LITMIR.BIZ

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house I ever bought with my own money, when it slid down a hill onto Pacific Coast Highway.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Thanks. It was rough. So I guess I’d have to say that so far, this little rocker is a piece of cake.”

      I smiled. “I’m glad someone feels that way. But I jumped to conclusions about you, and I don’t usually do that.”

      Kim rubbed a smear of dirt from her face. “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the first. C’mon, let’s go.”

      This time I followed, watching the dark red ponytail bob ahead of me. After the rosy sunset the night before, the day had turned chilly, the sky spitting rain. Kim wore only the jeans, long-sleeved sweatshirt and Saucony sports shoes she’d had on when the quake struck the day before. They were soaked clear through.

      I caught up to her. “Kim, listen. I wasn’t thinking when I asked you to come with me. We should have taken more time to find you warm clothes.”

      She smiled. “Guess you’ve never been on location, have you?”

      “No. Pretty tough?”

      “Try swimming in a creek in Yellowstone when it’s thirty degrees out and starting to snow.”

      “Ugh. You must like your work, though, to be so successful at it. They say we thrive the most in the kind of work we love.”

      “I suppose that’s true, at least for some. For me, it’s been a long, hard road, getting to where I am now. Some of it I don’t even want to remember.” Her face clouded over. “What about you?”

      I started to answer just as we rounded another curve on the beach—only to see another stretch of uninhabited shoreline.

      “Damn,” I said. “Where is that house, anyway? I remembered it being closer.”

      “You want to rest?” she asked.

      I shook my head. “I do need something to eat, though.” Pulling out the poppyseed muffin, I broke it in two and offered one half to Kim.

      “Thanks. Listen, let’s sit down a minute so I can take my socks off. There’s so much sand lumped inside them, they’re making my toes sore.”

      Holding the piece of muffin in her teeth, she untied her shoes and removed her socks, stuffing them into a pocket. We both sat for a moment, eating silently.

      “You’re a lawyer, right?” Kim said, as the final bite of muffin disappeared. She brushed crumbs off her jeans. “A public defender?”

      “I was.”

      “You were? What happened? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

      I gave a shrug. “It looks like we’re going to be on this blasted island together for a while, so sure, you can ask. I was a public defender in Seattle. I lost my job.”

      “Cutbacks?”

      “No. I was fired.”

      She looked at me sharply. “I can’t imagine you doing something bad enough to get fired over.”

      “Really? But we hardly know each other.”

      “Well, it’s true I haven’t gotten to know you very well,” Kim admitted. “And that’s my fault. Believe it or not, even though I can hang loose in front of a camera, I don’t feel comfortable in groups of women. I don’t seem to have much in common with them, and I never know what to say. But the way you took over yesterday when the quake happened—not getting freaked out or anything—I guess I saw you as being in some sort of responsible job and never doing anything wrong.”

      I almost laughed. “Well, you’ve got some of that right. I was in a responsible job, and I didn’t do anything wrong. Somebody set me up for drug possession with intent to sell, and now I’ve got a trial pending.”

      “You’re kidding!”

      “I wish.”

      “But, Sarah, doesn’t being an attorney allow you more of a chance of clearing yourself? You can convince a jury you’re innocent, right? Then you can go back to work?”

      “Aye, and there’s the rub…convincing a jury of my innocence.”

      Kim nodded and sighed. “I was offered a role like that—an innocent woman, behind bars. I turned it down because my agent didn’t want me to play a prisoner.” She rolled her eyes. “Like people don’t know the difference between real life and acting these days. Laura West, who did take the part—Do you know her?”

      “I know of her, of course,” I said. “Julia Roberts’s latest competition, right? Or so it’s said. Personally, I don’t think she can hold a candle to Roberts.”

      “I agree. Even so, she won an Oscar for the part of that inmate. I was left to look at it as the road not taken.”

      “Frost,” I said. “‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—’”

      “‘I took the one less traveled by,’” Kim finished for me, smiling. “High school. And don’t look so surprised. I’ve got a memory like an elephant.”

      “I guess that comes in handy when you have to study a script.”

      She nodded. “It put me in demand when I was first starting out and working in low-budget flicks. Public defenders, though—they don’t make much money, do they?”

      “No. But I didn’t go into it for that.”

      “Yeah, I know what you mean. I had a role in a film once as the president of a perfume company. Sylvie, her name was. She quit when she was forty to become a missionary.” Kim laughed, a loud, free sound that surprised me, coming from her, and under these circumstances. “A really bad movie. Did you see it? ‘Heavenly Scent’?”

      I smiled at the title. “‘Heavenly Scent’? I’m sorry, no. I haven’t found much time over the years for movies. I usually go over briefs at night and on weekends.”

      “Me, too. When I’m not filming, I mean, I stay home, crash and watch TV. Of course, I usually watch movies on TV. I guess we tend to relax with the same kind of work we do.”

      “How true.”

      “So, this charge you’ve got against you. Is there some way you can prove your innocence? I mean, as a lawyer, you must know how to do that, right?”

      I hesitated. The quake had loosened my tongue, yet I didn’t feel entirely comfortable telling Kim how I planned to prove my innocence.

      “Hopefully, I’ll remember how to be a lawyer when we get out of this,” I settled for. “Why don’t we keep walking? It’s beginning to look like a long day.”

      She wiggled into her damp shoes, and as we walked, a mist moved in over the island. I was reminded of the tsunami warning we’d heard over the radio, the possibility of a wave several stories high striking the shore here and engulfing us all. The one from Alaska in 1964 had reached a height of 250 feet—the approximate height of a twenty-five-story building—and had landed as far south as Crescent City, California, destroying large portions of that town. Would a tsunami, if it originated from a Seattle epicenter, move this way, as the newscaster on the radio had suggested? Or would it travel south?

      I couldn’t remember, from the earthquake preparedness sessions. We could only hope we would find a portable radio at the Ford house. Maybe even a cell phone. Though how much good that would do, if its batteries were dead, I didn’t know. For that matter, would there even be service? Were nearby towers intact, or had they gone down, too?

      I couldn’t think about it. The worry alone was sapping my strength.

      “To answer your question,” I continued, as we dodged incoming ripples on the shore, “I was helping out a working woman—a prostitute. She’d been raped by cops, and they killed her to keep her from testifying. Then they came after me.

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