as she shivered. They were both wet and freezing. Sharp pain shot from his ankle to his calf the longer he stood, and when he couldn't lean against the metal wall anymore, Tresa got up and forced him to sit down. She sat down again too, balanced on his knee. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head in his chest. He couldn't see her at all. She was invisible. He could only feel her huddled against him, her fingers clinging tightly to his skin, her damp hair nestled against his chin.
'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'This is my fault.'
'Don't say that.'
He didn't think anyone would hear their low voices through the stone walls. They were in a black cocoon, just the two of them.
Tresa was silent, and then she said, 'I still think about it, you know. You and me. On the beach.'
Mark knew exactly what she meant. Weeks before Delia Fischer found her daughter's diary, before his life began to crash down, there had been the kiss. It had happened not far from here. They'd been on the beach in the moonlight behind his house, warmed by flames licking from a fire pit. Hilary had left them there as it got late and gone to bed. She trusted him, the way she always did, more than he trusted himself. He and Tresa had talked for two more hours, well past midnight, although Tresa was the one who did most of the talking. She told him about her dreams, fantasies, life, guilt, hopes, fears, and loneliness. Then, as they stood up and he poured dirt on the fire, she'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him, not a girl's kiss, not an innocent kiss, but a kiss with all the eroticism a teenager could bring to it.
She'd said what she wanted: 'Will you make love to me?'
Now, holding her, he could feel her arousal again, the heat through her clothes. This was romance to her, not life and death. Her rescuing him. Him rescuing her. He felt her shift on his lap, and though he couldn't see her face even an inch away from his own, he knew that her cool lips were about to find him with the same urgency, the same passion, as they had a year earlier. She wanted him to touch her. Undress her. She wanted to be the heroine in the novel.
He stopped her with a gentle pressure on her cheek. 'We can't.'
Tresa tensed. He felt her disappointment. She eased away from him and stood up in the cramped space.
'I've tried not to love you,' she murmured, 'but I can't help myself.'
'Tresa, don't.'
'I'm not a kid. This isn't a crush. I know I can't have you, and I know I'm a fool, OK? I never meant to hurt you and Hilary. That was the last thing I wanted. Really. Except here I am, doing the same thing all over again.'
Mark said nothing.
'At least tell me you were tempted, huh?' she went on. 'A little?'
'Tresa, there isn't any way that I would have let something happen between us. It's not just that I love my wife, and it's not because you aren't a sweet, beautiful, amazing girl. It's because I care about you too much. A girl like you falling in love with your teacher is absolutely innocent. A teacher who perverts that love for his own ends is sick. I wouldn't do that to you.'
'Oh, shit, you think I'm a child,' Tresa murmured, with a grievous hurt in her voice, as if it were the worst thing he could have told her.
'That's not what I mean.'
'You're wrong,' she told him. 'I'm not innocent. Do you think I didn't know exactly what I wanted on the beach with you?'
Her voice grew loud and he worried she would be heard outside.
'You read what I wrote in my diary,' she said. 'I know the positions, OK? I know where things go. I know I was asking you to cheat on your wife. I still am, and I hate myself for it. I don't care. I'd take off my clothes for you right now and get on my knees. That's me being innocent, Mark.'
He realized he was making the same mistake with Tresa all over again — treating her like a girl in woman's clothes when it was the other way around. She could be naive and seductive all at the same time. Just like Glory.
'All right, yes, of course, I was tempted,' he told her. 'I'm human, but I wasn't going to wreck both of our lives. OK?'
'Say yes now.'
'You know I can't do that.'
'It doesn't have to be anything more than right now. One night.'
'Tresa, no.'
He felt her bitterness and disappointment emanating out of the darkness. When she spoke, her voice was thick with betrayal. 'Were you human with Glory?'
'What?'
'Did you say yes to her?'
Mark heard the echo of Glory whispering to him on the beach.
'Nothing happened between me and her.'
'You were out there with her, though, weren't you? Just like everybody said. You and Glory. Together.'
'It wasn't like that.'
'Be honest with me.'
'Yes, I saw her on the beach,' he admitted. 'That's all.'
'Did you arrange to meet her?'
'No. It was an accident. I went for a walk, and I found her there.'
'Did she try to seduce you?' Tresa asked quietly.
Mark hesitated. 'Yes.'
'That bitch. I knew it.'
'She was drunk. She was upset. It wasn't deliberate.'
'What did she do to you?'
'It doesn't matter.'
'Did she kiss you? Did she go down on you? What?'
'No, nothing like that.'
He could hear the rattle in her voice as she battled between anger and tears. 'You know what, Mark? You know what I really think? I think you fucked her, and you don't want to admit it to me.'
'That's crazy.'
'You're lying, aren't you?' she demanded breathlessly. 'Glory got whatever she wanted. It's true, isn't it? Everybody's right. You had sex with her, and then you killed her to cover it up.'
'No.'
'I don't know what's worse. The idea of you killing my sister, or the idea that you wanted to have sex with her, not me.'
'Tresa, listen to me. Stop and listen. You're wrong. I didn't have sex with Glory. I didn't kill her.'
'So what happened to her?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you think I killed her myself? Are you trying to protect me?'
'You didn't kill her.'
'If I saw the two of you having sex, I swear I would have strangled her.'
'I know you, Tresa,' Mark said. 'I know you didn't do this.'
Tresa sobbed quietly. She shuffled closer, bent down, and threw her skinny arms around his chest. 'I'm sorry. I'm such a complete fool. I'm saying whatever comes into my head.'
'Tresa, you have to believe me. I didn't kill Glory.'
'I know. I'm just as bad as everyone else. I'm the one who's supposed to trust you, and I was ready to say you did it, too.'
'I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Mark said. 'That makes me the only suspect, at least until Hilary gets back from Green Bay.'
