Snapshots
Pamela Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Thanks to Neill for “Joey” and the music, Melanie for

Low Country lore and Bethany for chai tea latte and the

prom (though like my heroine, she was never allowed to

stay at the hotel all night, either). I love y’all!

This book is for Cameron, in happy anticipation of our

snapshots together in the coming years.

Contents

Chapter 1: Rick

Chapter 2: Rick

Chapter 3: Trista

Chapter 4: Trista

Chapter 5: Trista

Chapter 6: Rick

Chapter 7: Trista

Chapter 8: Trista

Chapter 9: Trista

Chapter 10: Rick

Chapter 11: Trista

Chapter 12: Rick

Chapter 13: Trista

Chapter 14: Rick

Chapter 15: Trista

Chapter 16: Trista

Chapter 17: Rick

Epilogue: Trista

Chapter 1: Rick

2004

To say that their marriage was in trouble was a classic understatement. Sure, he and Martine had their problems like any other couple. They’d managed, though. In the past they’d congratulated themselves on their strength under pressure, their determination to make the relationship work. But this time was different.

An unwelcome guest had hitched a ride earlier when he stopped to pick up Martine at work, and it began to whine in the vicinity of Rick’s ear. He swatted at the mosquito, and the hum stopped, then resumed. He slapped at it again, harder this time, and the noise ceased.

Martine glanced out of the corner of her eye, still defiant but incredibly beautiful. “Bet you wish that was me,” she said. “Bet you’d like to squash me flat.”

“Stop it, Martine,” he said, keeping his voice even.

She turned her head away, her pale hair glimmering in the headlights from oncoming cars. “If you insist on going to this stupid party for Shorty, I have to stop by the house to get a wrap,” she said. The early-January breeze blew in on the promise of a cool night, more than welcome in Miami any time of year.

“Attendance is mandatory,” Rick said. “All the guys are—”

She cut him off midsentence. “Just don’t talk to me while we’re there, okay?”

“Fine,” he said curtly. It’s not as though he really had anything to say to Martine, except Why?

“At least we’re doing something together,” Martine said. “For once you don’t have to work late.” She didn’t even attempt to conceal her resentment.

Gunning the car’s engine as he rounded the corner onto their peaceful palm-lined street, Rick spotted the white Impala immediately. It stood out in this manicured Kendall neighborhood; one rear window was broken out, and a spreading rust stain marred the trunk. At any other time, he might have paid more attention.

“I’ll be right back,” Martine said, reaching for the door handle.

“It’s a surprise party,” Rick reminded her. “We don’t want to be late.”

As she slammed the car door, Martine cast a scathing glance back over her shoulder. Under normal circumstances, Rick would have accompanied her, maybe changed out of his jacket, shirt and tie into more comfortable clothes, but he needed time to recoup. She disappeared into the house, a typical south Florida ranch with a red barrel-tile roof.

Rick drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Ten years of marriage. Ten wasted years, and how long since he’d realized he’d made a terrible mistake? Seven years? Five? He’d wanted kids; Martine hadn’t. His paralyzing discovery of those love notes in Martine’s bottom dresser drawer, which he had opened innocently enough last night, had made so many things clear. All the nights she’d said she had to work late, the Saturday-afternoon shopping trips when she returned with no purchases, the cell-phone bills he never saw, not to mention the general air of secretiveness that he hadn’t recognized for what it was. And all he’d had in mind when he opened that drawer was to check her bra size so he could buy her a sexy birthday present for the purpose of inspiring their almost nonexistent sex life.

He felt a sting on his left ear—that damn mosquito again. He opened the car window, figuring that maybe the insect would do them both a favor and escape into the night. While the window was down, he spared the derelict white car at the curb a cursory assessment. A car parked there was by no means unusual, since the teenage girl next door often entertained boyfriends who left their vehicles at the edge of Rick’s property. Out of habit, Rick attempted to pick out the numbers on the license tag, but it was hidden in shadows from the surrounding shrubbery.

He punched the button to bring the window all the way up and massaged his eyelids for a long moment. It had been a quiet day in Homicide, affording him time to catch up on paperwork and mull over the situation with Martine. He’d never dreamed she was capable of betrayal. They’d been childhood friends, college buddies. Which proved that you really never knew another person, no matter how close the relationship.

Minutes ticked past, punctuated by the shrilling of crickets. What was taking Martine so long? Rick checked his watch. It had been half an hour since he’d picked her up at the law office where she worked, twenty hours since he’d read the incriminating letters. Last night she’d cried, he’d accused, she’d admitted everything. No, that wasn’t quite true. Not everything—at least, according to a terrible suspicion that he’d never voiced and never would.

He sure as hell wouldn’t be going to a party for his boss tonight if Shorty hadn’t encouraged him and promised a promotion to chief detective before long. All Rick wanted, really, was to lick his wounds in private. To hunker down somewhere far from here and figure out whether he was capable of living without Martine. Or maybe he should be considering whether he could still live with her. Tappany Island, yeah, that was the place. Tomorrow he’d ask for a week off, depart on a road trip to South Carolina and just hang for a while.

The front door of their house swung open abruptly. Rick, expecting Martine to hurry out, waited impatiently for her to emerge into the yellow glare of the bug bulb in the porch light. Then, in the shadows inside the house, he saw the stocky dark-clad figure pressing a knife to Martine’s throat, muscular arms gripping her in an awkward embrace. Instinctively, Rick reached for his weapon, a .38 semiautomatic tucked away in the shoulder holster under his jacket. He leaped from the car.

At this point, the action sped into fast-forward. Martine let out a small involuntary squeak at Rick’s sudden movement. Lightning quick, the knife slit a shallow cut across the creamy skin at the base of her throat. Beads of blood appeared, dark red and out of place as they slid toward the scoop neckline of Martine’s pale green dress.

“Stay away,” warned her captor in an agitated voice, his accent guttural and Hispanic. “Unless you want your wife to become fish food at the bottom of a canal.” The man seemed electric, wired, jittery, like an out-of-control marionette.

Rick recoiled, held himself back when all he wanted to do was to rush the man and blow his head off. Martine, who must have known his inclination, sent him a look of such dire pleading that it rocked him back on his heels.

All thought of their previous argument and of last night’s discovery faded in the force of Rick’s sudden, gut-wrenching comprehension. He recognized the man as Jorgé Padrón, an illegal immigrant who had been convicted on Rick’s testimony some years ago. Padrón had created a fracas in the courtroom before they led him away, kicking over a chair and yelling in broken English that he’d get even with Rick McCulloch, no matter how long it took. Since Padrón was sentenced to ten years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, Rick had known he would eventually be back on the street, but he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. The newly convicted often issued impassioned threats before being led away to serve their time.

“Drop your gun,” Padrón commanded.

Rick hesitated, bile rising in his throat. It tasted metallic, coppery.

“Rick—” Martine gasped, her eyes begging him.

“Shut up,” Padrón said, tightening his grip so that she winced. “Drop it,” he said to Rick. “Unless you want me to add a few more red beads to this pretty necklace I gave your wife.”

Bloodstains now covered the bodice of Martine’s dress. Feeling a sense of futility, Rick dropped the .38. It landed with a thud on the grass.

“Hands up where I can see them.”

Slowly, Rick raised his hands above his shoulders.

Padrón maneuvered Martine between him and Rick as he propelled her toward the white car at the curb. “No talk from you,” he warned Rick. “I’ll kill her without thinking twice.”

“Take me, instead,” Rick said urgently. “Let her go.”

“You? You’re no use to me. Comprende?”

Rick comprended, all right. The man was a convicted sex offender who had robbed a convenience store and raped the owner’s wife. He’d carved the woman’s face into ribbons for good measure.

“Open the door,” Padrón ordered Martine as they approached the driver’s side of the white car. “Do it!”

Martine’s hand, the one with his wedding ring on the third finger, inched out. Rick watched, alert for any lapse on Padrón’s part, any chance he might be able to jump the man before he reached the car. The steel skin of the .38 gleamed in the moonlight a few feet from his right foot.

“Hurry up!” Padrón said.

Martine pulled at the door; it opened. Padrón slid inside under the steering wheel and yanked Martine in after him.

“Padrón, let’s talk about this,” Rick said, refusing to panic. “We can solve your problems some other way. Let her go. Take me. I can help you.”

“Like when you sent me off to Raiford Prison? Yeah, right.” To Martine he said, “Turn the key. Start the car. You and me, we go for a ride.” He tightened his choke hold around her neck.

Martine did as he said. The car’s engine clunked to life, and a cloud of black exhaust spewed from the tailpipe. Rick hoped some of the neighbors would notice, but all the nearby houses were dark.

“Now put it in drive. No surprises, Mrs. McCulloch, and you will be okay.”

Rage flickered up past the fear in Rick’s throat, wrapped itself around his brain and squeezed. Martine…Martine. The white car began to roll slowly toward the intersection.

“Don’t call police,” was Padrón’s parting command. “Anyone follows me, she dies.”

This warning notwithstanding, Rick grabbed his gun and was behind the wheel of his Taurus sedan before the Impala rounded the corner. He grappled with his cell phone and managed to alert the police department, relieved to learn that his friend Wally was working the desk.

Rick did his best to explain, and Wally was no dummy. He knew who Padrón was. Wally had worked the case with Rick shortly after Rick had joined the force.

“Don’t worry, Rick,” Wally said, but by that time Rick was straining to keep track of the Impala, which was darting in and out of cars ahead. He almost lost it in the traffic on busy Kendall Boulevard.

Rick sped through traffic lights and ignored stop signs as the Impala bobbed and weaved, nearly running up on the sidewalk at one point, speeding up the ramp to the Palmetto Expressway. From what he could tell about the car’s occupants, Padrón stayed pressed close to Martine, and he could only imagine her state of mind at present. His wife wasn’t the most stable of women even in the best of times; in the past few months she’d been seeing a counselor for depression. Hang in there, Martine, he muttered. Despite their difficulties, she would expect him to do everything in his power to save her. Rick wouldn’t disappoint her—the consequences were unthinkable.

The expressway was its usual tangle of passenger cars and semis, with macho guys jockeying for every inch as they dodged from lane to lane, women laughing into cell phones pressed to their ears. Packs of commuters were scurrying home to outlying subdivisions. Overhead a 747 banked low, preparing to land at Miami International. Graffiti rushed by, spray painted on the metal guardrail in the median: SNOWBIRDS GO HOME. DOLPHINS ROCK. JULIO + ANA (TRULY).

The white Impala picked up speed, almost sideswiping a Mack truck. Rick jammed his foot down on the accelerator, raced past a school bus, barked out his location to Wally on the phone.

What happened next went down fast. The Impala, traveling an estimated hundred miles an hour in the passing lane, swerved to the right for a few seconds, almost clipping a red Mustang. When the Impala arced back into the passing lane, it skidded left into the grassy median.

Steer into the skid, Rick thought. He had a moment of jubilation when Martine appeared to be doing just that, but before he could draw another breath, the Impala’s tires bounced off the pavement so that the car slewed sideways into the median again. Miraculously, it straightened. Then it struck the metal barrier, sending up a plume of sparks.

For one heart-stopping, surreal moment, the Impala seemed frozen in midair, no longer a car but a graceful white wingless flying machine. Rick’s brain struggled to make sense of the scene as the car with his wife inside proceeded to land on its roof with a deafening crash, immediately bursting into flames.

Rick ran toward the twisted wreckage, heart thudding against his ribs. Other motorists stopped, and cars slowed on the highway as drivers craned their heads in curiosity. The blaze made it impossible to see anything but the outline of the car, and the heat drove him backward. Then he spotted a patch of pale green in his peripheral vision, Martine’s dress, and he changed direction, dreading what he would find when he reached her.

He knelt beside her, appalled by all the blood. Soon, sirens were keening all around as pulsing multicolored lights illuminated a nightmare scene of fire engines and police cars. Martine was unconscious, but she was alive. He let the paramedics push him aside, their brief, urgent words mere babble in his ears as they strapped Martine onto a stretcher and slid it into the ambulance.

He’d supervised a hundred emergency scenes in the course of his work, but all of them had been marked by his own detachment and his ability to function well under stress. As one of the paramedics slammed the ambulance door, he tried to bring that same sense of focus into this situation but failed. The horror of the images and the engagement of his own emotions made it impossible.

He was in his car, hitting his cell phone’s speed dial, before the ambulance pulled off the median with him following behind. The phone on the other end seemed to ring for an interminably long time, and he started muttering, “Pick up, pick up.” He imagined his sister-in-law in her condominium in Columbia, South Carolina. She’d have recently arrived home from work at WCIC, where she was coanchor of the evening news. Or maybe she was staying late at the station tonight, but he prayed that wasn’t the case. Due to her coolness under pressure, Martine’s identical twin was the person of choice to call in crisis situations.

“Hello?”

He’d planned to cushion the blow of his news, but when he heard Trista’s voice, he blurted it out.

“Tris, there’s been an accident. It’s Martine.”

A sharp intake of breath. Then, in a rush, “Is she all right?”

“She’s alive. We’re on the way to the hospital.”

“What happened?”

Keeping the ambulance in sight as he drove one-handed, he told her, his words tense and measured.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Trista said, and he imagined her heading for her closet, phone still pressed to her ear as she grabbed a duffel and started tossing clothes into it. He was approaching the hospital by this time, speeding into the curve leading to the emergency entrance, and he didn’t know what he said after that, only that they hung up.

He bolted from his car, stood jittery and on edge as the ambulance crew wheeled Martine into a curtained cubicle where he was not permitted to go. He paced the waiting room, thought about calling Trista again, but was reluctant because she’d be busy lining up airline reservations. Two officers from the department showed up and informed him that Padrón had died in the fiery crash, but Rick was too crazed with worry to derive any satisfaction from that.

The next few hours would be forever blurred in his memory. Long after Martine disappeared, a doctor summoned him to a small bare room. Rick swallowed, prepared to hear the worst.

“Your wife will recover,” said the doctor, someone Rick had never seen before. His name tag pegged him as Ethan D. Stillwater, M.D.

Rick’s knees went weak with relief, but the doctor didn’t notice. He consulted his clipboard. “She’s suffered three broken ribs, concussion, a fractured collarbone and assorted abrasions and contusions. She’ll soon be as good as new.”

Completely numb by this time, all Rick could do was try to pay attention as Dr. Stillwater rattled on about length of hospital stay and rehab. By now the issues Rick had with Martine before the accident seemed moot; he felt overwhelmingly guilty for what had happened to her. She’d never approved of his going into police work and had always resented the time he gave to his job. Maybe, in the long run, she’d been right.

“Sir, your wife has been placed in room 432,” said a nurse, briefly and comfortingly touching his arm.

“Thanks,” Rick said automatically. He took an interminable ride to the fourth floor on a jolting elevator whose mirrored walls revealed that his face was as white and pinched as those of his fellow passengers, all of whom must have urgent reasons for being there in the middle of the night just as he did.

He wouldn’t have recognized Martine if her name hadn’t been printed on a placard beside the door. A tightness gripped his heart when he first saw her, a heavy mantle of self-reproach pressing him down. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head bandaged so that only a few tendrils of hair escaped. She wore a hospital gown, its institutional print faded from many washings. When she first opened her eyes, she stared as if she wasn’t quite sure who he was, her eyes drifting closed almost immediately after registering recognition but no emotion at all.

Rick settled himself on the uncomfortable plastic-covered chair and caught a couple of hours’ sleep, waking when an aide delivered a breakfast tray. Martine was still asleep, so he forced down what he could from the tray—gummy oatmeal, a wedge of toast soaked with margarine.

After that he phoned a friend of his from the department and asked him to stop by the house. Charlie rang him back a couple of hours later and told him that Padrón had entered by disarming the security system and breaking a back window. “I’ll take care of it,” Charlie said, and Rick left it to him, knowing that he would.

Martine dozed most of the day, and Rick tried unsuccessfully to do the same. When the door swung open late in the afternoon, he glanced up sharply, expecting yet another nurse or an aide. Instead, Martine walked in, her eyes frantic. But no. His befogged brain cleared in a moment to realize that it was Trista.

Overwhelmingly relieved to see her, Rick stood immediately and pulled Trista into a hug, taking comfort from her warmth. Her bones felt fragile and her pale hair smelled of the almond-scented shampoo she’d favored for as long as he could remember. He released her reluctantly when she pulled away.

Trista turned immediately toward the figure in the bed. “I got here as soon as I could,” she said, noting the monitors and machines crowding the small space. “How is she?” She wore little makeup and a white T-shirt with jeans and a navy blazer. The back of her hair was crushed, as if she’d rested her head on the back of the airplane seat and forgotten to fluff it afterward.

Rick filled her in as best he could, though he had the feeling he was leaving a lot out. Trista nodded, looking worried and upset as she slung her shoulder bag on the nightstand and slipped out of her jacket. “I called Mom. She’s not well enough to come,” she said. A sense of calm radiated from her, and Rick drew sustenance from it. He was desperately in need of support, someone to care about him, and Trista was the closest member of their family. His parents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to teach English in China, were living in faraway Nanchung, and he seldom saw his brother, Hal, whose prissy, uptight wife, Nadia, vaguely disapproved of him.

As Trista’s glance took in his beard stubble and rumpled clothes, she moved to the side of the bed and caressed her twin’s hand.

“I can’t imagine how awful it must have been,” she murmured sympathetically. “For both of you.”

“I couldn’t stop Padrón. I tried.” As long as he lived, Rick would never forget those moments of watching helplessly as the man forced Martine into the car.

Trista’s hand reached backward for his so that the three of them were linked as they’d been so many times when they were children growing up together. Her grasp was warm, familiar, and he should have completed the circle by clasping Martine’s free hand. He didn’t. The gesture was preempted by the IV needle.

“Why don’t you take a break, Rick,” Trista said quietly and sensibly. “Grab some sleep. I’ll stay here.”

He refused. He didn’t want to leave Martine, even though Trista was more than capable of looking after her. But after he slumped over a few times in the chair and realized that he was viewing Trista’s caring face as if through a heavy fog, Rick finally admitted to himself that he’d been wiped out by an ordeal that had begun with that unwelcome discovery in Martine’s dresser drawer.

“I think I will go home for a while,” he told Trista, who had pulled a second chair close to the bedside and was still holding her twin’s hand.

“Go on,” she said. “You’re a walking zombie.”

You don’t know the half of it, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His anguish over the rift between Martine and him was coming back, invisible and unknown to everyone. Certainly, he’d feel less raw and vulnerable after a good night’s sleep.

“Go on,” Trista urged gently.

“Call me if there’s any change.”

“I will.” She smiled up at him.

It was eleven o’clock at night when Rick left the hospital. With Miami’s streets almost deserted at this late hour, he didn’t have to concentrate on his driving, only on staying awake. He pulled the car into the garage in Kendall and sat for a moment after the door descended behind him. Returning home was hitting him hard in his gut, and he had to force himself to go inside.

The house was neat and clean, thanks to Esmelda, their Guatemalan housekeeper, who cheerfully whooshed in and out twice a week bearing vacuum cleaners, solvents and a multitude of rags. The master bedroom was as he’d left it, and Charlie had already repaired the broken window in the utility room.

He showered, shaved, phoned Trista at the hospital.

“Anything new?” Rick asked.

“Martine’s resting,” Trista told him. “She’s opened her eyes a couple of times, and she took a drink of water about half an hour ago.”

Rick wanted to say, Has she asked for me? But his mouth wouldn’t shape the words and he couldn’t have forced the air out of his lungs even if it had.

And so he hung up. Even though he was exhausted, he lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. He kept thinking of the first time he’d seen Trista and Martine, long ago at Eugene Field Elementary School. How they’d become fast friends immediately, and where they’d gone from there. How until recently the future had always seemed just around the corner, bright and shining as the sun.

If Rick had learned anything in his thirty-two years, it was that life had a way of rearing up in your face or skidding along in unexpected twists and turns, like now. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t go back and change any of it afterward.

Chapter 2: Rick

2004

After Martine’s accident, Trista and Rick alternated shifts at the hospital, and Rick was thankful that Trista could stay on in Miami to help him out. They didn’t see each other often, mostly brief hellos and goodbyes as one left Martine’s bedside and the other arrived.

Though Martine was more alert by the third day after the accident, she didn’t talk to him much. The nurses told him that she needed her rest while her body healed. Rick suspected that Martine was more forthcoming with Trista, and he considered whether she might be filling her sister in on their personal situation during the long hours when Trista sat at her bedside. Even if that was what was going on, he knew that Trista would respect Martine’s confidence and that she would never speak of their marriage difficulties with him.

Rick returned to work in Homicide, but his heart wasn’t in it. More than anything, he wanted to patch things up with his wife, but he was reluctant to broach the subject while she was recovering. He was still wallowing in guilt. In his heart, he believed that the kidnapping would never have happened if he hadn’t gone against Martine’s wishes by choosing police work as a career.

Five days after the accident, Rick was sitting in the backyard of their house, watching the light from the moon dancing in the dense tropical shrubbery and thinking things over. Not that he got very far with it—his mind kept playing back the scenes with Padrón and the horror of watching the car roll over and explode into flames. When he heard the glass door behind him slide open on its track, he snapped out of his reverie and swiveled quickly in alarm. Since the break-in, he’d remained jittery and on edge. He sagged in relief when he saw that it was only Trista advancing toward him through the shadows.

“Hi, Rick. Martine practically pushed me out of her room and told me to get lost,” she said.

It struck him how pretty she was, and though her features were the same as Martine’s, Trista’s were softer somehow, as if they were the same picture captured by a more flattering lens.

“She seems to be feeling better today,” Rick said. He’d been encouraged by the color in Martine’s cheeks and the fading of her bruises.

“So what are you doing out here all by yourself?” Trista asked.

“Thinking,” he said.

She paused, skewering him with a glance. “About?”

He sighed. “A lot of things.”

“Do I have to drag it out of you?” she asked with an impish grin, but he wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

“I need to figure out where to go from here. I thought I could do a lot of good by working in law enforcement, and yet I endangered Martine. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

Trista’s expression changed, became serious. “You didn’t cause Padrón to do what he did. He’s responsible for his own actions.”

“Tris, I’ve learned the hard way that when you’re dealing with the criminal element, you open yourself to things that should never happen.” He was more than serious. Somber, even.

“We both figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?” Trista said, and he knew she was remembering her father, a prominent South Carolina attorney. Seven years ago, Roger Barrineau had been murdered by a former client, gunned down in cold blood on the steps of the Richland County Courthouse.

He nodded. His father-in-law had been Rick’s friend and role model, and the shock and grief of his murder had never completely gone away. Now, years later, to be faced with nearly losing his wife in a similar situation had not only been terrifying, it had brought him up short. He didn’t want to live his life like this anymore. He wanted things to be peaceful, calm, nice.

Of course, the case could be made that Rick had lost his wife before Padrón ever forced her into his car, but he wasn’t about to discuss that with Trista unless she brought it up first.

Thankfully, she didn’t. She stretched, smiled at him and stood. “That chair in Martine’s hospital room has put a permanent kink in my spine. I could use a glass of wine to start the unwinding process. How about you?”

“I’ll get it.” He started to rise, but she stayed him with a light hand on his arm.

“No, let me. I’m going inside to change shoes, anyway. I’m ready to kick back some.”

He looked at her feet, small for such a tall woman. She wore espadrilles with cork wedge heels that made her ankles seem impossibly slim.

“All right, if you insist. I like the Delicato chardonnay. It’s in the refrigerator.”

“I’ll try it,” she said.

When Trista returned wearing bedroom slippers, which were incongruously fuzzy and pink, she carried two glasses on a narrow tray. “I couldn’t find any crackers or cheese. Maybe I should stop by the store on my way back from the hospital tomorrow.” She sat down beside him and eased the back of her patio chair down a notch.

“I don’t expect you to do the shopping. I’ll be happy to pick up some food tomorrow. You’ve helped so much with Martine, and I’m grateful you’re here, believe me.”

She regarded him over the top of her wineglass. “Where else would I be?” she asked. “I belong with you and Martine at a time like this.”

“I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he said, thinking back to all the other occasions when he and Martine had depended on Trista. The time they’d won a Caribbean cruise in a raffle and she’d house-sat, overseeing the building of their new Florida room while they were gone. Trista had rearranged her vacation days in order to accommodate them. And a few years ago when Martine had injured her knee while skiing, Trista had uncomplainingly occupied their guest room for two weeks, doing all the cooking and keeping Martine company. Martine declared that she would have gone stark raving mad sitting around the house by herself all that time.

“So what do you think of the Carolina Panthers’ chances when they play the Dolphins next season?” Trista asked, and since this was something on which Rick held a well-thought-out opinion, he gratefully entered into a discussion. It amazed him that he was capable of this when he was hurting so much inside, but it had become second nature to pretend everything was okay when it wasn’t.

The conversation progressed to updating her about his parents and their work in China and inquiries about Virginia Barrineau, who now lived with her sister in Macon, Georgia. It was easy talk, unchallenging and comforting because it required no thinking, no decision making.

“I like this chardonnay,” Trista said when the conversation began to wane. She swirled the pale liquid in her glass, studying it. “You have good taste in wine.”

“You used to be disappointed that wine didn’t taste like Kool-Aid,” Rick reminded her, recalling their first foray into alcohol together. When they were high-school juniors, he’d snitched a bottle of pinot grigio from his parents’ bar at Sweetwater Cottage, and they’d drunk every last drop from paper cups on the beach. The wine had given them only a mild buzz, and Martine had declared that she liked beer better, so what was all the fuss about?

He and Trista had jumped all over Martine, demanding that she tell them when she’d had occasion to drink beer, and she’d laughingly informed them that she and her current steady date customarily downed a six-pack every weekend; they’d park in the lover’s lane overlooking the lake behind their subdivision in Columbia and chugalug until the beer was gone. Then they’d make out.

If Trista recalled that long-ago discussion, she gave no indication of it now. She smiled. “Not much can beat cherry Kool-Aid, even today. I’ve considered adopting a kid so people won’t tease me about having it in the refrigerator.”

He cut a sideways glance in her direction. “You really mean that? About adopting a child?”

Trista shrugged, almost too casually, and avoided his eyes. “I’ve thought about it, usually when I’ve overwound my biological clock. Then I get sane again and realize that with my job, I wouldn’t be a great single parent.” She sounded sad or perhaps reflective, and he could only imagine what was running through her mind.

He infused his voice with what he hoped was encouragement. “You’ve got a great job. Don’t knock it.” After he said it, he realized that refocusing the conversation on her job rather than her wish to adopt could be construed as unfeeling, but it was too late to take back his words.

Trista pushed a strand of cornsilk-pale hair back from her forehead and adroitly changed the subject. “Martine’s getting out of the hospital on Sunday. I’m planning to leave that morning,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

He was surprised at the disappointment that washed over him when he thought of her leaving. “Don’t you want to be here when she comes home?”

“I did, but Martine insists that she won’t need someone around the house 24–7. And let’s face it, I’ve got a job I should be tending. Anyway, Martine said she’d call Esmelda if she can’t handle being by herself.” Esmelda had been angling for more working time due to the fact that she was expecting her fourth child and could use the money.

Rick didn’t say anything. He supposed he couldn’t ask Trista to stay in Miami any longer, considering that she had her own life. For a few brief seconds, he wondered if it was a satisfying one. Her talk about adopting a baby seemed to indicate that she wasn’t completely happy.

But she was already off on another tack. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Not yet.” In fact, it hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d lost his appetite after the accident and it still hadn’t returned.

“I picked up some Chinese food at lunchtime, and there’s plenty left. I’ll heat it in the microwave and we can eat out here.” Trista set aside her empty wineglass before heading for the house.

“Need some help?” he called after her.

“No, it’s just a matter of dishing it out,” she called back. She disappeared inside, leaving him with his thoughts, not to mention regrets. Miami was a long way from Columbia, South Carolina, and he was a long way from the person he had been while he was growing up there. While they were growing up, he and Trista and Martine.

“Hey, Rick, can you get the door for me?”

Trista emerged carrying a tray loaded with plates of General T so’s chicken, moo goo gai pan and fried rice, and he hurried to pull their chairs over to the round patio table.

“I haven’t had Chinese for a while,” he said, watching her. She’d donned a loose cardigan over her top, but it didn’t obscure her curves. Trista had the well-honed figure of an athlete, thanks to her habit of running before breakfast. Back in high school and whenever they were home from college, the three of them had liked to run together.

“Spicy for you,” Trista said as she spooned a helping of General Tso onto his plate, “and bland for me.” She dished out a small portion of moo goo gai pan for herself. She didn’t like anything hot, but he and Martine did. Tabasco sauce on eggs, hot red pepper flakes on almost everything else.

Rick was hungrier than he expected. It didn’t take him long to devour all his food, after which Trista went back inside the house to get the rest of the moo goo gai pan, which he ate, as well.

“That was delicious,” he said, smiling at her across the table. She’d brought a candle outside and lit it, and its sweet vanilla scent combined with the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine from the surrounding shrubbery. For the first time in days, he wasn’t thinking about all he had to consider—his marriage, Martine’s injuries, neglecting work.

“There’s ice cream in the freezer,” Trista said. “I peeked.”

“What kind?”

She shot him a conspiratorial smile. “Our favorite. Mint chocolate chip.”

The three of them must have eaten gallons of the stuff in the course of their childhood. Trista had laughingly pointed out that it should be their official ice cream, comparing Rick to the mint, Martine to the chocolate chips and herself to the ice cream itself. This was because, she said, Rick provided the spark, the excitement to the synergy that the three of them generated. Martine was the richness, and Trista was the no-nonsense person, the base of everything.

That was certainly true, he reflected as he gathered up the plates. Trista was the one that both he and Martine consulted before they made a move, the reliable anchor in their lives. Which was probably why she’d been promoted so quickly to her position at WCIC–TV; her crisp but serious reporting of the news gave it weight and meaning for the thousands of viewers who regularly tuned in.

Trista took cut-glass bowls from the cabinet, and he scooped the ice cream. They sat at the kitchen counter to eat it.

“You’ll be glad to have Martine back home,” Trista said as she concentrated on scraping chocolate chips off the side of her dish.

What could he reply but, “Of course,” but he averted his face so that Trista wouldn’t read anything into his expression.

“I’ll change the bed linens tomorrow, and—”

“Don’t bother,” he interrupted much too sharply. “Esmelda will do it.”

“I’ll leave a casserole in the freezer for you. Martine won’t want to cook once she gets home. Did you like the chicken tetrazzini I made at the cottage last summer?”

“The best. Better than your mom’s chicken and noodles.”

“That’s saying quite a lot,” Trista offered with a smile. She got up and rinsed her bowl off in the sink. “I believe I’ll turn in early,” she said, but he couldn’t help wishing she’d stay in the kitchen and talk awhile. He hadn’t realized how starved he was for human companionship.

“Hey,” he said. “How about a walk around the block?”

Trista shook her head. “Not tonight,” she replied offhandedly. “Catch you in the morning.” She touched his shoulder briefly before retreating down the hall and closing the guest-room door.

Words sprang unbidden to his mind: Such a shame that Trista has stayed single so long. She’d make a fine wife, a good mother. He entertained the fleeting notion that it might be partly his fault that she’d never married, his and Martine’s, but he didn’t linger on it. There was no point in allowing even more regrets to enter his consciousness; no sense in twisting this situation into something it wasn’t.

Still, he minded that Trista couldn’t stay for a few more days. On the other hand, if she were here, neither he nor Martine would be likely to initiate a discussion of the intimate details of their marriage. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out if that would be good or bad.

He stared down at the melting ice cream in his dish. For a moment, it seemed like a metaphor for his life at present. Melting away, becoming something he didn’t recognize anymore.

In the morning, he expected Trista to show up in the kitchen for breakfast and intended to suggest running together before she headed for the hospital. But she’d already left in Martine’s car, so he gulped two cups of high-octane coffee, scribbled a note saying he was sorry he’d missed her and went to work.

He only saw Trista briefly on Sunday morning before she left for the airport. He would have driven her himself, but she’d already summoned a cab before he woke up. She seemed subdued, worried, but this scarcely registered with him. All his thoughts were focused on springing Martine from the hospital.

The night before, Martine had quizzed him thoroughly on the phone about what time he’d be there to pick her up. She’d remained all too quiet on his previous visits, barely replying when he spoke to her, but now he entertained the tentative hope that Martine was willing to give their marriage another chance. Maybe a couple of weeks at Sweetwater Cottage, just the two of them, would smooth things over.

As soon as Trista’s taxi disappeared around the corner, Rick started for the hospital. He bought a bouquet of flowers from a roadside vendor, and when he reached Martine’s floor at the hospital, he bounded off the elevator, smiling at the nurses and aides at the nurses’ station. Martine’s room was only a couple of doors down the hall, and he rounded the corner prepared to kiss her hello.

The bed was empty.

A cold hand clenched his heart. Of course he thought the worst. Visions of emergencies straight from TV dramas sprang to mind, all punctuated by doctors running down the hall, their lab coats flying, and someone yelling, “Stat! Hurry, she’s coding!”

He rushed back to the nurses’ station, losing a couple of daisies in the process. The flowers skidded across the highly polished tile floor as they scattered. Oblivious to his panic, one of the aides, a young girl named Kitty, glanced up from her coffee and doughnut. A scrim of powdered sugar trailed unheeded across her upper lip.

“Where’s my wife? Is she all right?”

“Yes, Mr. McCulloch, she checked out about an hour ago.”

This stopped him in his tracks. “She did?” He was incredulous. They’d discussed on the phone last night how he would be there to pick her up as soon as Trista left. He’d told Martine jokingly that he’d drive her directly to Star-bucks for a chai tea latte because she claimed that she was going through withdrawal; she usually treated herself to one every day.

“A man came to get her.” Kitty took another bite of her doughnut.

“A man—?” For one horrifying moment, a new picture of Padrón forcing Martine out of the hospital at gunpoint flashed through his mind. But Padrón was dead.

As this irrational vision faded, one of the nurses sitting behind the counter extended her hand, and in it was a white envelope. His name was scribbled on the front. It was Martine’s handwriting, distinctive and easily recognizable by its wide lower loops.

“Mrs. McCulloch left this for you,” she said.

He accepted the envelope, slitted it open and walked slowly to the waiting area in a nearby alcove, where he sank onto one of the chairs to read the message.

Rick,

I’m sorry, but I can’t go home with you. Steve is taking me to his apartment for now, and I’ll send someone to our house to get my things as soon as I can. I want out of the marriage, and we’ll have to talk about it. I can’t face hashing things over now. I need to heal first, and then I’ll be in touch.

Martine

Steve Lifkin, an attorney in the law office where Martine worked as a paralegal, was the guy who had written Martine those love notes. The letters had left no doubt in Rick’s mind that Martine and Steve enjoyed an intimate, ongoing relationship of almost a year.

He glanced up when Kitty passed by. “Mr. McCulloch? Are you all right? You’re so pale.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said tonelessly. He stood, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, but shoved it back in again. His first instinct was to call Martine and ask her what the hell she was doing. If she was with Steve, though, she wouldn’t talk to him anyway. He wondered how she could have gone from joking about chai tea lattes last night to moving in with Steve today. He wondered what he was going to do with himself for the rest of his life, and he wondered why he cared.

In the days that followed, Martine’s belongings disappeared mysteriously, piece by piece, from their Kendall home, as well as furniture that she’d brought into the marriage. The grandfather clock that had always stood in the foyer of her family’s Columbia house, the engraved crystal wineglasses that were her mother’s. Blank spaces on the walls appeared where Martine’s beautiful watercolor paintings had been; the stained-glass window that she’d crafted so carefully was missing from where it hung on the screened porch. Every day when he arrived home from work, Rick would amble around the house, glumly taking note of the things that were newly missing, then sit down to a tasteless frozen dinner heated in the microwave.

At first he’d thought that before she left Miami, Trista must have known Martine wasn’t going to come home from the hospital with him, but when she called two days after Martine left the hospital, she seemed astonished when he told her that Martine was living at Steve’s place.

“Oh, Rick, I’m sorry,” Trista said, her voice low. Other women shrilled when they were upset, but not Trista. If anything, she became more centered.

He greeted this with silence. Though Trista and Martine had grown apart in recent years, he couldn’t imagine Martine’s embarking on such a course without running it past Trista first.

Trista sighed. “Rick, she told me on Saturday that she was going to file for divorce. She mentioned that you’d had a fight before Padrón forced her into the car, and she said she wanted to leave you. I couldn’t talk her out of it. I tried. She never mentioned that another man was involved.”

“She and Steve have been having an affair for almost a year. Maybe she’ll fill you in on what’s happened,” he said.

“She doesn’t talk to me,” Trista replied despairingly. “And I don’t understand her or the things she does sometimes.”

“Ditto for me.”

After they hung up, Rick buried his face in his hands. Through his pain, he was furious with Martine for putting them through this and angry with himself because his wife had felt a need to include another man in her life. He was well aware that it was too late to go back and change the way things were, and he didn’t much like the way they were going to be, either.

Shortly after this conversation, Rick descended into a depression the likes of which he had never experienced. As always when things got tough, he began to ruminate over his life as it was before things got so complicated. Before he had a job that was becoming increasingly difficult to perform.

Maybe that was because he was drinking too much, staying out later and later at one bar or another and avoiding one-on-one social situations of any kind. Still, he believed that he was performing his job to the best of his ability until his boss called him into his office late one Friday in early March.

“Rick,” Shorty said, walking around his desk and perching on the edge of it as he was wont to do when attempting to establish rapport. “You’ve been through a lot, and I think you need a break. I hope you don’t take this as a put-down, and I have great respect for your ability, but I’m going to put you on an extended leave starting today.”

Rick hadn’t seen this coming at all. “Extended leave?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll welcome you back after a few months. We’re giving you time to pull yourself back together, that’s all. I’ll keep in touch, and—”

“What have I done wrong?” Rick was in a state of bewildered disbelief; how could this be happening? On top of everything else?

Shorty sighed and stared out the window for a long moment. “Son, you’re not playing at the top of your game. People complain that you don’t call them back, you forgot an important meeting last week, and I suspect that your mind’s not focused on your work. I’m doing this for your sake as much as the department’s. I don’t want you finding yourself in an edgy situation and getting into trouble.”

I’m already in trouble, at looks like. “My divorce will be final this week. After that—”

“Please don’t argue, Rick. What’s the name of that place in South Carolina you go to every summer? Where your family has a vacation cottage?”

“Tappany Island,” Rick said in a low tone.

“Take a break—that’s all I’m asking.” Shorty paused at the door and appeared to be thinking something over for a moment, before abruptly leaving the room. Rick sensed that the conversation had been almost as hard on his boss as it had been on him.

Numb after this dismissal, still scarcely believing it, Rick cleaned out his desk and set about getting roaring drunk as soon as he got home. When he emerged on the other side of this binge with a nasty hangover, he tossed some things into a suitcase in preparation for leaving.

He’d planned to head for Sweetwater Cottage anyway. He just hadn’t expected to be going alone.

Chapter 3: Trista

1981

Click: Class picture of Miss Davison’s third grade, Class 3-A, Eugene Field Elementary School, Columbia, South Carolina. Rick, the new boy in class, stands in the back row because he’s tall. I’m grinning, Martine is biting her lip, and we’re holding hands.

The first picture of Rick, Martine and me was snapped on his second day in Miss Davison’s third grade. There he is, standing in the back row with the other big boys, grinning widely and completely at home.

In the picture, Martine and I sit in the front row, two skinny nine-year-old girls missing various front teeth. We were the twins. Our names were always scrunched together—TristanMartine. If you’re not a twin, you probably have a hard time imagining how we were never separate identities but a collective noun, not to mention that people could hardly tell us apart, though we are mirror twins. I’m left-handed, Martine is right-handed. I part my hair on the left, and Martine parts hers on the right.

Rick was a transfer student who arrived in the middle of the semester, and we were drawn to him as soon as we spotted him shuffling his feet beside the teacher’s desk on that first morning. He had sandy hair shading toward brown and blue eyes tending more toward gray than ours, which were on the violet side. Freckles. A strong, straight nose. High cheekbones that were to become craggy in adolescence and a ready smile that would become his trademark.

I can’t explain it, but it was as if the three of us were instantly connected on sight, as if someone somewhere had thrown a master switch and we were three instead of two plus one. Soon we were no longer TristanMartine; we were Trista, Martine and Rick. Three names were more difficult to run together than two.

By Rick’s second week in our class, we’d formed a secret club we called the ILTs. This came about when the school cafeteria served tacos and we discovered that we all loved them more than any other lunch food at Field School. For some reason, Rick felt compelled to trade his prized red-and-blue Richard Petty Matchbox car for Goose Fraser’s unwanted taco and chivalrously presented it to us. We showed our appreciation by sharing it with him, after which the three of us raced through the wide halls back to the classroom in spite of the No Running rule, screaming, “I love tacos!”

Even today I can almost smell the chalk dust in the air as I remember how, under Miss Davison’s stern eye, we laboriously wrote “I will not run in the hall” a hundred times on wrinkled notebook paper with our stubby pencils. In the back of the school bus on the way home, we unanimously agreed that ILT was our shorthand for I Love Tacos. On the reverse side of one of the “I will not run in the hall” papers, the three of us added our first initials to ILT so we’d have names that rhymed. Rick became Rilt, Martine was Milt and I was Tilt. The password to our secret club was “Burrito,” and that was what we also named the club goldfish, which belonged to Rick.

I was the introvert, my nose always stuck in a book. Rick was outgoing, the kind of guy everyone liked. And Martine—well, she was artistic and creative, mercurial, flighty and fun. It wasn’t long before we discovered that we worked well together. Never a dull moment, Dad would always say, but it was clear that he doted on Rick, and soon, he considered Rick to be the son he’d always wanted.

By the time summer arrived, the three of us were inseparable and our parents had become good friends. We all lived in a new country-club subdivision grandiosely named Windsor Manor and populated with big two-story brick houses where professional people like my dad, a criminal lawyer, and my mother, a volunteer in local charities, lived and reared their families.

Windsor Manor abounded in vacant lots lushly shaded by tall and fragrant loblolly pines as well as a goodly number of oak trees cloaked in wisteria vine. The three of us claimed these lots for our own. Our tree house, erected in the low fork of an oak in the woods not far from our house, was the neighborhood gathering spot for all the kids.

Martine and I were raised Southern, my parents’ families both having settled South Carolina before the American Revolution; Barrineaus and Woods fought for the Confederacy in what we were taught to call the War of Northern Aggression. Our grandmother, Claire Dawson Barrineau, signed Martine and me up for the Daughters of the American Revolution the day after we were born, and Rick’s father’s most prized possession was a copy of the Order of Secession, signed by one of his ancestors. He hung it over his desk at Carolina Gas and Energy, of which he was president.

That summer after Rick arrived was the first year that we three spent time together at Tappany Island, an unspoiled barrier island off the South Carolina coast reachable only by a picturesque side-swinging drawbridge. Rick’s mother usually spent the whole summer there with Rick and his elder brother, Hal. Boyd McCulloch, Rick’s father, drove down on weekends, and the first time we were invited to the cottage, Martine, our parents and I accompanied him in his big Roadmaster station wagon.

After a wonderful weekend, Mom and Dad departed on Sunday night with Boyd, but Martine and I stayed for the rest of the week. We settled happily into a guest room connected to another by a bath. Our room was decorated with antiques, heirloom quilts and hand-crocheted dresser scarves. We loved the ornate iron bedsteads, delighted in the wispy, drifting curtains that could be looped back to expose the view of the dunes with a slice of blue ocean beyond. Ever after, that was our room when we stayed at the cottage.

I mean to tell you, Sweetwater Cottage was no palace. It was an unpretentious old grande dame of a house, built high off the ground but not spiked up on stilts like the ones they build in flood zones today. The cottage was surrounded by a veranda, which we always called the porch because, Rick’s father said, veranda sounded much too granda for a blowsy old lady like the cottage.

Rick’s grandfather, Harold McCulloch, built the house on several oceanfront lots back in the 1940s when land was cheap, and the cottage sat far away from its neighbors. Over many years, the original three rooms were expanded into the present L-shaped structure with the Lighthouse room on top. The shingles on the outside have been painted many colors and were, in my childhood, a milky blue. Lilah Rose, Rick’s mom, who delighted in decorating and redecorating both the cottage and her house in Windsor Manor, had the shingles painted yellow some years back, and she’s the one who skirted the space under the house with white lattice.

Spreading oak trees shrouded in wispy curtains of gray moss shaded the house; dried fronds of palmettos at the edge of the dense woods across the road clattered in the breeze. The island abounded in roads of white sand, fine as sifted sugar; glistening salt marshes sheltered all manner of wildlife; tidal creeks wended their pristine, unspoiled way through the island. And best of all, we had the wide majestic ocean with its many moods.

Across the road was the river and the marsh, home to a variety of creatures both large and small. I loved to watch the birds—dapper little crested kingfishers, diving from tree limbs to catch their dinner, ospreys soaring and wheeling against the brilliant blue sky, graceful white ibis stalking the shallows. But we saw lots of animals, too, raccoons and otters and turtles. Even a couple of alligators.

I guess you’ve figured out that Tappany Island was a kids’ paradise. Our primary playmates on the island were the innumerable nieces and nephews of Queen, who cooked and cleaned for Rick’s family during the summer. Queen invariably arrived for work accompanied by a gaggle of beautiful brown-skinned children. When these happy denizens of the island weren’t available to fish with us or play tag or join us in pestering Queen to whip up a batch of her wonderful featherlight waffles, the three of us, Rick, Martine and I, often rode bikes to Jeter’s Market at the crossroads of Bridge Road and Center Street.

The store was fragrant with the smoky scent of the barbecued pork that the Jeters made in the wooden shed out back and with whatever fresh fish local fishermen brought in that day from the nearby public docks. Old toothless Mr. Jeter never minded if we kids read comic books without buying them, perhaps because while reading, we consumed great quantities of boiled peanuts and Gummi Bears, which he charged to the McCullochs’ account.

We walked every one of those winding roads. We yanked untold numbers of blue crabs out of the marsh and poked curiously at jellyfish stranded on the wide sandy beach by the tide. So happy were we during our first summer there that we vowed on both spit and blood to meet on Tappany Island every single summer of our lives as long as we lived.

Making such a promise exhilarated us, gave the stamp of permanency to our extraordinary friendship, and was the occasion for Lilah Rose to snap a picture. We’re nine years old, arms flung around each other, eyes squinting into the bright sunshine and wearing T-shirts with our club names Rilt, Milt and Tilt emblazoned across the front. Martine is sticking out her tongue at the camera, and Rick’s fingers are forked behind my head, giving me devil’s horns.

That’s how it started for Rick and Martine and me. Later, after I read The Three Musketeers and we watched the movie video together at my insistence, we adopted “all for one, one for all” as our motto. It was unthinkable that anything would ever come between us.

Unthinkable—but inevitable. What we didn’t know is that it would be one of us.

As I said, we were all best friends, but I first felt something special for Rick over and above friendship the day of our class picnic when were in sixth grade.

Our middle school was located across the street from a city park, and at the end of the school year, the room mothers brought fried chicken, potato salad and brownies and spread the food out on the picnic tables there. After we ate lunch, we ran wild, playing Crack the Whip and Red Rover while the mothers chatted with the teacher nearby. The boundaries were impressed upon us: no leaving the picnic area, and a buddy system was strongly enforced.

For some reason I’d worn strappy white sandals instead of my usual Nikes. It was a foolish decision because they weren’t the proper shoes for playing such lively games, and eventually one of the straps broke. I retrieved my shoe in dismay as the hubbub swirled around me, limping over to a bench partly screened from the picnic area by a bush. I’d been having a great time whooping and hollering with the rest of the kids, and those sandals were my favorite shoes. I was so disappointed at being sidelined that tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and one slid slowly down my cheek.

I sat there for a while before Rick spotted me and left the others to come over and kneel at my side. “Tris?” he said. “What’s wrong?” He tilted his head sideways, and his eyes reflected concern. For the first time, I noticed that the lashes were gold-tipped, bleached by the sun.

Wordlessly, I held out my shoe. “Look at this. My mom’s going to be so mad that I wore these today.” I wondered if I could talk her into buying me another pair. I wondered if the store would still have that particular style.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Rick said. He was studying the broken strap.

“Uh-huh.” I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand.

“Listen, Tris, give it to me.”

“What?”

He took the shoe from my hands and stood. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.” He loped toward the street.

“Rick, wait,” I called after him, though I didn’t want to get him in trouble by attracting attention. He disappeared around a magnolia tree, and all I could think of was that he’d better hurry back before we had buddy check, because they’d surely find out he was missing then.

I sat. I waited. The other kids eddied by, and once someone said, “Tris, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, my unshod foot tucked beneath me on the bench. “Just resting.”

Though it seemed like much longer, it was probably only twenty minutes or so before Rick returned.

“Here,” he said. “Your shoe’s fixed.” He tossed it in my direction. Sure enough, the strap was newly attached by means of heavy white stitching.

“But how?” I whispered, turning it over in my hands.

“There’s a shoe repair place right up the street. I’ve been there with my mom before.” The sunshine glinted on the lighter strands of his hair, and he smiled at me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean, really. Why, if they found out you left the park, you could get detention until school’s out. Or maybe even suspended.”

“It was worth it if you can enjoy the rest of the picnic,” he said gruffly and as if embarrassed by my gratitude. I aimed a sharp glance up at him and noticed something different shimmering in the air between us, a tentative knowing, a recognition of important things left unsaid. Surprised, I blinked, and it was gone, like a burst soap bubble.

“Hey, Rick,” called one of the boys over by the water fountain. “Let’s play some ball.”

Rick touched my hand so briefly it might not have really happened, and then he ran away to join the game. I never mentioned Rick’s thoughtfulness or daring to Martine, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The complexity of the look that had passed between us that day became a secret between Rick and me, one of the many that we were to share during our lives.

It would be romantic if Rick was the first boy I kissed or the first one I dated, but that wasn’t what happened. That day in the park when we were eleven was very special, but it wasn’t the precursor to something more, at least not then. It was as if we both tucked the memory away for future reference, for taking out at a later date when something might come of it. As it turned out, that date was a long time coming.

We progressed through our teenage years making new friends and branching out in our interests, though the three of us, Rick, Martine and me, remained special to one another. We were still best friends. We were buddies. All for one and one for all.

In the middle of April during our senior year at John C. Calhoun High School when we were eighteen, Rick dropped Martine and me off at home. He drove a spiffy red Camaro in those days, a birthday gift from his parents, and we rode back and forth to school with him every day, the windows wide open, stereo speakers blaring full blast. On this occasion when we arrived home, two white envelopes were displayed prominently on the dining-room table. Martine spotted the envelopes first as she dropped her backpack on the nearest chair. “They’re here!” she shouted gleefully, and her yell brought me running from the kitchen, where I was already digging the container of our favorite mint chocolate-chip ice cream out of the freezer.

The envelopes bore the return address of the University of South Carolina. True, it was our hometown school, but it was also first choice for all three of us. We’d grown up cheering the Gamecocks at football games in Williams-Brice Stadium, and graduating from USC seemed as natural as spending weekends at Sweetwater Cottage or eating the traditional black-eyed-peas-and-rice dish known as hoppin’ john every New Year’s Day for luck. As natural as being Southerners, for that matter.

Martine and I ripped open the envelopes and read the acceptance letters within. It wasn’t five minutes before Rick phoned to say he’d received his letter, too.

“All for one, one for all, and all for USC!” we exclaimed gleefully, hanging up right away so we could call our friends to find out if they would be at USC, too.

It wasn’t until my acceptance from Furman arrived a week later that any of us had an inkling that our plans could change. Furman offered me a scholarship that, according to my guidance counselor, merited serious consideration.

“Do you realize what you’ve got here?” asked Mrs. Huff, eyeing me sternly through her bifocals after cornering me near the snack machines in the school hallway. “They don’t hand out this kind of money for nothing, un-huh. Your excellent scholastic record and your performance on the SAT went a long way toward getting you this scholarship award. I can’t believe you’d consider turning it down.”

I didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to the University of South Carolina with my sister and Rick,” I said firmly, whereupon Mrs. Huff yanked me none too gently into her cramped cubicle and sat me down for a serious talking-to.

“Listen up, honey. Furman is a small, private college. Here in the South, a Furman education is comparable to one from Princeton or Yale. Trista, you need to consider this. You really do.”

I’d applied to Furman only because earlier in the year Mrs. Huff had badgered me until I relented and filled out the forms. The spring before, I’d sleepwalked through a Furman-campus tour, bored because Martine and Rick had refused to accompany me. Martine wasn’t a Furman candidate, for was Rick. Martine’s grades weren’t nearly as good as either Rick’s or mine, and Rick had no intention of going anywhere but USC; his brother played football for the Gamecocks, and besides, he planned to join the same fraternity.

“I don’t want to go to Furman,” I told Mrs. Huff that day, but she wouldn’t allow me to exit the room until I’d promised to consider it. I always suspected that Mrs. Huff put a bug in my parents’ ears, because when I arrived home from school that day, they were both waiting in the living room to speak to me.

“Honey, a scholarship to Furman is a huge honor,” Mom said gently, her brow wrinkled in concern. The formal education of my mother, Virginia Wood Barrineau, had ended abruptly after two years at Columbia College when her parents lost everything they owned in a securities scam. As a result, Mom had had to support herself from the time she turned twenty. She’d worked as a file clerk in a law office until she married her boss, my dad. Mom regretted skipping her last two years of college, mostly because she’d always felt educationally, though not intellectually, inferior to the wives of Dad’s friends. To her credit, Mom wanted the best for her daughters, and if that meant shipping me off to Greenville a hundred miles away, well, so be it.

“Of course you’ll miss Martine and Rick, but Furman is a great opportunity,” my father added. “Maybe it would be good for the three of you to split up. You might enjoy exploring your independence in the next few years.”

The idea of that opportunity, at least, did resonate with me. I’d never hurt Martine’s feelings by telling her so, but wearing the same outfits, which we’d continued even after we became teenagers, was getting old. Martine was sensitive; Martine didn’t like change. Normally, I didn’t mind coddling her, and Rick catered to Martine, too. It was an unspoken pact of benevolent complicity: Martine was the weakest of the three, and the two of us compensated for that.

“I’ll think about it,” I sighed, intending no such thing. Mom smiled, and Dad chucked me under the chin the way he used to do when I was a little kid. He still harbored the hope that I would join the rapidly expanding family law firm someday, and Rick and I had often planned to do just that. When we were younger, a career in law sounded exciting to us, but lately I’d been doubting that I really wanted to be a lawyer.

Martine had already declared that she wasn’t going to sign up for three extra years of education after getting her B.A. Worse, as far as our parents were concerned, Martine was bent on pursuing an art degree, which Dad said would prepare her for nothing except flipping burgers at a local Hardee’s. I hadn’t yet told them that I was thinking about working in TV. Writing for the school newspaper had sparked an interest in journalism, and the insightful analysis of current events appealed to me. Moreover, I longed to be involved in something compelling and immediate, like television. If I’d mentioned this to my parents, they both would have gone ballistic.

The thing that finally tipped the scales toward Furman for me started out, ironically enough, as a small argument over who was going to bathe the dog. Bungie, our cockapoo, had ventured into the creek behind the house and tracked mud all over the back porch before being discovered. It was afternoon on a school holiday, and our parents stopped by the house for a few minutes before going on to a steering-committee meeting at the church.

I’d just come downstairs after getting ready to go to the mall with a group of friends, and Martine was lolling on the couch in the family room, watching TV. Our parents’ appearance set off a spate of delighted barking from Bungie, who took anybody’s arrival or departure as an occasion to initiate noise.

Barking drove my mother crazy. So did that peculiar deranged jumping up and down that Bungie always did when excited, find of like a bucking bronco, over and over and over. We’d tried obedience training once, but Bungie flunked out.

“For heaven’s sake,” Mom chided from the kitchen over the sound of running water. “Somebody give that fool dog a bath.”

“Do it right now before she tracks mud into the house. You know how your mother feels about that,” and Dad glowered menacingly, only to grin and waggle his eyebrows when Mom turned her back. “Hurry up, Virginia,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to be late.”

“Trista, you can take off my new hoop earrings right now,” Martine said.

I’d worn them without asking, true, but what were sisters for if not to borrow things? While Martine and I were engaging in a heated altercation that resulted in my forking over the earrings, Dad wandered back into the kitchen, and soon we heard the Lincoln backing out of the driveway.

Martine glanced around at me. “Your turn to give Bungie a bath,” she said in a blithe singsong that always set my teeth on edge. “I did it last time.”

I knew what was behind Martine’s attitude, other than the borrowed earrings, that is. I’d been invited to tag along on an outing with friends from Spanish class, and Martine was jealous because she wasn’t included. Why should she be? She’d opted out of Spanish for French, airily pointing out that she needed to know French so she could converse with future lovers.

I rubbed my earringless lobes and kept a watchful eye on Bungie, who had tired of bouncing and was no doubt dreaming up her next mischief. “Get real, Martine,” I said. “We both bathed her last time, and Rick helped.”

“Well, I’m watching The Young and the Restless. I want to find out what Nikki will do if Victor hires the thug who made the indecent comment to her.”

I had little patience for soap operas, or, for that matter, Martine at the moment. “I’m all dressed and ready to go. I don’t care to get dirty.” I stalked over to the bookcase, where I’d left yesterday’s earrings after removing them last night. I slid them into the holes in my ears and squinted critically at my image in the mirror over the couch.

“So?” Martine flounced back around and gave her full attention to the drama unfolding on the TV screen.

Outside, Bungie began to whimper and paw at the door.

“We could do it together,” I suggested. “You hold her and I’ll squirt the water.”

Martine shook her head. “Uh-uh. You’ve got the wr-o-o-ng number.”

“Come on, Martine,” I wheedled in desperation. It was almost time for my ride.

“No way.”

I tried reasoning. “If Bungie pokes a hole in the screen, Mom will start talking about how we ought to give her to the people next door.” This had been a constant refrain from our mother, who said the neighbors would provide a better place for Bungie, seeing as they had no kids and stayed home all the time, and we would be going away to college in the fall, anyway, and then who would take care of that dog? Mom, that’s who, and she’d never even wanted a pet. You may have figured out by this time that our mother was anything but an animal lover.

Martine got up, and at first I thought she was giving in. Instead, she walked to the back door and held it open. The ecstatic Bungie immediately began to race in frantic circles around the kitchen, tracking muddy smudges wherever she stepped. With a triumphant smirk, Martine went back to her TV program, ignoring my outraged shrieks.

Past experience had taught me that there was no point in further arguing, so I grabbed Bungie and hustled her outside, where I washed her as best I could without hog-tying her. Of course, Bungie shook water all over me, and of course I ended up a mess, after which I went back inside and cleaned up the footprints in the kitchen. By the time I’d finished, I was so angry that I could have throttled Martine.

Which was why, when the gang stopped by, I told them to go on to the mall without me. Then I went upstairs and composed a letter informing Furman University that I was accepting their kind offer of financial aid and would enter as a freshman in the fall.

When she found out, Martine was shocked. Rick was surprised but cautiously supportive. My parents were ecstatic.

During the frequent periods of doubt that ensued after I made this momentous decision, I reminded myself that my father could be right. It was time for me to stop being the person I’d always been and to start creating the woman I wanted to be. The ideal way to do that, in my estimation, was to sever my identity with Martine and Rick once and for all.

The only thing was, I’d miss my soul mates, the two most important people in the world to me. I’d miss them so very much.

And they, of course, would miss me.

Chapter 4: Trista

1990

Click: Prom night in our senior year at John C. Calhoun High, Columbia, South Carolina. The three of us are posed in a latticed gazebo. Rick is standing between Martine and me, one arm around each. We’re wearing identical black dresses, strapless and slinky, with a wide white band circling the top of the bodice and identical chrysanthemum corsages on our wrists. I’m smiling up at Rick, whose expression is serious. There’s something spacey about the way Martine is grinning into the camera, though I didn’t notice it at the time.

The fact that I wouldn’t be at the University of South Carolina the following year made senior-prom night—our last big blast together—even more poignant and important. Rick insisted on squiring both Martine and me to the dance, declaring that he’d have the two prettiest dates there. We were more than agreeable, since Martine had broken up with her boyfriend a couple of months before, and I wasn’t dating anyone special.

It should have been perfect—the limo, our corsages, everything. Our class had chosen to hold the prom the Saturday night at the beginning of spring break at the biggest hotel in downtown Columbia. The theme was Summertime, like the song from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Martine and I shopped for two months, checking out boutiques and department stores in Greenville and Charleston before we found the perfect dresses, which were excruciatingly expensive. Dad sprang for them anyway, remarking that when you were a man blessed with two beautiful daughters, it was your responsibility to keep them looking good. Martine and I giggled at that; we were tall and blond and attracted more than our share of attention because there were two of us, but lots of other girls at our school were just as pretty and every bit as pampered by their fathers.

Trouble started to brew a couple of weeks before the big event when I casually mentioned at the dinner table one night that Rick and one of his friends were going to chip in to rent a room at the hotel on prom night. Adjourning to hotel rooms after the dance had become standard procedure at our school, and I was sure that our parents would fall into line. We’d heard lots of chatter about other kids’ parents paying for the rooms, the rationale being that they didn’t want the kids driving home drunk, and they were good kids, never any problems, so why tempt fate? Safe at the hotel, kids could hang with their friends, watch TV, and if they were going to sneak a few drinks, so what? I’d heard stories of people puking their guts out at last year’s prom, of a girl who’d called her parents at three in the morning begging them to come to the hotel and get her, but I’d discarded them as exaggerations. Besides, in every group of teenagers, you’d find guys who considered it cool to drink until they barfed and girls who got scared when their dates became too familiar.

After I innocently dropped the information over dinner one evening that Rick was planning to get a hotel room and that Martine and I intended to stay there overnight, my father slid his chair back from the table and drew his brows in the way that usually preceded a lecture. Martine darted a covert warning glance in my direction.

“And I suppose Rick will be bringing you home in the morning?”

“Sure,” I said, already sorry I’d floated the idea.

“How? I doubt that the limo driver is going to stick around waiting that long.” Renting a limousine for prom night was the norm, and Rick had already paid the deposit.

“Maybe Rick will leave his car at the hotel earlier and drive us home in the morning,” I said, definitely on shaky ground.

“Sometimes guys do that, leave their cars there the afternoon before the dance,” Martine chimed in.

“Hunh. So let me get this straight. After the prom, everyone sits around a hotel room in their prom finery? On the beds?” my father asked, a scowl spreading across his handsome face.

“Usually, kids dress for the prom at the hotel beforehand, and afterward they wear the same clothes they had on when they checked in. Then everyone watches TV and maybe orders room service,” Martine said. “And they have tables in the rooms. Sometimes a couch to sit on.”

“But there are beds,” Dad said ominously.

“It’s not a big deal, Dad,” I said. “Anyhow, you don’t have to have beds to do what you’re thinking.” This seemed like common sense to me, knowing as I did two or three girls who’d had babies, and not by stumbling across them in a collard patch, either.

He glowered across the table. “My daughters do not spend the night in a hotel room with a guy.” Have I mentioned that as a defense lawyer, our father excelled at the art of logical argument and enjoyed sparring with us?

“Dad—” I said, not too worried at this point. His resistance might be no more than part of his training program; Dad still cherished the possibility that Martine and I might join his law firm someday.

“Daddy—” Martine said at the same time.

“Roger,” Mom said hastily, “maybe we should talk this over later.”

“It’s only Rick, Dad,” I reminded him patiently. “He’s not just ‘a guy.’”

“Roger, there will be three of them,” Mom added. “It’s hard to imagine that anything, um, bad could happen. Rick’s parents gave him permission.”

Dad slapped his hands on the table, palms down. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Rick is a fine young man, but Trista and Martine are not spending the night at a hotel with him or any other boy. Stuff happens. Bad stuff. And don’t give me ‘Daddy, please,’ or ‘Dad, all the kids are doing it.’ Just because everyone else decides to jump off a cliff, does that mean I have to let my daughters do it?” This, of course, has a rhetorical question, and one that we’d heard often enough as we were growing up.

“But if you don’t let us stay at the hotel all night, we’ll have to come home after the prom is over,” Martine wailed.

“Nothing wrong with that,” my father stated firmly, tossing his napkin onto the table and stalking out of the room.

Okay, so Dad’s abandonment of the argument meant that his decision was final. The master of our fates had spoken. I was smart enough not to push it, at least not then.

I gazed down at my lap, my mother emitted sounds of distress and Martine burst into tears.

Martine and I spent the next few days commiserating with each other. Our friends added fuel to the fire by declaring that their parents were allowing them to stay at the hotel overnight, and how could our parents be so mean? To which we replied sorrowfully that it was beyond us, our father was hopelessly old-fashioned and just didn’t understand. Keep in mind that this was the year that Martine and I alternated between loving our parents to death and being sure they were out to ruin our lives.

A few days before the prom, our mother, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement, walked into our room and perched on the edge of my bed. She’d just had her hair trimmed, and it swung across her cheeks in a shiny arc as she told us she had a wonderfully exciting secret to reveal.

“It’s about prom night,” she said, barely able to contain her glee. “The Finnerans are having an all-night party at their house and you two are invited!”

I was folding socks to put in my drawer, and Martine sat at her desk producing a pen-and-ink cartoon for the school paper, where we both were on staff. My face fell, and Martine let out a groan. “Alec Finneran is the biggest dork in our school, and I wouldn’t spend prom night at his house for anything in the world, not even a date with Keanu.” This announcement was major, since Martine had been in love with the movie star Keanu Reeves for over a year. She even blotted her lipstick on a mini poster of him that she’d taped on the inside of her school-locker door.

Mom plowed ahead. “Both Gail and John Finneran intend to stay up all night to monitor the party. They’ll set up tables around their swimming pool, and they’re planning to order an eight-foot-long sub.” I had to hand it to poor Mom; she was trying to make the idea sound attractive.

“I told you Alec was dorky,” Martine said with conviction. “Otherwise he wouldn’t agree to an eight-foot-long sub.” Her words oozed sarcasm.

We waited in stony silence for Mom to say the next word, and of course she did.

“Your dad said it would be okay if you stayed out at the Finnerans’ after the prom.”

“Auurgh! I hate my life,” Martine said, flopping onto her twin bed and burying her head under the pillow.

“Me, too,” I agreed. I crossed my arms over my chest and avoided Mom’s eyes.

Our mother heaved a sigh, stood and headed for the door. “Mine isn’t so great right now, either. You twins didn’t arrive with an instruction manual.” She was still smiling, forced though it was. “I worry about you.”

“We’re eighteen, Mom,” I reminded her with growing impatience. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“You don’t even know what to watch out for,” she said with considerable conviction, and Martine and I exchanged a baffled glance. This was another parental declaration that made little sense to us.

As Mom’s footsteps faded down the stairs, Martine spoke up, her words still muffled by the pillow, “You’d better call Rick and tell him the fantastic news about Alec Dork’s party. And don’t forget the eight-foot sub, which we’ll be eating by the romantic blue light of the Finnerans’ humongous bug zapper.”

When we told him about the party, Rick tossed off a good-natured comment along the lines of “Let’s roll with the punches.” As a result, by the time prom night trundled around, we were psyched up for the dance and resigned to Alec’s party. A few other kids in the neighborhood would be there, and one of them was bringing his guitar. If the weather was warm enough, we’d go for a moonlight swim in the Finnerans’ pool. None of that would be so bad, really, and Rick even talked Alec out of the sub in favor of grilling hamburgers.

When Rick arrived at our house on prom night, we oohed and aahed over him in his rented tux. He’d chosen black, like our dresses, and the white tucked shirt had a cool wing collar and cuffs fastened with links borrowed from his dad. He wore a red cummerbund and shiny black shoes. He looked fantastic and said the same about us.

Of course, we had to troop out to the backyard and have our pictures taken in front of Mom’s prize camellias. Another snapshot, another milestone in our lives.

When the three of us walked under the bower of fresh flowers into the ballroom at the hotel, we were a showstopper. Heads literally snapped around in midconversation, jaws dropped and Mr. Helms, the principal, favored us with one of his toothy smiles. He clapped Rick on the shoulder, shook Martine’s and my hands and directed us to the refreshment table, where Mrs. Huff was ladling out syrupy pink punch.

“What is this stuff—antifreeze?” Martine murmured, smiling sweetly at a bevy of chaperones all the while.

“Flop sweat,” I told her, having recently heard the term and thinking it appropriate, though I had no idea what flop sweat might be.

Martine snickered, and Rick grinned. “Which one of you would like to dance first?” he asked as the band ground out a heavy rock beat. They were a local newbie outfit called Hootie and the Blowfish, whose popularity was growing with the college crowd.

“I’ll dance,” Martine said offhandedly. She set her cup down on a nearby table and accompanied Rick out on the floor.

After that, guys asked me to dance, putting both arms around my waist, and I looped my hands behind their necks. It was the classic prom waddle, nothing fancy. I’d known a lot of the boys from kindergarten—Dave Barnhill, Shaz Gainey, Chris Funderburk. They all had dates, but their dates were my friends, and we had no illusions of exclusivity.

Things got a little crazier as the evening wore on, and the dancing became less inhibited as more people arrived. Girls exclaimed over one another’s dresses, the guys joked, the chaperones beamed approvingly the way they always do as long as things remain calm. The stays from my long-line strapless bra dug into my ribs, and I was glad to dance with Rick after a while because I could be honest about my agony.

“You should be wearing a choke collar like this one.” With a grimace of distaste, he removed his hand from my waist and ran a forefinger inside the offending object. “But—” and he gazed down at me with a twinkle in his eyes, just managing not to ogle my cleavage “—I’m awfully glad you’re dressed the way you are. You’re gorgeous, Trista.”

“Martine, too,” I replied automatically as she swooped into the periphery of my vision. Shaz was dipping her, and her laughter verged on the manic. I tried to catch her eye, but Rick twirled me too fast. When I remembered to look for Martine again, I didn’t see her.

I was having such a good time that it didn’t matter. Martine and I weren’t joined at the hip, after all. Kids began to drift out of the ballroom toward the end of the evening, heading upstairs to their rooms, and I admit to a pang of frustration as I watched them leave. I was eager that night to leave my childhood behind. Senior prom marked a rite of passage, and I was heady with the promise of the future and all the wonderful new experiences that would soon open to me.

Before the last dance, Mr. Helms climbed the steps to the bandstand. He intoned something into the microphone about the revels at the hotel being over, that mumble mumble we were a fine group of young people, that he harbored great mumble hopes as he loosed us on the rest of the world. He also said, his voice lowering on a note of seriousness, that none of the gatherings at the hotel after midnight were school-sanctioned. He’d sent flyers home stating that very fact, much to the satisfaction of my father.

The last dance was slow and dreamy, and Rick appeared as if by magic and took me in his arms. This time, unlike during our other dances, he rested his cheek against my temple, making me conscious of how well we fit together. For a few minutes, I imagined how it would be if Rick were really someone I dated. I’d had boyfriends, a few that I liked a lot. I never fell in love with any of them, and to the guys I went out with, I was just a date who had a few interesting things to say and knew how to shag really well. No, that doesn’t mean what you’re thinking. The shag is what we call our South Carolina official dance, and I’d learned it from my parents, the 1970 shag champions of Myrtle Beach. Okay, okay, I can’t help it if that’s what they call the sex act in England. A shag can also be either a rug or a haircut, take your pick.

Anyway, as the band wound the song to a close, Rick held me close for a moment. Then it was over, and everyone started calling out their good-nights. One boy stumbled over the edge of the dance floor, and Rick pulled me back in case the guy fell in our direction.

“That’s Bill Kryzalic,” Rick whispered. “Drunk as a skunk.”

“What did he do—bring booze in a flask?” The chaperones were keeping a sharp eye out for any flouting of the rules, which were clear: we catch you drinking at the prom and you get a stern lecture, plus we deliver you in disgrace to your parents. Serious infractions were penalized by school suspension, and with final exams in the offing, this could jeopardize a student’s graduation.

“Some guys had flasks in the restroom,” Rick acknowledged. “Pretty stupid, if you ask me.”

“Have you seen Martine lately?” I asked, frowning.

“She was dancing with Hugh Barfield about twenty minutes ago.” A lightning streak of alarm rippled through me, a warning, an alert. A glance passed between Rick and me, an instant communication of alarm. We each knew what the other was thinking, as we so often did.

I kept my voice calm. “Think I should check out the ladies’ room?”

“Sure. We don’t want to be late for Alec’s party,” Rick said, devilishly trying to distract me from worrying about Martine.

Exasperated, I punched him in the arm and left. He leaned against a column, hands in pockets, to wait.

The ladies’ room was not as crowded as it had been earlier. “Martine?” I called as I entered the anteroom, where a couple of girls were applying lipstick or tucking stray wisps of hair into their elaborate hairdos.

“She’s not in here,” drawled Kaytee Blackmon, one of the girls from Spanish class. “Are you two heading up to the sixth floor for the parties?”

I didn’t feel like launching into the poor-pitiful-us explanation. “Not sure yet,” I said, pretending that everything was normal and breezing out of there as quickly as I could.

Rick was still leaning against the pillar where I’d left him, but he had loosened his tie so it hung around his collar. He lifted his eyebrows. “So where is she?”

“I haven’t a clue. Rick, I’m worried.”

“Let’s check the ballroom,” he said.

The only people still around were members of the hotel cleanup crew, our principal and Mrs. Huff, who was packing up the punch bowl.

“Do you know,” she said, smiling as we approached, “this is my aunt’s Waterford that she willed to me? Aunt Eulalie would be so pleased that I’ve put it to good use.”

“Mrs. Huff, do you know where Martine is?”

“Oh, she was out dancing the boogaloo with some John Travolta look-alike a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Huff said.

Rick and I exchanged grins. Boogaloo? John Travolta? What century was Mrs. Huff living in, anyway?

Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong, terribly wrong, with Martine. My concern mounted as we pressed into the lobby behind a couple of football players who were friends of Rick’s. We asked them if anyone had seen her.

“Didn’t she go upstairs with some of the other kids?” asked one of the guys.

“I doubt it,” I replied.

“I’m sure she got on the elevator,” said one of the others.

“Oh, shit,” Rick muttered. “What the hell is she up to?”

I rested a hand on Rick’s sleeve. “Rick, she could have gone up for a while and meant to be back but lost track of the time.”

“You’re right,” Rick said, a line of worry appearing between his eyes. He knew as well as I did that Martine had no business being on the sixth floor.

We crowded into the elevator, and the exchange among the other kids was loud and jocular. When the doors opened and we all tumbled out, someone behind us yelled, “Party!” at the top of his lungs.

Most of the doors to the rooms lining the corridor were open, and music blared from several. Shannon Sottile, one of my colleagues on the school newspaper, lounged in a doorway, sipping from a paper cup.

“Hiya, Trista. Whassup?”

“We can’t find Martine,” I told her. Shannon had changed into hip-huggers so tight that she must have slithered them on.

“She’s not in my room,” she said, “but come in anyway. We’ve got a bunch of food that my mother sent over, Triscuits and cream cheese with hot-pepper jelly. Half a ham.”

“Later,” Rick said, pushing past her.

The next room’s door was closed, a discarded bow tie draped across the doorknob in a not-so-subtle signal that the occupants wanted privacy. I wondered who was in there doing the deed; I wondered whether I’d be having sex, too, if I had a boyfriend. I had never let anyone get past second base, though I was curious about how I’d feel if I ever did. Happy? Scared? In love? Who knew?

Rick’s hand in the small of my back guided me to the next door, behind which a raucous gathering was in progress. Sam Gambrell, wearing a pair of wrinkled Bermudas and nothing else, staggered into the hall. In the room behind him, the cheerleaders’ captain danced on one of the beds to an MTV video playing loudly on the television set behind her. She was bouncing up and down, her hair loose and unruly, a group of onlookers egging her on.

“Has Martine been around here?” Rick asked Sam.

“Ummmm, yeah. A while back. She went through there.”

Something was wrong with Martine, I felt it in my bones. I slipped my hand into Rick’s as we craned our heads far enough inside the door that we could see where Sam was pointing. A corridor in the room led past a bank of closets on one side, and an open door adjoined this room and the next. Rick stepped into the murky gloom inside and pulled me in after him.

The closets in the hall between the two rooms faced a bathroom, where someone was washing her face.

“Hi, Rick,” said Kim Yarbrough. “Hi, Trista.” She was stuffed into a royal blue satin dress like a sausage into a casing.

“We’re trying to find Martine,” I said, standing on tiptoe to peer over Rick’s shoulder.

“She was with Hugh Barfield,” Kim said in a confidential tone. “They went in there.” She angled her head over her shoulder toward the other room.

“Hugh had a date with Abigail, didn’t he?”

“They were fighting, and she ran down the hall crying,” Kim said.

Just then we heard someone vomiting in the bathroom next door. I was right behind Rick when he rounded the corner into the brightly lit vanity alcove. The open door to the tub and toilet area revealed a pale Martine leaning over the white porcelain john and retching miserably.

My heart sank. Somehow Rick and I had to get Martine out of there, and it didn’t look as if she’d be in any shape to leave for quite a while.

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