LITMIR.BIZ

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      Fiona looks at Pat.

      “Saturdays are my days with her,” he growls in a low voice.

      “You can go with Meg,” Fiona calls back to her daughter. “Go feed your fish.”

      She hears the basement door open, and Ashley’s footsteps skipping down the stairs.

      Fiona looks her glaring ex in the eye and exhales a stream of smoke in his direction. “She really wants to go.”

      Pat curses and waves away the smoke. “Don’t you think it should have been my decision? Especially since she was supposed to be spending the day with me?”

      “You’re the one who always wants her to make lots of friends and be social. You know how much she likes Meg. And anyway, if you don’t want her to go shopping with her friend tomorrow, you can go ahead and be the one to tell her and break her heart, and then call the mom back and break Meg’s heart, too.”

      Pat scowls.

      She can tell there’s a lot he wants to say.

      But he calls, “Good night, Ashley, honey! I’ll pick you up in the morning!” in the sweet Daddy voice he uses with their daughter.

      So different from the deadly cold tone he uses with Fiona.

      He turns and storms away without a good-bye.

      Good riddance to you, too.

      She kicks the door closed with a resounding slam.

      Life would be so much simpler, she thinks as she moves through the living room, smoking, straightening throw pillows that don’t need it, if she and Pat didn’t have a child together.

      Then she could have made a clean break, picked up and moved out of town after the divorce.

      Yes, Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations would be in the heart of Manhattan if not for the relocation clause in the divorce settlement, which states that neither she nor Pat can move beyond a fifty-mile radius of Cedar Crest without reopening their case.

      She isn’t about to do that, especially now that she’s worked so hard to become a success. Why should Pat reap the benefits in any way?

      So, she’s stuck here for at least another ten years. At least they have only one child, thank goodness. Thanks to me.

      By the time Ashley is in college, she’ll be pushing forty.

      Another milestone.

      But the pivotal one is right around the corner: she’ll turn thirty next month.

      And Rachel…

      Rachel would have turned thirty yesterday.

      Would have?

      Brynn wasn’t so sure those two words were accurate.

      Now Fiona tries the phrase without them—Rachel turned thirty yesterday—and a chill slithers down her spine.

      She watched Rachel Lorent fall to her death ten years ago last night…

      Or did she?

      It was Tildy who immediately made her way down to the spot where Rachel had fallen, clutching a flashlight whose beam bobbed eerily in the night. The rest of them clung to each other above, sobbing helplessly and hopelessly.

      It was Tildy who felt their friend’s—their sister’s—neck for a pulse, and found none.

      And it was Tildy who tearfully left Rachel at the base of the cliff exactly where she had fallen, on a thick bed of pine needles a few feet away from a stone marker at the edge of the hiking trail.

      Back at the top, Tildy was visibly shaken, trembling violently.

      They all were.

      But after they had cried hysterically, and pulled themselves together—the others considerably more quickly than Brynn—Tildy declared that they couldn’t tell anyone what had happened.

      “Are you crazy?” Brynn protested. “We can’t just leave her there. We have to go call the police.”

      “And tell them what?”

      “That it was an accident,” Brynn choked out in her grief, “that Rachel was drunk out of her mind, and we warned her. We tried to stop her.”

      “But we didn’t stop her,” Tildy pointed out. “And now she’s dead. And we’re involved. Look what happened to the Sigs, and nobody even died.”

      Sigma Tau was a fraternity whose chapter at a neighboring college was investigated for hazing last fall after a sophomore pledge landed in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning. In the end, he suffered permanent brain damage, the Sigs had their charter revoked, and several of their officers were still facing charges in a lawsuit.

      “That could happen to the four of us in a heartbeat,” Tildy warned them. “Cassie, can you imagine what your parents would say if you were arrested?”

      Cassie, the daughter of a high-powered New York politician mother and a neurosurgeon father, looked as though she was going to faint.

      They all knew about her notoriously perfectionist parents. The Ashfords were let down enough when a learning disability, undiagnosed until her senior year at a prestigious Connecticut boarding school, prevented Cassie from earning Ivy League grades and attending their alma mater as her brother did.

      Trouble with the law would put them over the edge.

      “What about you, Brynn?” Tildy went on. “You’re here on a full academic scholarship. Do you actually think the college will let you stay if you’re involved in something this scandalous?”

      Brynn was silent. The answer was obvious.

      “What about you, Fee? You’re a local. You know everyone in town. And what about your parents? Look what they did to your sister last year when she came out and the whole town was gossiping about it. What do you think they’ll do if your name is dragged through the local press in connection with something like this?”

      “I don’t want to think about that,” Fiona said grimly. “None of us can afford to get involved. This would ruin our lives.”

      “Not to mention destroy the sorority,” declared its loyal president. “We owe it to our sisters to keep this quiet.”

      “But we didn’t do anything wrong, Tildy. We didn’t force Rachel to drink, like the Sigs forced that pledge,” Brynn protested.

      “Says who?” Tildy asked.

      “What do you mean? Of course the four of us will stand up for ourselves and say we’re innocent.”

      “Those Sig guys claimed the same thing. Who believed them?”

      “That was different. They were hazing.”

      “Do you think anyone will really care about the details, Brynn?” Cassie spoke up at last, sounding almost frantic. “All they’ll see is a bunch of underage sorority girls drinking in the woods.”

      “My God, Rachel is dead!” Brynn cried. “We can’t just leave her here in the woods. Isn’t that against the law?”

      “No,” Tildy said firmly. “It isn’t.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Because it’s not like we’ve murdered someone.”

      “But leaving her here is wrong,” Brynn said in desperation. “Maybe it’s not against the law—which it might actually be—but it’s wrong.”

      “Brynn, there’s nothing we can do for her now,” Fiona said gently.

      “Rachel would never want us to incriminate ourselves,” Tildy added. “We have to leave her. Anyone in our situation would do the exact same thing.”

      Brynn shook her head miserably, unconvinced.

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