prescribed medication-something called a serotonin reuptake inhibitor-and gradually, the fog began to lift. Hannah enrolled at the University of Tennessee in January of that year. She made few friends because she kept largely to herself, but the routine of campus life, along with the medication, helped her to gradually put the tragedies of the past behind her. Six years after she enrolled, she earned a master’s degree in sociology and got a job as the victim /witness coordinator at the Knoxville district attorney general’s office. Then, after spending another six years in quiet anonymity, helping people like her, people who had been the victims of crimes, she’d met Lee Mooney at a conference in Nashville and been persuaded to make a change.
Now, as she stood gazing up at the narrow, hundred-foot falls, a hand touched Hannah on the shoulder from behind.
“Maybe we should head back,” Tanner Jarrett said.
“You’re right,” Hannah said. “I smell a storm coming.”
Later that evening, several people from the office gathered at Rowdy’s, a sports bar in Johnson City, to celebrate Tanner’s twenty-seventh birthday. Hannah and Tanner had become friends, but Hannah was always careful not to give Tanner the idea that she might be looking for anything more. The hike earlier in the day was the first time the two of them had been without company. They went to lunch together sometimes, but always with someone else from the office along.
Today was Tanner’s birthday, and when he’d asked Hannah to hike to the falls with him and then accompany him to Rowdy’s later, she couldn’t say no. It would have been much easier to keep her distance if Tanner wasn’t so likable. He was handsome and funny and charming, and he had a way of making Hannah feel wonderful whenever she was around him. But she couldn’t get too close. She just couldn’t. Not yet.
The gathering consisted of Hannah and Tanner, Joe and Caroline Dillard, Lee Mooney, Rita Jones and her boyfriend-a lawyer Hannah didn’t know-and two other young prosecutors from the office and their dates. Hannah was enjoying herself. Joe and Caroline Dillard had become close friends of Hannah’s. More than once, she’d found herself wondering whether she might ever be as close to a man as Caroline seemed to be to Joe. They were virtually inseparable outside the office, and they treated each other with a gentle kindness and respect that Hannah imagined could only come from a bond that had been carefully nurtured for many years.
Hannah ate lightly while Tanner laughed and joked with Joe about a DUI case Tanner was prosecuting.
“You should have seen it,” Tanner said through a mouthful of chicken. “I put the police officer’s videotape in the machine, and it shows this woman getting out of her car. It takes a second to see that she’s stark naked from the waist down. She starts grinding on this officer and singing, ‘Hey, big spender.’ I thought her lawyer was going to lose his lunch right there in front of the judge.”
The laughter was contagious, the conversation light and easy, and Katie decided to do something she’d never done. She decided to have a drink. Tanner was driving. Why not? She turned to Lee Mooney, who was sitting on her right, and whispered, “Please don’t tell anyone, but I’ve never had a drink before. What should I order?”
Mooney smiled at her and bent close to her ear.
“Try a Vodka Collins,” he said.
The drink arrived a few minutes later, and Hannah took a sip. Slightly bitter, a little lemony. Cold going in and warm going down.
“How is it?” Mooney said.
“Good.”
As the drink disappeared, Hannah found herself becoming more and more animated. She’d never realized how funny and entertaining she could be. By the time the first drink was gone, Mooney had ordered her a replacement. After Hannah downed the second drink and just as the waitress set down a third, Mooney announced to the crowd that she was taking her maiden voyage into drunkenness.
“No kidding?” Tanner said to her. “You’ve never had a drink in your life?”
“Never,” Hannah slurred. She was light-headed and giddy, already drunk. “Not a single one single time.”
Mooney raised his glass.
“To virgins,” he said. “God bless them every one.”
The entire group laughed, but instead of joining them, Hannah began to sulk. As the alcohol clouded her judgment and dislodged her self-control, she began to grow angry. She wasn’t a prude, after all. She just couldn’t face the thought of a man discovering her reconstructed breast. He would ask questions and jostle rusty memories of death and sorrow. How dare Mr. Mooney make fun of her.
Hannah drained the third glass of vodka and slammed her glass down on the table.
“I am a virgin, you know!” she yelled drunkenly into Mooney’s ear. The rest of the group immediately went silent. “A real virgin! And I don’t appreciate you laughing at me!”
37
Jack Dillard hustled along West End Avenue toward his dorm room in the semidarkness. It was nearly eight p.m. in Nashville, and he felt a constant rush of wind as the traffic roared past. His backpack was weighted down with textbooks and a twenty-pound plate he’d stuck inside. The extra weight pushed him, made him leaner and stronger.
Jack had been at Vanderbilt for three years now. When he arrived, he weighed two hundred thirty pounds and thought he was strong. Now, at two hundred fifteen pounds, he was stronger than ever, a walking piece of granite. Arkansas was coming in for a three-game series this weekend, and Jack briefly visualized smashing an inside fastball over the green monster in left field. He smiled to himself. He’d done it before. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d do it again.
Jack’s mind drifted to the paper he had to write later that night-five pages on biological anthropology. He intended to write about the difference between the evolution of man and the evolution of apes. Many people thought men evolved from apes. They were wrong. As he pondered his thesis sentence, Jack wondered how many papers he’d written at Vanderbilt. At least a hundred, he decided. The professors were all about being able to express yourself in writing.
Jack was sore and tired, but he was used to it. Vandy was a demanding place, and his baseball coach was a drill sergeant. His days were often twelve, fourteen hours. He was up early and off to class until noon. On game days, he’d be at the field right after lunch, hitting in the cages, throwing, shagging fly balls, lifting weights. After a two-hour warm-up, he’d play a three- or four-hour game, then do maintenance work on the field, take a shower, grab something to eat, and then study, study, study. Off days were just as strenuous, probably more so, because that’s when the team conditioned, and the sessions were brutal: weight lifting, plyometrics, sprint work, endurance work. It was a never-ending assault on the mind and body. Free time was for nonathletes. Free time was for pussies.
Something ahead caught Jack’s eye. A man was leaning against a tree just inside the wrought-iron fence that separated the campus from the street. Jack wasn’t close enough to recognize him, but the man appeared to be watching him. As Jack approached, the figure slipped behind the tree and disappeared.
Jack walked past the spot and looked closely at where the man had been standing. There was a hemlock hedge to the right of the tree, and it appeared he had walked behind it. Maybe the guy was a student and had just walked outside the dorm for a smoke. Jack kept walking. Because of his size and strength, mugging had never been a concern, at Vandy or anywhere else, but as he pushed on down the street, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, maybe even followed.
Jack turned right onto the circle that surrounded the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He looked over his shoulder. The lighting here was poor; if someone was going to attack him, this would be the best place. He lengthened his stride and veered off the circle onto the sidewalk that led toward the Hemingway Quad. As he passed a low wall of shrubbery, he caught a quick glimpse of someone moving quickly. He was suddenly knocked off balance as the figure jumped on his back and tried to get him in a choke hold.
Jack quickly gathered himself and dropped to his left knee. He instinctively tugged the attacker’s right shoulder forward with his left hand and jerked his upper body hard, downward and to his left. It was a judo throw his father had shown him years ago. Every time he’d used it when wrestling with teammates or challengers from
