Bill and his blue car behind, Clea had met a boy on the road and fallen in love—only to be left for dead in a motel room.
For a moment, Brenna could feel the diary in her hands again, the pages between her fingers as she flips to the very last page. Just three sentences, the ink strangely light on the paper, the pen barely touching it :
Pine City is TOO SMALL. My hands keep shaking. I think I took too much .
“Brenna?” he said slowly. “I understand you want to test me, make sure I’m the same Alan Dufresne. But this is kind of cruel.”
“Huh?”
“Why are you acting as if we haven’t ever spoken?”
“We haven’t .”
“Maybe not in the real world,” he said, that black gaze fixed on her face.
Brenna’s jaw tightened. She felt her face going hot. “I’m getting tired of this.”
“Tired of what?”
“Cut the crap, Alan. You’re not crazy enough. I know those are my sister’s things. But you know and I know that we’ve never breathed the same air before today, and whatever you know or think you know about me on a personal level is a news-created fantasy.”
His eyes narrowed. He set his beer down on the bar and stared at it. “The safe deposit box was in Provo,” he said, very quietly. “I told you that.”
“When, Alan?” Brenna said, frustration rushing through her. “When did you tell me that ?”
“In my last e-mail.”
“ What? ”
“You’re the one who needs to cut the crap, Brenna,” he said. “We’ve been e-mailing for the past two weeks. You know it as well as I do.”
4
This wasn’t the Saturday that Faith Gordon-Rappaport had envisioned last night while falling asleep. Faith was used to that, of course. As much as she was a born planner, her job was, by nature, unpredictable—a fact that, over the years, she’d grown not only to appreciate but to love.
Interviews came through and fell through, front-running politicians dived headfirst into career-ending scandals, children went missing and starlets went crazy and tragedy struck at times and places you could never expect or imagine, never in your worst nightmares . . . And Faith had to stay on top of it all. Not only did it sharpen her skills as a broadcast journalist, it made her heart beat that much faster, made her appreciate the here and now that much more, knowing that, in an instant, everything could go so horribly wrong.
Back when she was a teen and doing pageants, Faith’s coach, Kathy, used to call her a “rehearsal addict.” “Most girls, I have to twist their arms trying to get them to practice,” Kathy used to say. “But you, honey, you’re just too prepared for your own good. How am I going to unlearn some spontaneity into you?”
Kathy couldn’t, poor dear. Faith was by far the most overprepared, overrehearsed, boring piece of white bread ever to grace the pageant circuit, and she’d have been the first to admit it, even back then.
But Faith’s job had succeeded where Coach Kathy had failed. It had taught Faith, once and for all, that a good eighty percent of life is beyond anyone’s control, that it never does what you expect it to, and that all those crappy clichés about the best-laid plans are clichés for good reason. It was a lesson Faith was grateful for every day of her life—the ability to just “roll with it” so much more important than any trick or twirl or judge-beguiling answer she’d rehearsed to death during her Miss Teen Georgia days.
But still . . .
Today, Faith had been hoping for some normalcy. It was Jim’s and her turn to have Maya for a few days, and she’d been looking forward to time alone with her stepdaughter at the handoff . . . Actually, she’d been counting on it.
It had been so long since Faith and Maya had talked, really talked, and she could feel this part of her life—the one sweet, simple thing she’d always been able to count on—she could feel it turning as unpredictable as the rest.
Last week, she’d twice caught Maya
Greg Herren
Crystal Cierlak
T. J. Brearton
Thomas A. Timmes
Jackie Ivie
Fran Lee
Alain de Botton
William R. Forstchen
Craig McDonald
Kristina M. Rovison