rear of the house. He held the flashlight in a tight grip and led the way around the corner with the light.
Clark examined the backyard carefully. He didn’t come back here often, except to push the mower around every few weeks. There was only a narrow strip of lawn, and behind it, the dense stand of birches and their white bark peeling like paint. He stared into the woods and had the strangest feeling that someone invisible was staring back at him.
He shrugged. His mind was playing tricks on him.
Clark went over to Mary’s window and shined the light on the sill. He realized that he could stand here with half his body above the height of the window, and if the light was on, he could stare inside and see everything.
He turned the flashlight down to his feet.
Near his own boots were damp indentations in the grass, and behind them, he now saw a track of other footsteps, running away and disappearing into the protection of the trees.
5
Stride swung into the driveway of their cottage on the Point at midnight. There was no garage, just a muddy patch of ground where they parked. During the winters, they strung power cords from the house to plug in the vehicles and keep the engines warm through the frozen night hours. He squeezed his Expedition into a gap near the fence beside Serena’s Mustang and got out. Light rain tracked him as he tramped through the grass and up the steps of their front porch.
The lights were off inside, but when he opened the door, he saw a fire glowing in the fireplace on the opposite side of the living room. The log had burned down to ash and embers. A ballad by Patty Loveless played on the stereo. Stride heard Patty singing about a woman dying and going up to the stars. He had listened to that song over and over when Cindy was dying, and even now, it made his heart break.
Serena sat in a lotus position on the floor, her eyes closed, her face calm. She had taken up yoga as part of her recovery plan from burns she had suffered during a fire a few months earlier. The mental intensity of the exercises also helped her manage the memories of abuse she carried from her childhood. It seemed to be working. She was more at peace with herself than at any time since they had met.
Serena was totally different in appearance from Cindy. She was tall and full-figured. She had shoulder-length dark hair, but it was fuller and wavier than Cindy’s. Her face had a high forehead and emerald green eyes. Her skin glowed, but he could see the damage where her legs had been badly scarred. She was healing from the fire-she could run again without her legs or her lungs giving out-but she had come to accept that her body would always be flawed now. Not perfect. Not forever young. It was the devil’s bargain that everyone made with age, but Serena had put it off longer than most. She had covered herself up after the fire, even to Stride, but she was wearing shorts again, not caring if people saw. She had also gained a few pounds over the spring, when she couldn’t work out with the intensity she had in the past. She was dieting to shed them, but Stride didn’t care. He thought she looked voluptuous.
Her eyes opened as he took a seat in the leather chair near her. She carefully unfolded her legs and stretched them. Above her shorts, she wore a black bra over her full breasts. Her hair was tied into a ponytail behind her head.
“It’s late,” she said.
“Yeah, sorry, time got away from me.”
“Were you with her?”
He didn’t hear any jealousy in her voice, but he wanted to reassure her anyway.
“No, I left Tish down at the boardwalk hours ago. I went over to the police archives and pulled the material on Laura’s murder and began going through the file again. The next thing I knew, it was almost midnight.”
“She got to you, didn’t she?” Serena asked.
“I guess she did.”
“What do you think of her?”
Stride rubbed the brass studs of the red leather chair under his fingertips. “She’s keeping things from me. I don’t know what, but I don’t like that.” He added, “I can tell that
Serena shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“Come on. I saw your hackles go up.”
“No, it’s true.
“How can you tell?”
“Women know, Jonny.”
He wasn’t about to argue.
“Was there anything in the police file?” Serena asked.
“No, but Tish had something new.”
He told her about the letter Tish had given him and about the possibility that they could find DNA on the postage stamp or the flap of the envelope.
Serena digested this and then studied him with thoughtful eyes. “I’m surprised you never told me anything about Laura and her death. We’ve been together a long time now, Jonny. Is there a reason you didn’t want to share it with me?”
He didn’t know what to say, because he wasn’t sure why he had kept the story to himself. That week in July had changed him so profoundly, in so many ways, that he was never the same person again. He had realized during that week that he was going to spend the rest of his life with Cindy. He had decided during that week, as he got to know Ray Wallace, that one way to fight back against death was to become a cop. He had also discovered how much it hurt to make mistakes and that some mistakes could never be erased. When he thought about who he was today, he could draw a straight line all the way back to that summer. Even so, he had never been able to talk about it. He rarely talked about the passions that drove him. He realized that in the two years he had been coaxing Serena to share secrets about her past, he had rarely spent any time sharing secrets of his own.
Serena saw in his silence that he wasn’t ready to say anything. She didn’t push him. Instead, her face softened into a teasing smile.
“Guess what I did this evening?” she said.
He cocked his head with a silent question.
“I went to the library and found a copy of your high school yearbook from 1977,” she told him.
“Oh, no,” he said.
Serena leaned closer and whispered, “Nice hair.”
“I kept it long in those days.”
“You and Shaun Cassidy.”
“It was the 1970s, for God’s sake. It was the decade that taste forgot.”
“No, no, I like it. What a heartthrob you were. So intense. And those eyes! What did Cindy call them? Pirate eyes? I can really see it, Jonny. Smoldering, brooding, the future wounded detective.” Serena covered her mouth and started laughing.
“You’ve been spending way too much time with Maggie,” he told her.
“I saw a picture of Cindy, too. I’ve never seen a photo of her when she was young. She was amazing.”
“Yes, she was.”
“She had such an interesting face.”
“I told her that once, and she almost decked me.”
“No, really, with those big eyes and that sharp nose, and with the raven hair, she was
