking to her through the closed door. You told her, “That’s MY mother, not yours. I’ll take care of her.” Even though I had my head over the basin, it made me laugh. And it let me know how strong you are and that you’re going to be just fine without me.

How did you ever get so brave?

EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE ONLY A FEW MILES OUTSIDE OF Chapel Hill, the tension in Tim’s van was already so thick CeeCee could feel it on her skin. They still had a good hour and a half before they reached New Bern. The bucket seat felt lumpy to her, pressing against her back in the wrong places. Marty sat on a beach chair turned sideways behind Tim’s seat. He held a hand-drawn map on one knee and a beer bottle on the other, and he and Tim had been arguing about which roads to take since pulling out of their driveway. She wanted to tell them to shut up; if they couldn’t agree on something as simple as how to get to New Bern, how were they going to make the more critical decisions that lay ahead of them in the next couple of days? But she said nothing, afraid of making Tim any more agitated than he already was. They were on edge, all of them. These were their last few hours as law-abiding citizens.

The mattress in the back of the van was covered with suitcases, duffel bags and backpacks. It had taken Tim a full day to pack and she’d felt sorry for him as she watched him weigh what to take and what to leave behind. He and Marty would never be returning to the mansion. She, on the other hand, brought only a couple of changes of clothes and her toothbrush. That was all she expected to need. Three days, max, Tim had told her. Then Andie would be safe, the governor’s wife returned to hearth and home, and CeeCee could go back to Chapel Hill.

She was in charge of the cassette tapes on this trip. The Eagles, of course. Creedence and Queen and Chicago and old Stones. None of it very soothing.

“Turn that crap off,” Marty snapped at her when Queen started singing “We are the Champions.”

“Don’t talk to her that way,” Tim said.

“It’s all right,” she said, pressing the eject button. “What do you want to hear, Marty?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded desolate all of a sudden. “Stones, I guess.”

She put in the cassette, and “Under my Thumb” filled the van.

“Turn it down,” Tim said.

She did. She would do whatever she was told to keep peace in the van.

Tim turned onto a highway, and Marty grabbed his shoulder from behind. “I told you not to go this way!” he shouted.

“Let go of me.” Tim’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “It’s a straight shot from here, Marty.”

“Stop it, you two!” she said. “We have to pull together, okay? Y’all told me this would be easy and now you’re at each other’s throats.”

The two men shut up, probably stunned into silence by the fact that she’d confronted them more than by her request to stop fighting. No one said a word for nearly an hour. She put on the Eagles when the Stones tape was finished, then tried to get comfortable as she watched the terrain grow flatter, broken up by miles and miles of tall pines. The small houses were acres apart from one another. Some of them were well maintained, with white wrought-iron railings on the front steps and gazing globes in their yards. Others had sheet plastic over the windows, sloppily patched roofs and weedy, knee-high lawns.

“We’re in the boonies, boys and girls.” Marty finally broke the silence.

“The boonier, the better,” Tim said.

Marty leaned forward between the bucket seats and pointed to an opening in a grove of pines. “Turn here,” he said. She could smell tobacco and beer on his breath.

Tim turned onto a narrow one-lane road.

“Now, watch for a road off to the right,” Marty said. “It’s about a mile down, I think.”

He knew the couple who would put them up for the night, and he’d been to their house once before.

“Is that it?” Marty leaned even farther between the seats to peer out the front window.

CeeCee spotted a road veering off to the right.

“Yeah,” Marty answered his own question. “Turn here.”

Tim did as he was told. They were on a rutted dirt road, so tightly surrounded by pines and shrubs that the sun was stolen from them and branches scraped the side of the van. It was three in the afternoon, but it might as well have been evening for all the light on the road.

They grew quiet as they bounced along. The cassette tape ended, but CeeCee didn’t even notice. In the silence, she could almost hear her heart beating. In a few minutes, everything would change and their journey would begin in earnest. Guiltily she hoped something would interfere with their plan. The kidnapping was to occur the following night. Maybe the woman would be ill and unable to teach her class. Maybe the people they were going to stay with would talk Tim and Marty out of the whole crazy idea.

She’d told Ronnie and George that she was taking Thanksgiving week off to visit a high-school friend who now lived in Pennsylvania. George was annoyed, but Ronnie was so supportive that CeeCee felt guilty.

“You need to get away,” Ronnie said. “You’ve been so down since the breakup with Tim.”

She wasn’t depressed, but she’d apparently done a good job of acting as though she were. She saw Tim nearly as much as before the so-called breakup. She’d lie to Ronnie about meeting a friend for dinner, then go to Tim’s house for lovemaking and reassurance that everything would turn out all right.

“You sure this is it?” Tim asked now, after they’d driven through the dark tunnel of trees for several minutes.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Marty said. A house suddenly appeared in a small clearing on the right. “That’s it,” he said.

The house was tiny, the white paint peeling. Smoke rose from the crumbling top of the brick chimney. A rusting swing set stood near the woods, and a little girl swung on it, leaning back so far that her long blond hair dusted the ground. Three cars, ancient and rusting, sat in the weeds on the other side of the house, and a truck and an old VW bus were parked next to them.

“Looks like Forrest has a leak,” Marty said, and CeeCee noticed a man on the roof spreading a piece of blue sheet plastic over the shingles. He stood up as they pulled in behind the old cars, and he hesitated a moment before heading for the ladder that rested against the eaves.

Two mangy dogs, barking and baring teeth, ran up to the van as CeeCee and the men started to get out. She was afraid of the dogs, but she didn’t want Tim to think she was a chicken. If she couldn’t handle two dogs, how was she going to handle the task she’d agreed to?

“Hi, fellas,” she said, holding her arms close to her sides. The dogs sniffed her legs, tails rising into uncertain wags.

The man climbed down the ladder from the roof and approached them. He was tall, bearded and big-boned but not overweight. He looked like someone accustomed to physical work. He wiped his hand on the rag hanging from his belt, then reached out to shake Marty’s.

“What’s the buzz, bro?” he asked.

“Not much,” Marty answered. “This is my brother, Tim, and his girlfriend, CeeCee. And this is Forrest.”

The little girl ran from the swing set and grabbed on to Forrest’s leg. “Is this the company?” she asked.

Forrest rested one big hand on the child’s head. “Yes, honey,” he said, then to the three of them, “And this is Dahlia.”

“I’m five,” Dahlia said.

CeeCee laughed nervously, charmed by the little girl’s blue-eyed beauty. “Wow, five,” she said. “Are you in kindergarten?”

“Mommy teaches me,” Dahlia said. “Where does your hair end?” She let go of her father to walk behind CeeCee. “It’s all the way to your bottom!” she said, delighted. “I’m going to grow my hair that long.”

“Leave her alone, Dahlia,” Forrest said. His voice was gruff, all business. “You guys have any trouble finding us?”

“No problem,” Tim said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to get from here to the cabin.”

It was the first time the cabin had been mentioned on this trip, but as much as she would have liked to, CeeCee had not forgotten about it. That was where she would create the prison for the governor’s wife.

“I’ve got a map you can take a look at,” Forrest said.

“Great.” Tim nodded.

They followed Forrest through the front door. The inside of the house was an unexpected contrast to the ramshackle exterior. There was a fire in the small fireplace and the living room smelled of smoke and something else, something savory. The furniture was old and threadbare, but the room was neat and cozy. They walked through the living room into a kitchen, where a woman, dressed in a long pale yellow skirt and blue-trimmed peasant blouse, pulled a loaf of bread from the oven.

“Smells good in here,” Tim said.

The woman set the bread next to two other loaves on the counter and shut the oven door. She did not look pleased to see them.

“Naomi,” Forrest said, as he lifted Dahlia onto his shoulders. “You remember Marty?”

“You shouldn’t have come here, Marty,” the woman said. Her shoulder-length hair was light brown, part of it caught in a barrette on the back of her head.

Marty ignored her comment. “This is Tim and his girlfriend, CeeCee,” he said.

A small cry came from the corner of the room, and CeeCee noticed a cradle near the doorway. Naomi walked over to it and lifted a baby into her arms. She walked out of the room, jostling the baby, cooing to him.

“She’s upset you’re here,” Forrest said, looking toward the door through which Naomi had disappeared. “You have to understand, it’s been years for us. We’ve got a good life here and she’s afraid you’ll screw it up.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Marty said.

“I know.” Forrest reached over his head to tickle his daughter, who giggled and covered his eyes with her hands. “Don’t get me wrong,” Forrest said, prying Dahlia’s hands from his face. “Naomi’s got a good heart. She knows what you’re doing and supports you in it, but she doesn’t want us to be part of it. So I’m telling you boys—” he looked from Marty to Tim “—forget you were ever here. You, too, CeeCee. You can stay with us tonight and we’ll give you a car, like I said, but once you’re out of here, you just forget you ever saw the place.”

“A car?” CeeCee asked. Why did they need a car?

“You’ll need one when this is over,” Tim said. “You know, when Marty and I take off. You’ll have to go back to—” He suddenly slapped his forehead with his palm. “Damn!” he said. “You probably don’t even have your license yet, do you?”

“I do. I’m supposed to have an adult with me, but I know how to drive.” She cringed. She’d said adult as though she were not one herself, but Tim didn’t seem to notice.

“Good,” he said. “That’s great. So you can use one of Forrest’s.”

“Not just use it,” Forrest corrected. “Keep it. We’ve got more than we need, and like I said, we don’t want any of you coming back here leaving a trail behind you for the pigs to follow.”

“What pigs, Daddy?” Dahlia asked.

Forrest lifted Dahlia off his shoulders and set her on the floor. He leaned down. “The little pig that went to market,” he said.

Dahlia ran out of the room, squealing with laughter as her father chased after her.

Tim turned to Marty. “You said they’d be happy to help us,” he said. “Overjoyed. Isn’t that the word you used?”

“Fuck off,” Marty said. “It’s gonna be fine.”

They ate beef stew and honey-wheat bread for supper, and no one said a word about the plans for the following day. It took CeeCee a while to realize that was for Dahlia’s sake: they wouldn’t talk about it with a child in the room. Dahlia talked to CeeCee throughout the meal, telling her about the latest geography lesson she’d had from her mother, in which she learned the names of the states in alphabetical order. She rattled them off with only a few mistakes. When supper was over, Forrest handed the baby to Naomi, who sat back in her chair, tucked the infant beneath her peasant blouse, and began to nurse him.

“Dahlia,” Naomi said, “would you go into the other room now and play? We need to have some grown-up time.”

Dahlia grabbed CeeCee’s hand. “Let me show you my toys,” she said, as though she knew CeeCee would be more comfortable playing with her than she would staying with the “grown-ups.”

“Go ahead,” Tim said. “We’ll fill you in on anything you need to know later.”

Letting Dahlia drag her into the living room, she felt relieved. The conversation in the kitchen wasn’t going to be pretty. Please talk them out of it, she thought to herself. Please.

“This is my Barbie.” Dahlia sat down on the braided rug and pulled a brunette Barbie doll from her toy box. It seemed laughable that this child of hippies owned a Barbie doll.

“She’s pretty.” CeeCee sat down next to her.

“She’s from a garage sale,” Dahlia said, running a finger over the doll’s miniature denim jeans. “So I’m happy I could give her a good home.”

CeeCee smiled. The little girl touched her heart. She heard Tim say something in the kitchen but couldn’t make out the words. Forrest’s voice, deep and resonant, responded. Then Naomi said something unintelligible. She should be in there, taking part in their discussion.

What’s wrong with you? she asked herself. She felt very young, as though she truly belonged here with Dahlia instead of in the kitchen. She was sixteen and looked more like fifteen and felt more like thirteen. Did everyone know it? Were they whispering about her in there? Wondering if it had been a mistake to involve her and if she was up to the task?

“We’re not dragging you into anything!” Marty suddenly shouted. Someone else said, “Shh!”

Dahlia looked at CeeCee, alarmed. “Why is that man yelling?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “He yells a lot. That’s the way he is.”

Dahlia looked toward the kitchen for a moment, then returned her attention to the toy box. “And this is my wedding doll,” she said, pulling out a naked baby doll.

“A wedding doll?” CeeCee asked, confused.

“Wet-ting!” Dahlia said. She lifted the doll so CeeCee could see the hole between its legs. “She pees.”

“Oh!” She laughed. “I get it.”

There was an innocence in Dahlia that she envied. The little girl had no idea what her parents were discussing with Tim and Marty. She had no idea that her parents had once done something illegal and had at one time been known by other names. They’d had other lives. Was this how Tim would end up? Would she have to drive miles into the woods to be able to see him?

“You have pretty eyes.” Dahlia stared at her.

“Thank you.” CeeCee stroked her hand over the girl’s hair. “And you have the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“It’s gossamer,” the girl said.

“It is.” CeeCee smiled. She wanted a child like this someday. She looked toward the kitchen. She couldn’t see Tim, but she could picture his green eyes and blond curls and full lips. They could have beautiful children together. She wanted to raise children the right way, with both a mother and a father. She would write letters to them every year, in case she died. She teared up at the thought.

Dahlia reached out to gently touch CeeCee’s cheek. “Why are you crying?” she asked.

“Oh, I think my eyes are a little burny today.” CeeCee used her fingertips to wipe away the tears. “I’m allergic to something, maybe.”

“Agnes?” Dahlia pointed to the cat asleep on the back of the couch. “Mom’s friend is allergic to her.”

“Maybe,” she said. “It’s not too bad.”

Naomi came into the room, the baby, whose name was Emmanuel, in a sling tied over her shoulder. She squatted down next to Dahlia, her skirt flowing over her knees and touching the floor.

“Hope she’s not wearing you out,” she said to CeeCee. Her smile looked forced.

“Not at all,” CeeCee said.

Naomi smoothed a hand over her daughter’s head. “Time for you to get ready for bed,” she said.

“No, Mom,” Dahlia said. “I can stay up ‘cause of company.”

“This company has a lot to do tomorrow, so we can’t tire them out.” Naomi stood up, her hands under the sling and her baby’s little body. “Come on,” she said. “Hop to it.”

The little girl got to her feet. She leaned over and kissed CeeCee’s cheek. “Good night. I love you,” she said, then turned and ran toward the hall.

CeeCee watched her go. “She’s the nicest girl,” she said.

“Thank you.” Naomi watched her daughter disappear into a room at the end of the hall. “She’s an angel most of the time.” She turned to CeeCee. “You come with me,” she said.

CeeCee followed her down the hallway. They walked past a bedroom just big enough for a double mattress on the floor.

“You and Tim can sleep in there.” Naomi nodded toward the room. “Marty can have the sofa.” She poked her head into another bedroom, this one with bunk beds. Dahlia was sitting on the bottom bunk, a Golden Book open on her lap.

“You can skip your bath tonight,” Naomi said to her.

“Yippee!” Dahlia bounced on the bed.

“Daddy and I will come in later to tuck you in.”

“Okay,” she said, returning her attention to her book.

“She loves when we have company,” Naomi said as she turned the corner into the bedroom at the end of the hall. “Partly because she can’t tie up the bathroom.”

This had to be Naomi and Forrest’s room. The double mattress rested on a frame off the floor and there were two old mismatched dressers. The room was poorly lit and smelled stuffy.

“Sit here in front of the mirror,” Naomi said.

Obediently, CeeCee sat on the edge of the mattress. She felt young and shy with Naomi, who had to be at least fifteen years her senior. In the dim light, she could barely see herself in the mirror above the dresser. She looked a little like a nun—pale-faced, with a habit made of long brown hair.

Emmanuel let out a whimper as Naomi lifted him from the sling.

“Can you hold him for a minute?” she asked. “I have to get something out of the closet.”

“I’d love to.” She took the baby from Naomi’s arms and cradled him on her shoulder. Emmanuel mewed a little, then let his head fall against her as he sucked his fingers. His feathery blond hair brushed her cheek, and she pressed her lips to his temple. “How old is he?” she asked.

“Four months.” Naomi opened a closet that was so neatly organized CeeCee felt a kinship with her. The outside of the house and its yard were a mess, but inside, it was clear that Naomi was in control.

“You really have a nice house,” she said, as Naomi climbed onto a step stool inside the closet.

“Thanks.” Naomi reached for a cardboard box on the shelf above the clothes. “We’ve been in it eight years, which is hard for me to believe. Time flies.” Grunting a little, she lowered the box to her chest and stepped off the stool. “Eight years, CeeCee.” Blowing away the thin layer of dust on the top of the box, she set it on the bed. “We’ve worked so hard to build a new life for ourselves here,” she said. “I know I’ve been … I’ve been an ungracious hostess tonight. Forrest thinks that helping you is no big deal. And I think what the three of you are doing is magnificent. I don’t disapprove at all, don’t get me wrong. That girl—Andie—she’s a victim of the system and you’re doing what needs to be done.”

It meant something to her, hearing Naomi say that. She trusted this capable woman, and if Naomi thought what they were doing was magnificent, then maybe it was.

“But involving us …” Naomi’s voice trailed off as she looked at Emmanuel, asleep on CeeCee’s shoulder. “We have too much to lose now.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt terrible. “I just went along with what they told me. They said SCAPE members would help us and I—”

“And we will help you. Just please … please forget you ever met us.”

CeeCee nodded. “I will,” she said. “We will.”

“Now let me take him back so we can give you an alter ego.” Naomi lifted Emmanuel from CeeCee’s arms and settled him once again in the sling. She opened the top of the box. “You’ve never done anything like this before, I take it,” she said.

“Like what?” CeeCee asked.

“Something you need a disguise for.” Naomi began pulling out wigs and masks.

“Oh,” CeeCee said. She was amazed that anyone would have a box of disguises in her closet. “No, I haven’t.”

Naomi put her fist into a short brunette wig and fluffed up the curls. “I hope it’s not only your first time, but also your last,” she said.

“Me, too,” CeeCee said.

Naomi set down the dark wig, then pulled out one with fluffy blond hair. She turned it upside down and gave it a shake. “It’s brave and loving, what you’re doing,” she said. “I’d like to think that if my kids were ever in the position Andie is, someone like you would help them out of it. But we have to make sure you can’t be identified. Not just for your sake, but for ours. So if you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a guilty conscience, kindly don’t turn yourself in. They’ll pick your brain until you can’t see straight, and the next thing you know, you’ll lead them right to our door.”

“I won’t,” CeeCee reassured her again. “Tim said it’s really impossible for me to get caught. That there’s no way they can figure out where we’ll be holding the wife.”

“You’ll be spending a lot of time with her, though. And once she’s free, they’ll be looking for the person who held her hostage. That’s why this disguise has to be foolproof.” She held up four wigs, two in each hand. “So, which color do you like?” she asked.

CeeCee was still stuck on her words: They’ll be looking for the person who held her hostage. God, that was a frightening sentence! She studied the fake-looking hair with a new intensity. “This one.” She pointed to the blond wig. “It’s as different from mine as it can be.”

Naomi dropped the other wigs to the bed. “Put your hair up and we’ll pin it.” She stood up, one hand under Emmanuel, and pulled a box of bobby pins from a dresser drawer. CeeCee wrapped her hair around and around her head, flattening it in place with the pins. Then she pulled on the wig.

“A perfect fit,” Naomi said. “How does it feel?”

“Okay,” she said. She looked in the mirror. It was clown hair, thick and curly and silly looking. She touched it with her hands, then closed her eyes, suddenly weary. “Naomi, can I ask you a question?”

“You can always ask,” Naomi said. “Whether I answer is another matter.”

“I’m …” She wasn’t sure how to express her thought.

Naomi had her hands in the box again. “You’re what?” she asked.

“I’m worried about how Tim and I will get to see each other after this is over, with him having to go underground and everything.”

“It won’t be easy.” Naomi pulled out a black eye patch, glanced at it, then tossed it on the bed. “Forrest and I managed to find a way, though.”

“But you’re both in hiding, right?”

“We met in SCAPE many years ago,” she said, “but more than that, it’s better you don’t know.”

“Okay,” she said. She was catching on that no one wanted to know too much about anyone else in this business.

“You have very distinctive features.” Naomi studied her face. “You’ll really need a full-face kind of mask.” She rummaged through the box and pulled out a plastic mask, the face of a princess topped by a gold crown. “I think this is supposed to be Sleeping Beauty or something,” she said. “It might be a little small.” She stretched the elastic over CeeCee’s head and set the mask in place. “No, it’s perfect,” she said. “Can you breathe okay?”

“I can breathe,” she said, although she wondered how long she could wear the mask without going crazy.

“Good. Don’t take it off while you’re with the wife. If you have to eat, do it where she can’t see you. And try to disguise your voice when you talk to her,” Naomi said. “And the final thing is, you don’t want to leave fingerprints anywhere in the house or cabin or whatever it is. So.” She pulled out a plastic bag filled with gloves. Yellow rubber gloves. Clear latex gloves like a doctor would wear. Heavy wool men’s gloves. “Let’s go with these light white ones.” Naomi handed her a pair of lacy white gloves. They looked as though they’d never been worn. “Try them on.”

CeeCee pulled on the gloves. The fabric was stretchy and felt warm on her hands. “Good thing it’s not summer or I’d die in this getup,” she said.

Naomi nodded, adjusting the mask a little. “It was summer when I had to wear a disguise,” she said. “I threw away that mask. I never wanted to see it again.”

“What were you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, I’m sort of Sleeping Beauty …”

“Oh. I was some kind of space alien or something. It was weird.”

“Can you tell me what you did?” she asked. Was it as bad as what I’m going to do?

“That’s one question you don’t ask someone who’s gone underground,” Naomi said. “It would put both you and me in jeopardy. I don’t like that we know as much as we do about what you guys are plotting.” She put the other wigs back in the box. “I’ll tell you though, people died because of what Forrest and I did. That part was an accident. We never meant that to happen, but we’d end up on death row alongside Andie if we got caught. And our kids …” Naomi’s voice trailed off. She peered into the sling at her son, then closed her eyes for a moment as though imagining the worst.

CeeCee shivered. She could feel the dread that hung over Naomi’s world. “You won’t get caught,” she said, as if she knew that for a fact. She looked at herself in the mirror. A blond Sleeping Beauty stared back at her. “I can’t believe I’m really going to do this.”

“You’re scared?” Naomi asked.

CeeCee nodded.

Naomi closed the box and moved it to the floor. “Think of a time you were courageous,” she said.

CeeCee thought. She’d never done anything that qualified as courageous. “I can’t think of anything.”

“I don’t mean mountain climbing,” Naomi said. “I mean something courageous you did in your everyday life.”

She suddenly remembered being with her mother when she died. She’d been terrified, unable to imagine what it would be like to be with her when life left her body, yet she knew her mother needed her there, and so she stayed. She held her mother’s bruised hand as she left the world. It had taken all the courage she had.

“Did you think of something?” Naomi asked.

“I stayed with my mother while she died,” she said.

“Oh, CeeCee.” Naomi touched her shoulder. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Damn, you were courageous,” Naomi said. “I couldn’t have done that when I was twelve. When you start getting nervous, remember the courage you had that day and you’ll start feeling it again. Okay?”

She doubted it would be that simple. “All right. I’ll try.” CeeCee lifted the mask from her head. “Thanks, Naomi,” she said. “For everything.”

She and Tim made love on the mattress in the small bedroom that night. Her body felt even more numb than usual when he entered her, and she was angry at it. She thought of Ronnie telling her to fake it. Who knew when she and Tim would get to make love again? How long would they be apart? It would be a gift for him. A gift that would keep her in his mind until they were together again.

She began to pant, to writhe a little beneath him. Not wanting to overdo it, she only let a small moan escape her lips, but she felt his excitement mount and she grew more vocal. It was pretty easy once she got into it. She arched her back, biting the corner of the pillow as she shuddered with her counterfeit orgasm.

Tim came an instant after her performance. “Oh, babe,” he said, his breath hot against her ear. “That was the best ever. The best ever.”

“It was,” she agreed.

He rolled onto his side, pulling the covers over her shoulder as he held her close.

“I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he said. “I want you to know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. For Andie. It’s so generous.”

“Thank you.” She liked the acknowledgment.

“And that was phenomenal sex.”

“It was,” she said again. She felt guilty for misleading him.

“You weren’t faking that, were you?”

Damn. Why did he have to ask her straight out like that? How could she lie to the man she loved? It would make a mockery of their relationship.

“Of course not,” she said, her heart sinking a little with the words.

Tim let out a long sigh. “Tomorrow’s going to be hard, babe,” he said. “And I realized when I saw you in that Sleeping Beauty getup that you have the hardest job of the three of us. Do you regret saying you’d help us?”

She hesitated. Did she? She was doing something magnificent, Naomi had said. “I don’t think I’ll know the answer to that until it’s over,” she said. “I … you know what I’ll regret, Tim. I’ve told you so many times, you’re sick of hearing it.”

“What?” He sounded puzzled. How could he possibly not know?

“I’m worried about how we’ll ever get to see each other again,” she said.

He hugged her. “That, my little Sleeping Beauty, should be the least of your worries.”

What did he mean? Why couldn’t he, for once, tell her exactly how they would work it out? She was tired of his vague responses to the question. She needed to know more. She needed details. And this was her last chance to ask for them.

“Tim,” she whispered, gathering her courage, “I need to know what you mean when you say it will work out. At least tell me what might happen. How will you be able to let me know where you are? How can you do that without putting yourself … putting both of us, at risk?”

He didn’t respond, and she turned to look at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing soft and even, and she knew she would get no answers from him tonight.

Chapter Ten

It just occurred to me that you might have your driver’s license by now. All I can say about that is “Watch out, world!”

THERE WAS SOMETHING NO ONE HAD ANTICIPATED: Although CeeCee knew how to drive—barely—she’d never driven a stick shift. She’d had her provisional license less than a year, and her foster mother had let her drive their car to run close-to-home errands, but the clutch and stick shift were alien to her. So alien that she hadn’t even thought to mention it the night before, when they’d told her she could have one of Naomi and Forrest’s cars.

“All we’ve got is manual.” Forrest blew out a stream of smoke and looked from one rusted car to another. The dented vehicles appeared no better in the morning light than they had the afternoon before. Their paint was worn so thin it was hard to tell what colors they’d once been.

She shivered inside her jacket. “I’m sorry,” she said to Tim. “Why didn’t you tell us you couldn’t drive?” Marty asked.

“I can drive,” she insisted. “Just not a stick.”

“Okay.” Tim put his hand on her neck and gave it a squeeze. There was so much strength in his fingers that she wasn’t sure if the gesture was affectionate or threatening in nature. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “She’s smart. I’ll teach her in ten minutes.”

Thank God, Naomi and Forrest lived in the middle of nowhere so that she and Tim had the dirt road to themselves. The car bucked and stalled as she tried to find the balance between the gas pedal and the clutch. She felt nervous laughter bubbling up inside of her, but she stifled it, knowing that Tim was in no mood to make light of the situation. He’d awakened in his own head that morning. Any warm words from the night before were forgotten. He was a man on a mission to save his sister and that was it.

“Well,” Tim said, as they parked the car in the yard after her lesson. “The good news is that there’s not much damage you can do out here in this thing. You’d better take your time getting back to Chapel Hill, though. You’re not ready for the highway.”

Inside the kitchen later that evening, CeeCee hung back, rocking Emmanuel in her arms, while the three men studied the map spread out on the kitchen table. Naomi was baking trays of granola in the oven and the smell was tantalizing.

Tim looked over his shoulder at CeeCee. “You should take a look at this, babe,” he said.

“Here, let me take him from you so you can see.” Naomi slipped the baby from CeeCee’s arms and into the ever-present sling she wore over her shoulder.

CeeCee stepped between Tim and Forrest and leaned over the table.

“We’re here right now.” Tim pointed to a spot on the map. “And the cabin is here.” He ran his finger over barely visible lines on the map until he reached a long narrow strip of blue. “That’s the Neuse River. The cabin’s right next to the river, on a road that’s not on the map,” he said, “but I’ll remember it when I see it.”

“Where do we get groceries?” CeeCee asked.

“Closest store is ten miles from here,” Forrest said. “Over here.” He pointed to a spot on the map.

When they’d figured out their route, CeeCee and Tim took the van to the grocery store. At Tim’s insistence, she wore her gloves as they perused the aisles so that any groceries she touched would not bear her prints. They bought canned tuna, soup and vegetables, a loaf of bread, toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, eggs, pasta, peanut butter, cookies, tomato sauce and two pounds of ground beef.

“All this?” CeeCee asked worriedly as Tim put the ground beef in the cart. “How long do you really think this will take?”

“I’m still hoping for a few hours,” he said. “Overnight at the most. But you should have enough food in case it’s longer.”

They drove back to Naomi and Forrest’s house, where CeeCee transferred the groceries to the old car that she could now, for what it was worth, call her own. Marty decided to ride with her, in case she had any problems with the clutch, and they would follow Tim to the cabin. They said goodbye to their hosts, who couldn’t mask their looks of relief at seeing them leave.

She stayed close behind Tim in the old car. Twice she stalled, once at a turn and once on a hill when she stepped on the brake instead of the clutch. To his credit, Marty didn’t utter a word. He was too wound up to chide her, she thought. All three of them were so focused on what lay ahead that they barely noticed what was happening around them.

Ahead of her, Tim turned onto a road that was even more rutted than the one Naomi and Forrest lived on. She felt every jarring dip of the road in her spine, and Marty put his hand on the dashboard for balance. They were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing except acres of tall pines and the narrow ribbon of dirt on which she was driving.

Finally they came to a fork in the road. Ahead of her, Tim stopped his van and although she couldn’t see him, she imagined he was looking in one direction, then the other.

“I think we go right,” Marty said. He had started to open the car door when Tim apparently came to the same conclusion, driving onto the right tine of the fork. CeeCee followed him, her hands gripping the steering wheel as potholes threatened to wrench it from her grasp.

“Man,” Marty said, looking from left to right and back again. “Not sure how we’re going to find this place. It’s so overgrown out here.”

Just then, Tim turned right onto a gravel road. She followed him and, after about a hundred yards, spotted the corner of a building.

“All right!” Marty gave the dashboard a celebratory slap with his palm. “Eureka!”

The minuscule cabin was sided with bleached-looking cedar. It had white shutters, a cutout of a pine tree on the bottom of each one, and a steeply sloping roof. It appeared to be in good shape. Better than Naomi and Forrest’s house, at any rate. She parked behind the van, and as soon as she opened the car door, she heard the roar of rushing water.

“Come see the river!” Tim shouted to them over the din.

They climbed over rocks and tree roots to the rear of the cabin, where the yard fell away to the bank of the river. The water swirled over a cluster of smooth boulders, striking them with such force that thousands of small puffs of foam shot into the air. She could feel the spray on her cheeks.

“Isn’t this a cool place?” Tim came to stand beside her.

“It’s nice,” she agreed. She wished she were looking forward to a romantic week in the cabin with Tim instead of a few hours with a woman she didn’t know. Being here made it all so real. She held her jacket closed against the chill air and stepped away from the river. What was she doing? What had she gotten herself into?

“Do you have your gloves?” Tim asked.

She pulled them out of her pocket.

“Put them on now,” he said. “And don’t take them off until you’re miles away from here, okay?”

She helped the men carry the groceries and her small suitcase into the cabin. It was cold inside and Tim turned the knob on the thermostat. The electric baseboard heat clicked on, and the smell of burning dust quickly filled the air.

The cabin was a small square box, divided into three main rooms—a living room and two bedrooms—as well as a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom. She and Tim put away the groceries in silence. The empty pantry had mouse droppings on every shelf. She turned on the faucet, which did nothing, and Tim searched for the shutoff, finally locating it in a cupboard. The water poured from the tap in a rusty-brown stream.

“It’ll clear,” Tim said. “Just let it run a while.”

She dampened the paper towel with the brown water and wiped away the mouse droppings, then lined the open trash can in the corner with one of the grocery bags.

“Let’s check out the place,” Tim said, taking her gloved hand.

One bedroom had a double bed with an iron headboard. The other had two sets of bunk beds.

“This is the room Marty and Andie and I would stay in when we visited our cousins,” Tim said, a look of nostalgia in his eyes. “We brought sleeping bags, because there were too many of us.” He lifted the bedspread from the corner of the upper bunk. “Maybe you should have the governor’s wife sleep up here,” he said. “That way she can’t do anything fast and fake you out. You can cuff her to the headboard if you end up being here overnight.”

“Okay,” she said, but she was thinking, This isn’t really going to happen. “Where are the … the handcuffs?” she asked.

Tim gave a quick nod as though he’d only now remembered them. “I’ve got them in the van in case we need them when we pick her up,” he said. “I’ll give them to you when we bring her tonight.”

“Tim …” She was still wearing her jacket and folded her arms across herself in an anxious hug. “I’m nervous,” she said. “You’re going to just drop her off here with me and then leave, and I’m somehow supposed to keep her from escaping during the night. Couldn’t you at least stay here for a while after you bring her?”

“Squ-a-awk! Squ-a-awk!” Marty walked into the room making barnyard noises. “Do I detect a chicken in here?” he asked.

CeeCee ignored him. “Please?” she asked Tim.

“Can’t, babe,” Tim said. “We’ve got to start on the negotiations right away and we can’t do that from here. You know that. We have to strike while the iron is hot.” He tugged a strand of her hair and gave her a distracted smile. “It’s going to be fine.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out two keys held together by a rubber band. “These are to the dead bolts,” he said, handing them to her. “We’ve got to take off now.”

“Already?” she asked, startled. “You’ve got to leave now?”

He nodded. “We have to be in the parking lot when her class gets out.” He kissed her cheek. “You’re gonna do great.”

She wasn’t so sure. Through the bedroom window, she watched the brothers leave the cabin. Daylight was fading, highlighting Tim in its red sunset glow, and he looked slim and young and vulnerable. What if the police caught him during the kidnapping? What if they killed him? Her heart twisted at the thought. How would she ever know? She had no way to communicate with the outside world.

She locked the dead bolts on the front and back doors and pocketed the keys. Then she checked the windows. All but one were swollen too tight to raise, although she supposed her captive could break the glass. Even with the windows closed, the sound of the rushing river filled the cabin.

The bunk beds were neatly covered with bedspreads, but unmade. She found musty-smelling sheets and pillowcases in the closet of the larger bedroom and made the bottom bunk of one set and the top bunk of the other. She wandered through the rooms, peering into closets stuffed with sleeping bags, blankets and games. The medicine cabinet contained a bottle of aspirin, a packet of razor blades and some dental floss. She found cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink, so she scrubbed the counters and then cleaned the sink and tub in the little bathroom. There were a few books on a shelf in the living room, and she sat down on the ragged living-room sofa and tried to read, but concentration was impossible.

Giving up, she lifted her legs onto the couch, wrapped her arms around them, and tried to push away the dark and troubled thoughts that filled her mind.

Chapter Eleven

You don’t get scared very often, but you shake like a leaf when you do. You came into my room this afternoon, trembling all over, and I knew Dr. Watts must have told you I don’t have much longer. You were trying hard to hide your fear. You handed me a glass of juice and spilled it all over the blanket and when you tried to clean it up, your hands and arms were shaking so hard, you couldn’t. I felt so bad for you. I wanted to fix it, like I do your scraped knees and bee stings. But there was nothing I could do except hold you. I held you until you finally stopped shaking. Do you remember?

NIGHT FELL EARLY OUTSIDE THE CABIN. SHE ATE TUNA FROM the can for supper, barely tasting it. There were no shades at the windows, and she felt exposed to whatever or whoever might be lurking in the woods. A strong breeze came up and the world outside crackled with the sound of swaying branches. She jumped at a thud on the small front porch and unlocked the dead bolt to peer into the darkness, but the chilly wind made her shiver and she quickly shut the door and bolted it again.

Should she sleep? Who knew when she’d next get the chance? She turned off all the lights in the house and lay down on the bottom bunk bed she’d made, but she was trembling all over. She got under the covers, but the blankets didn’t help; it was not the cold that was making her shiver. How was she going to control a grown woman? She’d felt so young these past few days, so aware of the age difference between her and Tim and Marty and Naomi and Forrest. She wondered again if Tim regretted asking a mere kid to be responsible for an important part of his plan. He should have asked the girl from SCAPE.

She curled into a ball. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to get the governor’s wife. Please don’t let them get her. Tim would be sorely disappointed and she felt bad about that, but self-preservation was kicking into gear.

The slamming of a car door jolted her awake. She sat up in the darkness, still shivering, although the cabin had grown quite warm. She heard voices outside. Jumping from the bed, she ran into the living room to peer through the window into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything at first, and she felt dizzy, as though she might pass out or throw up. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself.

Moving to another window, she spotted the light inside the van. She watched Marty reach into the passenger seat and pull a woman to her feet. CeeCee caught a glimpse of a white blindfold tied around her eyes.

Her mask! She raced back to the bedroom and quickly wrapped her hair around her head, dropping some of the bobby pins on the floor with her trembling, gloved hands. One of the brothers pounded on the front door as she pulled on the blond wig and slipped the mask over her face.

“Coming!” she called. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she whispered to herself as she ran into the living room and unlocked the dead bolt.

It took both Marty and Tim to pull the blindfolded woman through the doorway. She was nearly as tall as they were.

“Stop it!” the woman yelled, her cuffed hands batting the air. “Let go of me!” Her short red hair was mussed, her cheeks crimson, from the cold or from crying. She wore a fur coat. Real fur, CeeCee thought. Dark and rich and shimmery. And she was very fat.

“She’s an obstinate bitch,” Marty said to CeeCee as he pushed the woman past her, but even with her eyes covered, the woman’s expression looked more anxious than obstinate.

“Don’t be afraid,” CeeCee said to her.

The woman stopped fighting. “Who’s that?” she asked.

She hadn’t thought of a name for herself. “Sleeping Beauty,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Her name’s Genevieve,” Tim said, as though the word tasted bad in his mouth. He reached up and untied the woman’s blindfold. She blinked against the light, blue eyes red and puffy from crying, and her gaze fell on CeeCee. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why are you wearing a mask? What’s going on?”

“Does she have to have the handcuffs on?” CeeCee asked Tim.

“You going to behave now?” Tim asked the woman.

Genevieve didn’t respond. She stared at CeeCee, trying to peer into her eyes behind the mask and CeeCee felt an unexpected connection with her: They were both trapped in this situation.

Tim pulled a small key from his pocket and unlocked the cuffs. The moment Genevieve’s hands were free, she slapped him hard across the face, much the way CeeCee had during their breakup performance on Franklin Street.

“You bitch!” Marty grabbed the woman’s wrist, but Tim merely smiled. He looked unsure of himself, though, as if he’d gotten in over his head. It scared CeeCee to see him that way. She needed him to be certain that what they were doing was right. Certain enough for both of them.

“Let go of me!” Genevieve tried to twist her wrist out of Marty’s grasp.

“Let go of her,” CeeCee agreed. She was not trying to protect the woman as much as ease her own discomfort. She didn’t like physical conflict, always fearing it might escalate into something worse. The woman was a massive and imposing figure in the fur coat. She could do some damage if she chose to. “She’s okay,” she said. “She can’t go anywhere.”

Marty let go, and the woman rubbed her wrist.

“Take off this animal you’re wearing,” Tim said. He helped her as though he was helping his girlfriend in a restaurant. When the coat slipped from Genevieve’s shoulders, it was clear she was not fat after all.

“She’s pregnant,” CeeCee said.

“Well, at least one of you can face reality,” the woman said. She was wearing a long, navy-blue sweater and pale blue slacks. “I’ve been telling these jerks that the whole way here. I’m thirty-seven weeks and this is a high-risk pregnancy.” Her voice broke as she rested one hand on her belly. “Please take me back,” she said to Tim.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” CeeCee asked Tim, but Marty answered.

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

It was a big deal, CeeCee thought. This was a human being they were dealing with. Two human beings.

“If your husband does what he’s told,” Tim said, his eyes were on the woman’s huge belly, “you’ll be home before you know it.”

“Thirty-seven weeks,” Genevieve repeated to him. “That’s more than eight months. Do you understand?”

“I’ve got it,” Tim said. “That’s all the more reason the gov should want you back safe, and soon.”

“If anything happens to this baby,” Genevieve said, “you two will be in worse trouble than you are now, I can tell you that.” She leveled her eyes at CeeCee. “You three,” she said. “My husband will never give in to blackmail.”

“This ain’t blackmail, bitch,” Marty said to her. “It’s a kidnapping. Much more elegant than blackmail.”

Genevieve reached behind her to rub the small of her back. “If you take me home now,” she said to Tim, obviously guessing he was the softer of the two men, “I can make sure they go easy on you.”

“No way,” Tim said. “I’m not crapping out on Andie.”

“You’re a fool,” Genevieve said.

“Look.” Tim touched her arm, and she snapped it away from him. “You sit here with Marty and I’ll get you some tea and something to eat.” He looked at CeeCee, nodding toward the kitchen.

“Sit down,” Marty ordered her. CeeCee felt a little afraid to leave her in his care. The woman lowered herself to the old couch, looking defeated and suddenly very tired.

In the kitchen, CeeCee lifted her mask. “Oh, God, Tim, please don’t leave me alone with her!”

“Put the mask down,” he snapped, and she dropped it over her face again. Tim filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. “She’s going to be fine,” he said. “She’s really a pussycat.” The red mark on his cheek suggested otherwise. “Don’t get too close to her, though. She might try to grab your mask or something.”

“I just … I …” CeeCee stammered. “She’s so much taller than me.”

“Babe.” He held on to her shoulders. His smile was meant to reassure her, but it was tight and uncertain. “I’m sure this isn’t going to last long. It’s actually good that she’s pregnant. It makes her less able to cause you any problems, right?” He waited for her to answer and she offered a reluctant nod.

“You’re doing a wonderful thing for me,” he said. “For my family. Whatever you need, anytime, I’ll be there for you. I owe you.”

Be there for me how, she wanted to ask? How could he be there if he was going underground? But she knew better than to bring up that subject again.

“Now look.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun, and she backed away.

“It’s not loaded, right?” she asked.

“Actually, it is,” he said.

She took another step backward until she was up against the pantry. “You said it wouldn’t be. Take out the bullets.”

“I think it’s better if it’s loaded. Just in case. I don’t mean you would shoot her.” He looked suddenly worried. “Whatever you do, don’t shoot her. She’s all we’ve got to trade with. But you might need to shoot the ceiling or something to keep her in line. She’s feistier than I anticipated.”

“Oh, Tim, I don’t want a gun!”

“The safety is on,” he said. “Let me show you how this thing works.”

She watched carefully as he toggled the safety back and forth. She supposed he was right. It would give her more confidence if she had a weapon. It didn’t matter that Genevieve was taller or bigger or stronger if she was the one with the gun.

She took the gun from him, her gloved hands trembling.

“Man, you haven’t stopped shaking since we got here,” he said.

“Not since you left me here, actually,” she admitted. “I can’t stop.”

“It’s all going to work out, I promise,” he said as he took a tea bag from the box in the pantry. “That asshole governor will want to keep this quiet and get her back before anyone’s the wiser. He’s that way. Very private. So I want you to stop worrying, okay?” He lifted her mask a couple of inches and planted a kiss on her cheek.

She poured boiling water into a mug, spilling some of it onto the worn wooden counter.

“You get the cookies,” he said, taking the mug from her. “And try to calm down. Don’t let her see how rattled you are.”

She was worrying him, she thought, as she put a few sugar cookies onto a plate. Disappointing him.

Genevieve was still sitting on the old sofa when they walked back into the room, and Marty stood at the window, looking less confident than he had a few minutes earlier.

“I heard something out there,” he said. “A thud or something.”

“It’s nothing.” Tim set the mug on the coffee table.

“I heard it a lot while you were gone,” CeeCee said. “I think it’s just a branch brushing against the porch.” How was someone as paranoid as Marty going to survive on the run? She placed the plate of cookies next to the mug, taking one of them for herself, although she was hardly hungry. She needed something to do with her hands.

Genevieve suddenly picked up all four of the cookies and threw them at the men. Then she threw the plate at CeeCee, catching her on the side of her face. Of Sleeping Beauty’s face.

“You bitch!” Marty was on the woman in a flash, pinning her arms to the sofa, and CeeCee saw a sharp flicker of fear in her eyes.

“Leave her alone,” she said, surprised as the words left her mouth. “You can’t blame her.” It suddenly occurred to her that befriending the woman might be the right approach. Her sympathy for her was genuine. As Marty backed away, CeeCee could tell that Genevieve was struggling to keep from crying. Her lower lip quivered and her eyes blinked back tears. She sat down next to her. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

Genevieve stared at her. “What have you let these guys talk you into?” she asked.

CeeCee quickly stood again as she felt the upper hand slip away from her. “I think for myself, bitch,” she said, but Genevieve’s eyes bored hard into CeeCee’s until she had to look away.

Tim pointed to the governor’s wife. “Do what Sleeping Beauty says, or there’ll be trouble,” he said. “Marty and I are leaving.”

“I don’t feel well,” Genevieve said, her hand rubbing her back again. “I could be going into labor.”

“Right,” Tim said with disdain. He looked at Marty. “You ready?”

“You bet,” Marty said, but he opened the door slowly and peered outside before walking onto the porch.

CeeCee stood next to the coffee table, watching the men leave. She listened to the van doors slam shut and the engine cough to life, and she thought, What now? She felt Genevieve’s eyes on her. The woman hadn’t touched her tea. “Do you want more cookies?” she asked.

Genevieve ignored the question. “So, what happens now?” she asked. “Will they tell my husband where I am and he can come get me?”

A horrible thought. Surely they wouldn’t send the husband here. She’d be a sitting duck if he showed up.

“They’ll come get you and take you back,” she said, as if she knew that for a fact.

“Where are they going now?”

“Someplace where they can call your husband.”

“Why didn’t they call him from here? Then I could talk to him and let him know I’m alive. That would make more sense.”

“There’s no phone here.”

Genevieve rolled her eyes. “Then why didn’t they take me someplace where there is a phone?”

It was a good question and CeeCee didn’t have the answer. “Look,” she said, “this is the way it is, so we’ll just have to make the best of it.”

Genevieve suddenly got to her feet and CeeCee panicked. “You sit down!” she said.

She thought Genevieve was going to ignore her, and she suddenly realized she’d left the gun in the kitchen. Her voice must have carried power, though, because the woman dropped onto the sofa again.

“I wasn’t kidding that I don’t feel well,” she said. “My back aches.”

“You probably pulled something when they nabbed you,” CeeCee said.

“It ached before that. It’s ached all day.”

“When is your baby due?”

“Three weeks from now.”

“Then it’s not the baby,” CeeCee said as if she knew about these things. Babies did come early, but a backache had nothing to do with labor. At least she hoped it didn’t. She walked over to the bookshelf. “You want a book to read?” she asked.

“I don’t want a book,” Genevieve said. “If you think I can concentrate on reading, you’re as crazy as your friends.”

CeeCee sat down in the chair by the window and folded her hands on her lap.

“What color’s your real hair?” Genevieve asked.

“None of your business.” She realized that she’d completely forgotten about disguising her voice. Too late now.

“I don’t think you’re as tough as you pretend.” Genevieve almost smiled. “You really should have gotten a tougher mask than that.”

CeeCee touched the thin plastic mask.

“Do you go to Carolina?” Genevieve asked. “You’re not one of my students, are you? You sound like one of them.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I were,” CeeCee said.

Genevieve looked annoyed. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Damn. She’d hoped they could get through this entire fiasco without either of them needing to use the bathroom.

“I have to go with you,” CeeCee said.

“Are those your orders?” Genevieve moved forward on the couch as though preparing to stand up. “Don’t let her out of your sight?” She was talking to her like she might a child. It was irksome enough to be annoying, and CeeCee was glad. It made Genevieve less sympathetic.

“I think for myself,” CeeCee said.

“Fine,” Genevieve said. “I need to go to the bathroom. Now.”

“Stay here one minute.” CeeCee darted into the kitchen and grabbed the gun. Just touching it started her hands shaking again. She checked to be sure the safety was on, then carried it into the living room.

“Whoa!” Genevieve said. “You don’t need that!”

“You can get up now, and I’ll walk with you,” CeeCee said.

Genevieve struggled to her feet, giving CeeCee a wide berth as she walked toward the hallway. She held one arm out as if she could block a bullet with her hand. The other hand she held protectively over her belly.

“It’s that door on the left,” CeeCee said.

Genevieve walked into the bathroom and started to shut the door behind her, but CeeCee stuck out her foot to keep it open.

“Oh, come on,” Genevieve said. “What do you think I’m going to do in here?” She pointed to the small, square window above the toilet. “I’m hardly going to be able to get through that window.”

That was true. CeeCee didn’t want to watch her while she went to the bathroom, anyway.

“Okay.” She removed her foot from in front of the door. “You have to leave it open a crack, though.”

“Fine,” Genevieve said again.

CeeCee leaned against the wall, waiting, listening to the rustle of clothing on the other side of the door. Genevieve urinated for a long time, then flushed the toilet. CeeCee straightened, gun held in front of her, as she waited for her captive to walk into the hallway. Then suddenly, so quickly CeeCee had no time to react, the bathroom door slammed shut and the key clicked into place in the lock.

Chapter Twelve

Oh, CeeCee, I get so scared sometimes! I’m not afraid of dying anymore, but I’m afraid of what will happen to you and that’s what keeps me awake at night. During the day, when I’m thinking rationally, I know you’ll be okay. At night, though, the worst thoughts fill my head. I have to remind myself that you have loads of gumption! I think you may need it, darling girl.

“OPEN UP!” CEECEE POUNDED ON THE BATHROOM DOOR.

“I just want to be by myself,” Genevieve said. “I told you. I can’t get out through the window, so just give me some space, all right?”

“No, it’s not all right.” CeeCee was frantic. She kicked at the door and rattled the knob. “Open it!” She heard the medicine-cabinet door squeak open and remembered the razor blades. The cookie she’d eaten rushed into her throat. Hands trembling, she aimed the gun at the doorjamb near the lock, released the safety and pulled the trigger.

The explosion nearly knocked her off her feet, and Genevieve screamed. The door and jamb were splintered and CeeCee reached for the knob. The damn thing was still locked. “Open the door!” Behind the mask, tears burned her eyes.

“All right, all right!” Genevieve pulled the door open and raised her hands in the air. “Are you out of your mind?” she asked. “Don’t shoot!”

Holding the gun on the woman, CeeCee checked the medicine cabinet and was relieved to see that the packet of razor blades was still there. “Get into the living room,” she said.

“Fine,” Genevieve said. “Just stop pointing that thing at me.”

CeeCee flipped the safety back on and lowered the gun to her side as they walked into the living room. Genevieve sat down on the sofa again, leaning forward and rubbing her back. “You’re a loose cannon, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Keep quiet,” CeeCee said. She was glad now of the mask. The plastic features would remain frozen no matter what emotions she felt behind them. Her trembling hands in their white gloves, though, were a giveaway.

“Put that gun away. Please,” Genevieve said.

She sat down in the chair by the window again and rested the gun in her lap, wondering what they would do now. Would they sit there facing each other for the entire night? Maybe all day tomorrow as well? Exactly how far was it to Jacksonville? She looked at her watch. Quarter past midnight! She’d had no idea it was that late. Were Tim and Marty in Jacksonville yet?

“Please take off that mask,” Genevieve said.

CeeCee shook her head. Her scalp was perspiring beneath the wig. It felt like worms crawling through her hair and she wondered who else might have worn the wig before her. She longed to rip it off and scratch her head.

“Why are you doing this, Sleeping Beauty?” Genevieve’s voice had softened, and with it, her features. She was very pretty. Maybe beautiful under other circumstances. Right now, her skin was a little too pale. Wan, even. Her blue eyes looked clouded and troubled in the overhead light, and there were two small, vertical lines between her eyebrows.

“I’m doing it because Tim’s sister is a victim of the system,” she said, parroting Naomi’s words. They sounded as inauthentic as they felt coming from her mouth.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Genevieve asked. “‘A victim of the system’?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” CeeCee felt the tremor in her hands again. She clutched the handle of the gun between her hands to stop their shaking.

“Do you know her? The sister?”

“No, but I know Tim and I know he loves her and I love him so I want to help him. “The words spilled out before she could stop them.

Genevieve cocked her head, looking at her differently. “You’re in love with Tim?” she asked.

“Yes, but that’s not the only reason I’m—”

“There’s something you should know about your … boyfriend,” Genevieve said. “I taught him in my Spanish class, Sleeping Beauty. He’s a … a womanizer.”

“You taught him?” She remembered Tim saying that Genevieve was a Spanish professor, but not that he’d had her.

“He’s a lady-killer.” Genevieve sat as far forward on the couch as her belly would allow. “He played around with every woman in that class. He even had an affair with one who was married.”

CeeCee raised the gun and pointed it at her. “Shut up,” she said. “I don’t want to hear your lies. You may have taught him, although I’m not sure I believe that, but you don’t know him.”

“Please put the gun down.”

“You promise to shut up?” CeeCee asked.

“Not another word about your darling Casanova.”

“I said shut up.” CeeCee lifted the gun higher, the barrel jerking through the air in her uncertain hands. She had to be careful. The cotton fabric of her gloves was slippery.

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