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 you don’t like her.”
Serena shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“Come on. I saw your hackles go up.”
“No, it’s true. She doesn’t like me. Big difference.”
“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 something to look at. I see why you fell for her. I mean, Laura was a typical teen beauty, but Cindy was distinctive.” She let the silence linger, and then she added, “So tell me about Laura. What was she like?”
“I didn’t really know her all that well,” Stride admitted. “She wasn’t home a lot when I was around. I always thought she was one of those girls who was uncomfortable being as pretty as she was. She didn’t like the stares from the boys.”
“Were she and Cindy close?”
“No. Not really. They weren’t enemies the way sisters can be, but they both led their own lives. Cindy really regretted the distance between them after Laura was killed. She thought she had missed out on having a sister.”
“I saw Tish in the yearbook, too,” Serena told him. “She’s not lying about her relationship with Laura. I spotted them together in three separate photos, and they were hanging on each other like BFFs.”
“Score one for Tish,” Stride said.
“Except you never saw them together, did you? You didn’t know Tish. Why not?”
“Tish says she and Laura had some kind of fight, and she moved to St. Paul by herself after graduation. That would have been in May and June, when Cindy and I began dating.”
“Did Tish say what the fight was about?”
“She claims she doesn’t remember but that it wasn’t anything important. I think she’s lying on both counts.”
“So what was it?”
“I don’t know, but what do teenage girls usually fight about?” Stride asked.
“Boys.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Tish says that Laura dated Peter Stanhope for a while. She all but accused him of being Laura’s stalker.”
Serena frowned. “Peter.”
“Sorry, he was up to his neck in this case,” Stride said.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I knew you weren’t happy when I started doing work for Peter’s law firm, but I didn’t realize you had this kind of history with him.”
“It was thirty years ago. I’ve barely spoken to him since then. People change.”
That was a lie. Stride didn’t think anyone really changed. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of Serena taking a job at Peter Stanhope’s law firm, but he also wanted her off the streets. Somewhere safe. The fire in which she had nearly died during the winter hadn’t been an accident. Her career had put her in the path of a stalker, and Stride found himself struggling with his anxiety whenever she was back on the street. Serena was a former homicide cop from Las Vegas, which was one of the toughest beats he could imagine. Her background made her fiercely independent. Even so, he understood now the emotions that Cindy must have felt whenever he left the house and the fear that would have flitted through her brain whenever she picked up the phone. For the spouse of a cop, the call could come anytime.
“Can I tell Peter about Tish and her book?” Serena asked.
Stride shrugged. “If Tish keeps digging, Peter’s going to hear about it sooner or later. You can tell him. For now, I’m not involved.”
“Do you really think that Peter could have killed Laura?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, but no one wanted to go down that road back then.”
“Because of Peter’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Who worked the case?”
Stride rubbed the scar on his shoulder where a bullet had violated his flesh. The wound twinged like a reminder. “Ray Wallace.”
Serena let out a slow breath. “You think Ray gave Peter a free pass?”
“Maybe.”
“I think you should tell me exactly what happened that night,” Serena said. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Stride steepled his fingers and stared at the fire and didn’t say anything more.
“I could read the police file if you want,” Serena said. “Or talk to Maggie. But I’d prefer to hear it from you.”
Stride ran his hand through his wavy hair, the way he did when he was tense. He thought about the long hair he had worn back then. About Cindy’s fingers running through his hair while they were in the water.
“Cindy and I felt guilty for a long time,” he told Serena.
“About what?”
“About leaving Laura alone that night.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen.”
“Yes, but it was dark, and it was raining, and kids had been drinking, and we just let Laura go off into the woods. It was stupid. We should have stayed with her.”
Serena waited.
“A few of us were playing softball that night,” Stride continued. “I was there. So was Peter Stanhope. Cindy was supposed to meet me afterward, and the two of us were going to hang out by the lake. I didn’t even know that Laura would be with her, but she and Cindy stopped by the field while we were playing, and then they headed off by themselves. I was a little pissed. I didn’t want Laura around.”
“Why not?”
“That was supposed to be the night. The night. Cindy and I were planning to have sex for the first time.”
“Oh,” Serena said, drawing out the word. “Now I understand.”
“So I wasn’t exactly thinking with my brain.”
“I’m sure.”
“The thing is, Cindy and I talked about it later, and we knew something was wrong, but we didn’t care.”
“What do you mean, something was wrong?”
Stride frowned. “Someone was in the woods that night.”