LITMIR.BIZ

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back just ten years, though—ten years ago this night and…

      No more Rachel.

      Across the street, the screen door creaks open.

      “Come on, girls, let’s call it a night.”

      That’s the housemother’s voice. Sara “Puffy” Trovato, still sounding exactly the same after all this time.

      Still bantering, the girls gradually disperse into the house. Finally, the door closes behind the last pair. The porch lamps are turned off.

      All is still.

      It’s easy to picture the girls retreating to their rooms now to finish course assignments, read magazines, watch TV, or check e-mail. Eventually, one by one, they’ll change into their pajamas, turn out the lights, climb into bed.

      Chances are, they’ve all heard of Rachel Lorent. They might be aware that this is the tenth anniversary of her disappearance.

      Maybe, as they lie in the dark, the current Zeta sisters are even secretly worried that something will happen to one of them.

      Maybe they should be.

      CHAPTER 3

      “Whoa!” Garth, dressed in khakis and a cream-colored T-shirt under a lightweight brown blazer, stops short in the doorway. “Brynn, I didn’t know we were having company at breakfast this morning!”

      Startled, she looks up from the pancake she’s about to flip on the hot skillet.

      Oh. Her husband is just teasing, of course. The only other occupants of the kitchen are their two sons.

      Brynn manages a faint smile as Garth feigns confusion, asking, “Who is that big schoolboy at the table? And where’s Caleb?”

      “Daddy! It’s me!” Caleb, dressed in a button-down and khakis, his hair neatly slicked to one side, pipes up proudly. “I’m the big schoolboy!”

      Wide-eyed, Garth says, “No, you can’t possibly be Caleb. He’s just a little guy, like this.” He ruffles Jeremy’s hair.

      “It is me, Daddy. Really!” Caleb shoots a glance at Brynn, one that says, Poor Daddy is clueless!

      Normally she gets a kick out of playing along with Garth’s antics, but today, she simply doesn’t have the energy or inclination for anything beyond the basic requirements. It was all she could do to get the boys dressed and hurriedly go through the motions of taking a shower herself, not even bothering to blow-dry her hair. She’ll regret it later when she tries to get a comb through the still-damp waves hanging loosely around her face.

      She was about to dole out cold cereal when Caleb reminded her that last night she promised them pancakes this morning. Right. That was before she opened her mail and her world turned upside down.

      But mommy guilt set in and here she is, dishing up a hot breakfast when all she wants to do is crawl back into bed and hide.

      “No way,” Garth is persisting as he takes down a mug and pours himself a cup of coffee. “You can’t be Caleb.”

      “Yes way! I go to school now, remember?” Caleb asks earnestly.

      Brynn flips another pancake and sees that the bottom is scorched. She turns down the burner, then looks over her shoulder and sighs in dismay.

      In his booster seat, Jeremy is finger painting the table with maple syrup.

      Oblivious to the mess, Garth scratches his head, studying his older son. “Hmm…can it be?”

      “Mommy! Tell him!”

      “It really is Caleb, Daddy,” Brynn obliges as she grabs a sponge from the sink and descends on Jeremy’s sticky masterpiece. “He’s in kindergarten now, remember? He rides the bus and everything.”

      Yes, and thanks to his mom, he’s got exactly five minutes to finish his breakfast before he has to be down at the bus stop.

      Brynn, who wakes with the sun daily and never bothers to set an alarm, overslept. She’s been scrambling to catch up for the last forty-five minutes.

      What a way to start the second day of school…

      And Caleb’s imminent departure is the least of her worries today.

      “Did you want pancakes?” she asks Garth, realizing she’s scorched three of the four on the skillet.

      “Do you have pancakes?”

      “I was making these for you, but…” She shrugs and indicates the smoking pan. “Sorry.”

      “It’s okay. I’ll just stick with coffee. I’ve got to take off a few pounds anyway.”

      No, he doesn’t.

      Tall and lean, with hair and eyes the warm shade of a well-loved baseball mitt, Garth Saddler looks the same as he did the first time Brynn laid eyes on him.

      Not that she recalls much about their first official connection. It wasn’t love at first sight, or even remote interest at first sight. She walked into the lecture hall on the first day of her final semester at Stonebridge, and there he was, standing quite unremarkably down in front, passing out copies of the syllabus.

      He had a professorial beard back then, obscuring enough of his handsome face that it took awhile for Brynn to notice him. Really notice him.

      It was Tildy who pointed out his masculine appeal one brisk day as they were crossing the campus and spotted him jogging past. “Look, there’s Dr. Saddler. Wow, how hot is he?”

      Brynn checked him out and saw that her sorority sister had a point. He looked a lot different with his muscular legs bared in running shorts, his sweat-dampened hair standing on end, than he did buttoned-up and intellectual in front of the class.

      “I have him for that morbid Soc course I’m taking,” she told Tildy.

      “‘Death and Dying’? I took it last semester. It was awesome. And so is he.”

      It wasn’t long afterward that Brynn realized Garth Saddler was, indeed, pretty awesome. She even got the feeling the attraction was mutual.

      But he didn’t ask her out until the semester was over and she had her diploma in hand.

      That, he told her, would have violated the rules.

      “College rules?” she asked.

      “No, mine.”

      She didn’t expect to fall in love with him that first night. Nor did she plan to stay on in Cedar Crest that summer instead of returning home to the Cape.

      But she did stay.

      Not just for the summer. For…

      Ever.

      Things just fell into place for them, and she never looked back.

      She worked nights as a desk clerk at the Amble On Inn nearby. So much for her newly minted bachelor’s degree in English. And so much for returning home to the Cape.

      Any potential postgraduation plans she had in mind—and she didn’t have many—evaporated the moment Garth told her he loved her and wanted her to stay. By the time the fall semester began, she had moved into his apartment just off campus.

      “Do you think things are happening too fast between us?” she asked him, more than once. Just to be sure this was all as much his idea as it was hers.

      “No,” he said, but she wondered if he meant it.

      Sometimes, he seemed taken aback at the way their lives had melded so swiftly and completely. But she never doubted that he loved her, or that she loved him. They belonged together.

      They were married in July, a little over a year into their relationship.

      When the Amble On Inn abruptly shut down that fall, Garth found her a secretarial job in

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