LITMIR.BIZ

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the better part of thirty minutes before it had finally been permitted to land. Stephanie then had a mad dash to make it to the connecting flight.

      “You’re the last one,” the flight attendant said, as Stephanie came panting onto the plane.

      “I thought I was going to miss it,” she gasped.

      “Take a deep breath. You made it.” She directed Stephanie to the right, into the first-class cabin. “Although, if you’d missed this flight you’d have ended up stuck in Chicago over Christmas!”

      “I can’t think of anything worse!”

      “I can.” The flight attendant smiled.

      Stephanie heaved her suitcase up into the overhead storage, slipped into one of the large comfortable seats, and only then allowed herself to relax. She sighed deeply. For the first time since Kathy Walker had appeared at her door, she felt a little of the stress slip out of her system, though her stomach was still cramping with tension.

      “That was a close call. . . .”

      Stephanie buckled her seatbelt and glanced sidelong at the overlarge balding businessman in the three-thousand-dollar suit beside her. He exuded the faintest whiff of whiskey with every movement.

      He stretched out his hand. “I’m . . .”

      Stephanie held up her right hand, palm outward. “Please don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t care. I’m really not interested, and I don’t want to talk to you between now and Milwaukee.”

      The fat man blinked, frowning slightly, trying to decide if she was joking or not.

      “I’m just trying to be friendly!” he began to bluster.

      “Don’t be. I’m not interested.”

      “Well, I never. . . .”

      “I’m glad we got that clear,” Stephanie continued. She pulled her earplugs out of her pocket and popped them in. She could hear them hiss and crackle as they expanded and the world slowly went away. She opened the novel she’d shoved in her bag. It had been sitting on her bedside table for months, and over the past few months she’d only managed to read three chapters, and she’d forgotten those already. Of course it might not necessarily have been the book; maybe it was just her state of mind.

      Stephanie closed the book, tilted her head back against the seat, and closed her eyes. The flight attendants were going through the emergency routine. Stephanie made a point of never watching them. If the plane crashed or fell out of the sky, she didn’t think she’d have much chance to put the techniques into effect anyway.

      She’d gotten out of the habit of reading during her time with Robert. He rarely read—claimed he never had the time—and he seldom listened to music. That should have been her first clue that their relationship would never work: She loved books and music.

      However, it also made her realize just how much time an affair consumed. Before she met Robert she would have lunch at her desk or in one of the small restaurants close to her office, and read, and in the evenings she’d come home, set up a long, hot bath, and lose herself in her current book. She could get through two and sometimes three books in a week, more if it was something from one of her favorite authors.

      But that was before Robert. . . .

      Once she started the affair with Robert, they ended up having lunch together most days, often in his office or in one of the nearby cafés. Driving to his office and finding parking had cut her lunchtime in half, and she’d often ended up with a quick sandwich—even though she’d been determined to give up refined white flour—rather than the salads she preferred. Then, Robert would come to her place two or three times a week. When they were together, there was little time left for reading. The last book she’d read right through was . . . She couldn’t remember.

      Well, all that was about to change.

      When the plane took off, she kicked off her shoes, tilted her seat back, and closed her eyes for the fifty-minute flight.

      And when, exactly, was she going to return? Before or after the New Year? It really depended on when she could get a flight, she supposed. If she got back to Boston before New Year’s Eve, there was bound to be a party she could go to—start off the New Year on a high note. Then she wanted to go through the house and strip out everything that belonged to Robert; she was determined to keep nothing of his. There wasn’t much: some clothes, a toothbrush, a razor, a pair of shoes, a spare tie. She’d stick them in a bag and drop them—no, messenger them—to his office. She wasn’t petty enough to send them to his home. She wondered briefly about the jewelry he’d given her. Should she return it or keep it? But if she kept it, she would never wear it because it reminded her of him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to return it to him however; she didn’t quite like the idea of him passing it on to his wife to wear. Then she smiled, quickly, fleetingly. She’d grabbed her jewelry case when she was packing. She guessed that most of the pieces were in it. She could always give them away as presents to her sisters and mother.

      Stephanie dozed off and drifted into a sleep in which the events of the past couple of hours cycled and recycled through her consciousness, twisting and turning into a dream that was not quite a nightmare, in which she was the woman going to face her husband’s lover. She came awake with a gasp, and for a brief moment didn’t know where she was. Realization came slowly, but the emotion in the dream—that combination of terror and rage—remained. The more she thought about Kathy Walker, the more respect she had for the woman. What courage must it have taken to face her husband’s mistress? A lesser woman would have been inclined to wait until after Christmas, so as not to disturb the status quo.

      What would she have done, Stephanie wondered. She liked to think she would have done the same thing—confronted the other woman—but she wasn’t entirely sure.

      Stephanie’s stomach lurched when the plane touched down. As soon as the seat-belt sign went off, she was out of her seat and had pulled her bag out of the overhead. The man sitting beside her opened his mouth to say something, but the look on her face silenced him. She was one of the first people off the plane, and as the blast of chill air hit her face, she was determined to leave her complicated past behind and enjoy returning to the simplicity of her childhood home.

      CHAPTER 4

      At least half a dozen flights, the last of Christmas Eve, had landed within the past forty-five minutes, and the arrivals terminal in General Mitchell Airport was heaving with people. Airport security were desperately attempting to keep the area clear, but it was an impossible task, and the refrains of “White Christmas” were lost beneath loud reunions.

      Stephanie wound her way through the crowd, heading for the Hertz desk. She walked past couples embracing, families locked together; she saw tears and laughter, and she was overwhelmed by a deep sadness. She’d flown in and out of airports throughout her adult life and had rarely been met by anyone, and it had never bothered her. Now, for the first time, she felt incredibly lonely.

      “Stephanie . . . Stephanie!”

      Right at the very edges of her consciousness, she caught the sound of someone calling out what sounded like her name. But that was impossible; no one knew she was coming in, except her parents, and they’d hardly drive all the way out from Madison to collect her.

      “Stephanie . . . Stephanie!” The voice was coming nearer.

      She fixed a smile on her face as she turned. It would be just her luck to bump into someone she didn’t want to see only moments after landing.

      “Stephanie?”

      It took a heartbeat to recognize the rather plain-looking young woman standing before her, head tilted to one side, smiling quizzically.

      “You walked right past me,” she said.

      “Joan? My God, Joannie,

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