Carmen—even baby Carmen—doesn’t need to witness what’s about to happen here.
Five minutes later the car is heading north on the Taconic Parkway, cruise control set at five miles above the posted limit—just fast enough to reach the destination in a little over an hour, but not fast enough to be pulled over for speeding.
Even if that were to happen, nothing would appear out of the ordinary to a curious cop peering into the car. Alex would turn over a spotless driver’s license and explain that the sleeping person slumped in the passenger seat had simply had too much to drink. No crime in that statement, and quite a measure of truth.
Three hours later the first traces of pink dawn are visible through the open window beyond the empty passenger seat as Alex reenters the southbound lanes on the parkway. All four windows are rolled down and the moon roof is open, too, despite the damp chill in the March wind.
The radio is blasting a classic rock station. Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” opens with a powerful electric guitar; eerie, wailing, lyric-free vocals from Robert Plant.
The fresh air and the music make it better somehow. Easier to forget throwing shovels full of dirt over the still unconscious human being lying at the bottom of the trench. Easier not to imagine what it would be like to regain consciousness and find yourself buried alive.
Maybe that won’t happen. Maybe it never has, with any of them. Maybe they just drift from sleep to a painless death, never knowing . . .
But you know that’s not very likely, is it, Alex?
Chances are that it’s a frantic, ugly, horrifying death, clawing helplessly at the weight of dirt and rocks, struggling for air . . .
Alex reaches over to adjust the volume on the radio, turning it up even higher in an effort to drown out the nagging voice.
Sometimes that works—with the voices.
Other times, they persist, refusing to be ignored.
Not tonight, thank goodness.
The voices give way to the music, and it shifts from Led Zeppelin to the familiar opening guitar lick of an old Guns N’ Roses tune.
Singing along—screaming, shouting along—to the lyrics, Alex rejoices. There is no more fitting song to punctuate this moment.
It’s a sign. It has to be. A sign that everything is going to be okay after all. Someone else will come along. Another chance. Soon enough . . .
“Oh . . . oh-oh-oh . . . sweet child of mine . . .”
Chapter 1
“No, come on. That one wasn’t good either. You look annoyed.”
“Probably because I am annoyed,” Gabriella Duran tells her cousin Maria, watching her check out the photo she’s just taken on her digital camera.
Yes, digital camera.
Gaby had assumed a few snapshots on a cell phone would suffice, and would make this little photo shoot far less conspicuous. But Maria, who took a photography class at the New School not long ago, insisted on using a real camera, the kind that has a giant lens attached. It’s perched on top of a tripod, aiming directly at Gaby.
Which might not be a terrible thing if they were in the privacy of her apartment. But in the middle of jam-packed Central Park at high noon on the sunny Sunday before Memorial Day . . .
Yeah. Definitely a terrible thing.
“Can’t you please just smile for two seconds,” Maria says, “so that I can get a decent shot? Then we can be done.”
Gaby sighs and pastes on a grin.
“You just look like you’re squinting.”
“I am squinting.” They’ve been here so long that the sun has changed position, glaring directly into her eyes. “How about if I just turn the other way?” She gestures over her shoulder, preferring to face the clump of trees behind her rather than the parade of New Yorkers jogging, strolling, and rolling past on the adjacent pathway.
“No, I need the light on your face. Here, just take a few steps this way . . . no, not that far, back a little, back . . . back . . . okay, good!”
A pair of long-haired teenagers roll past on skateboards.
“Say cheese!” one of them calls.
Gaby shakes her head at Maria, who is raising the viewfinder to her eye again. “Okay, smile . . . without clenching your teeth.”
“Maria, I swear—”
“Remember, Mami—” her cousin cuts in, using the Latina term of endearment, “you’re trying to attract the perfect guy with this picture. Trust me, he’s not going to be interested if you—”
“Okay, first of all, the perfect guy doesn’t exist.”
“Not true.” Maria shakes her head, her dark ringlets bobbing around her shoulders. “He exists. But he doesn’t know you exist. Yet. And he won’t unless you let me take a picture that captures the real you.”
The real me . . .
Gaby has no idea who that even is these days, other than knowing that the real Gabriella, who once laughed her way through life, doesn’t seem to remember how to smile anymore.
She hasn’t felt remotely like herself since last summer before she and Ben split up. After five years of marriage—and three years together before that—life without him was frighteningly unfamiliar. Even now, she begins every day with the momentarily frantic feeling that she’s woken up in a strange body in a strange place, having swapped someone else’s life for her own.
Then again, she really hasn’t felt like herself since . . .
No. Don’t go there.
She doesn’t dare let herself think about it even three years later—especially not when she’s supposed to be smiling.
Dr. Ryan—she’s the shrink Gaby has been seeing lately—says it’s okay to distract herself when she feels like she’s about to burst into tears over morbid thoughts of the past.
“Get yourself out of the moment,” the doctor advised. “Read a magazine, go for a run, call a friend—anything that you enjoy.”
She nodded at the advice, rather than admit that there’s very little she enjoys anymore. Even the things that once gave her pleasure have been reduced to mere obligations.
Yet here she is, allowing her cousin to take photos to create a profile on the InTune dating Web site. Even Dr. Ryan thought it might be a good idea—another positive step toward getting over Ben, making a fresh start.
“Gaby, I wish you’d try to relax,” Maria cajoles. “It’s for your own good. Try and have fun with it.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s see how Mr. Perfect likes this.” She sticks her thumbs into her ears and wiggles her fingers, rolls her eyes back and thrusts out her tongue.
“Hilarious! I love it!” Maria snaps away.
“Hey! I was just kidding around.”
“I know, but this will show him that you have a light side. We can do the sexy shots later.”
“Sexy shots?” she echoes, already shaking her head.
“Hey, why don’t you romp around on the grass?”
“Romp around on the—”
“You know, maybe do a cartwheel or something.”
“A cartwheel? Are you insane? Or do you just want people to think that I am?”
“Just do something that shows that you have a lighthearted, fun side. Go!” Maria points her left index finger at Gaby, her right poised on the shutter. “Come on. It’s for Mr. Perfect.”
Gaby shakes her head.
She thought she had already found Mr. Perfect, a long time ago.
She was wrong.
She also thought she could live with that. Live alone. Forever.
But then—in a weak, lonely moment, after too many happy hour cocktails on Cinco de Mayo—she allowed Maria to convince her that online dating is the answer to all her problems.
“Everyone does it,” Maria told her.
“Not everyone.”
“I do.”
“You’re not everyone.”
“But everyone else does, too. Excuse me,” Maria called to a pretty waitress scurrying past their outdoor table with bowls of tortilla chips and guacamole. “Can I ask you a quick question?”