LITMIR.BIZ

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Garth was home, and—”

      “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

      “Are you kidding me?”

      “Shh.” Fiona frowns and nods at the closed door, beyond which Emily could presumably be eavesdropping, though she sincerely doubts it.

      That would take initiative and, as far as she can tell, her assistant doesn’t possess a blessed ounce of it.

      Nor, apparently, does Brynn. She said she would call the others.

      Figures. Well, you learned long ago that if you want something done right…You do it yourself.

      “I’m just making sure you weren’t tempted to tell Garth,” Fiona says in a low voice. “I mean, he had Rachel in class, and he was in that faculty search party, so I thought maybe you figured—”

      “Well, I didn’t say anything. You didn’t tell anyone, did you?” Brynn whispers.

      “No.” Fiona ignores the slightest twinge in the vicinity of her conscience. “Who am I going to tell?”

      “Jeremy, no!” Brynn unpries her son’s fingers from the fringed lampshade beside the chair.

      He protests loudly as she removes several strands of maroon thread that are plastered to his sticky hands.

      “Sorry, Fee.”

      She nods, not about to say that it’s okay. Because it isn’t.

      Brynn should know better than to come barging into her office first thing in the morning—or anytime, for that matter—particularly with a toddler in tow.

      Anyway, this isn’t the time or place to discuss what happened in the past…ten years ago, or yesterday.

      Then her friend looks up at her with those big puppy dog eyes of hers and says, “I’m scared, Fee.”

      Fiona’s irritation dribbles away.

      So am I, she wants to admit.

      “The more I think about it, the more I’m sure it’s just Tildy or Cassie playing a stupid and totally unfunny joke,” she assures Brynn instead.

      “Really?”

      No.

      “I mean, who else can it possibly be?” she asks Brynn, but her attention is focused on Jeremy, reaching for the tall Lladro figurine on her desk.

      It depicts a mother and child; Deirdre sent it from Spain as a gift for Fee’s first Mother’s Day.

      Fiona was stuck at home with a newborn at the time. For her, the beautiful porcelain figure was less a testament to new motherhood than it was a symbol of her lost freedom.

      She had never been to Europe then. Saddled with a baby and a husband whose salary barely covered the rent, she probably never would get there…or so she believed at the time.

      She pulls the Lladro slightly closer to herself, out of Jeremy’s grasp.

      Brynn doesn’t seem to notice.

      “I can think of someone else it can be,” she says, and Fiona’s heart skips a beat.

      “Who?”

      “Think about it, Fee.”

      “I am thinking about it. Who are you talking about, Brynn?”

      “Rachel,” comes the unanticipated reply, just as Jeremy grasps the figurine and drops it onto the hardwood floor, where it shatters deafeningly.

      The Dave Matthews Band was on the portable CD player, drowning out the night sounds.

      “Go for it, Fee!” Tildy commanded and Fiona, standing on the crest of The Prom, facing the lights of

      Cedar Crest in dazzling array below, popped the champagne bottle with two thumbs. The cork shot out into oblivion; then they heard the faint rustle of its landing in the thicket far below.

      “Woo-hoo!” Tildy reached to take the bottle from her.

      “Um, shouldn’t Rachel have the first sip?” Brynn spoke up. “Since she’s the birthday girl?”

      “Oh, that’s okay.” Rachel reached into her sweater. “I’ve got something better.”

      She produced a pint-sized mason jar.

      “What’s that?”

      “Grain alcohol.” Unscrewing the lid, Rachel took a swig, made a face, and offered the jar to the others. “Who wants some?”

      “Are you kidding?” Tildy wrinkled her cosmetically perfected nose. “Where’d you get that? Somebody’s disgusting bathtub?”

      “No, from my stepbrother, over the summer.”

      “Which stepbrother?” Fiona asked. Rachel’s family was a blend of full-, half-, and step-siblings as well as former and present stepfathers and stepmothers.

      “Which one do you think? I’ve only got two steps, and Joshua is only in fourth grade.”

      That would leave the older stepbrother, whose father had married her mother briefly a few years ago. Their parents had long since gone their separate ways, but Rachel was still close to him. He had graduated last May from Morgantown University in West Virginia; now he was living and working in New York. The sorority sisters were planning a road trip to Manhattan later in the fall, and Rachel said they could stay with him.

      “So where did your brother get grain alcohol?” Cassie asked, after a delicate sip from the champagne bottle.

      “Where else? This came straight from the mountains of West Virginny.”

      “Hey, Rach, that hillbilly twang is about as believable as your fake English accent,” Fiona told her.

      “Yeah, but at least it’s a lot better than her fake Southern drawl,” Brynn put in teasingly.

      “Hey, my drawl was pretty good,” Rachel protested. “That guy I met in the Rat the other night believed me when I said I was from Mississippi.”

      “Yeah, up until you told him your name was Scarlett,” Tildy said with a snort.

      “You guys were in the Rat the other night?” Fiona asked.

      They exchanged guilty glances.

      “Sorry, Fee,” Brynn said. “You were working that night anyway.”

      “Whatever. Just because I can’t set foot in there until I’m twenty-one doesn’t mean you all have to stay away.”

      But she didn’t sound as though she meant it.

      And she added a bit sharply, “Just don’t go in there when Pat’s tending bar. He knows you’re underage. He can get busted if he lets you stay.”

      Somebody changed the subject to the upcoming Rush Week before anyone could point out that Pat had seen them there and looked the other way, plenty of times.

      Fiona had some funny hang-ups about being the lone townie among them. It wasn’t easy for her to watch the rest of them hit the popular local bars with their fake IDs.

      “Sure you guys don’t want any? It’s homemade.” Rachel brandished the jar of grain alcohol as though she was proudly referring to a tray of decadent brownies.

      Still no takers.

      Rachel shrugged and swigged, going about it almost grimly when she thought nobody was paying much attention.

      But they were—each of the four, in her own way.

      They all noticed there was something off about Rachel that night. As the night wore on, her voice vacillated between somber and shrill, but she didn’t really say much of anything.

      Nothing that would strike any of them, later, as having shed light on her strange mood.

      “You’d

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