Whitney’s family lived in the valley. Which valley, Tess had never been sure- Worthington or Greenspring, she got them confused. The more pressing question was valley of what. It wasn’t as if there were mountain ranges in this part of Maryland, just rolling hills. But that’s how it was known, this mix of huge old houses and farmland beyond the Baltimore Beltway. The Valley.

It was colder in the Valley, and darker and starrier. What’s the difference between the rich and the rest of us? They have more money, and they have more stars in their night sky. Tess had known Whitney for more than a decade, but she had never gotten over feeling like a trespasser when she turned up the long drive to the Talbots’ stone farmhouse, a place so simple and well preserved that even the most cloddish social climber could see it outranked the nearby mansions. And that was before one factored in the 50 acres of prime Baltimore County real estate, just screaming out to be turned into 100, maybe 150 “executive” homes. When Whitney wanted to torment her mother, she claimed she would do just that with her inheritance.

Whitney was full of shit. She loved her childhood home so much she wouldn’t move out, preferring to live in a small guest house rather than find her own place in the city. She had sworn, upon returning from Japan, that she was looking for a condo or a rowhouse, but she was proving to be more particular than Goldilocks.

“I don’t know why it’s so hard,” Whitney said a little plaintively. “All I want is an old place-but with the kitchen and systems updated, of course. A water view. And a neighborhood where there are things to do, but I don’t want to worry about parking and congestion.”

“How many real estate brokers have you gone through so far?” Tess asked her.

“Three. Four. No, just three,” she said, pulling on a pair of boots in what she called the “great room” of the four-room guest house. Her mother had decorated it as if it were a hunting lodge, which suited Whitney. “The last one didn’t call back when I left a message about a place I saw in Federal Hill. I think my photograph may be circulating through all the offices. Who cares? No one buys a house in December, anyway. It can wait until spring.”

“What about your privacy?”

“Oh, they never come up here. If anything, I’m the one who’s barging in on them all the time, borrowing things, stealing food.”

“But they can see your house from their breakfast table. If you brought someone home-”

“Brought someone home? Tess, you know I’m a sexual camel. I can go years in-between. I had sex in Japan. I’m not due for a while.”

“You had sex in Japan?” This was new. “You didn’t tell me.”

“It’s not like it was the first time, I told you all about that.” So she had, in detail so clinical and detatched that it would have put an eighteen-year-old Tess off men forever, if she hadn’t ventured into the territory first. “And it wasn’t love. Just the usual, ohmigod, I’m ten thousand miles from home, there go the last of my inhibitions kind of thing. The need for distance only seems to increase. First it was college, on the Eastern Shore. Then New Haven, or New York on the weekends. Now Japan. I may have to move to New Zealand to have any sex life at all.”

“Was he Japanese?”

“One was.”

“One?”

“There was an Englishman, too.” She grabbed her fair hair and crammed it under a battered tweed hat, the kind that older, preppy men wore. “It was fun.” She said this as if it was a rather sudden revelation. “I may even try it again sometime.”

They drove in Whitney’s new Suburban to a cleared field at the property’s edge, where Whitney had already set up two cardboard torsos. With the car running, she left the headlamps on, so they were in a small circle of light.

“It’s colder than I thought,” Tess complained. “My hands are blocks of ice.”

“Don’t you dare wear gloves,” Whitney decreed. “Gloves are for sissies.”

Tess loaded the Smith amp; Wesson, then fired off her six rounds. She always lost count, and had to click at least once on the empty chamber to be sure the gun was empty. She hadn’t practiced for a while, and her sighting was off. It was disgraceful, really, how easy it was for someone in Maryland to buy and keep a gun, with no proof of one’s ability to use it.

“You’re pulling to the right,” Whitney observed. “My turn.”

Whitney, whose first gun had been a hunting rifle, preferred a Berretta for target practice, a semiautomatic with a magazine. The first time Tess had seen a magazine, she had said: “Oh, like a Pez dispenser.” Because she always had trouble loading Pez dispensers-the candy tended to snap out of the plastic column and spray all over the room-she had decided she was better off with the Smith amp; Wesson.

Whitney was faster than Tess, much more expert, and her shots were neatly clustered at the center of the torso.

“Want to try mine?” she asked.

Tess shook her head. “I’ve tried it. Between the recoil and the casings flying out the side, it makes me a nervous wreck.”

She took aim again with her.38. Not as good as Whitney, but better.

“Now try it from leather,” Whitney instructed.

“Oh really-”

“Come on. Cops have to do it. Why not you? You think everyone who takes a shot at you is going to send you an engraved invitation first, so you know to have your gun handy? I’ve got a holster in the Suburban, let’s try it.”

Tess was clumsy at this. The local gun ranges didn’t allow members to draw from leather, so she had almost no experience.

“My turn,” Whitney sang out, as if they were playing jacks.

The night was cold and still, sharp with the final, decadent smells of autumn. Tess had thought she couldn’t last long in such cold. But her concentration made her forget everything, except the gun in her hand and the target ahead of her. There was room for nothing else in her head. Not for Ruthie, not for Jane Doe. Not for Sukey, not for bars whose licenses listed dead owners. Not for smarmy Arnie Vasso. There was only the night and her gun.

Before she knew it, two hours had passed.

“You know what? I think this is better than yoga. I never feel so relaxed and smoothed out as I do after shooting.”

“I think it’s better than sex,” Whitney said. But she was grinning in the glow of her headlamps, mocking her own cool Wasp couth.

Back at the house, they cleaned their guns, washed their hands, built a fire in the stone fireplace, and fixed mugs of tea with brandy. Food was more problematic. Whitney’s cupboards held only a very old package of Carr’s water biscuits. The refrigerator was slightly better-a jar of olives and a bottle of vermouth. The freezer had a bottle of gin, a bottle of vodka, and a frozen dinner so encrusted with ice that Tess could make out only a few letters on the label.

“Spinach,” Tess guessed. “Or maybe spanakopita. Whitney, what do you live on, anyway? My place isn’t that well-stocked, either, but I’m a few steps from about a dozen restaurants, not to mention Kitty’s kitchen. You can’t even get a pizza delivered out here.”

“I eat up there,” she said, indicating her parents’ house with her chin, not at all embarrassed. “Or I get carryout from Eddie’s. Or Graul’s, or Sutton Place. I’ve been living off Eddie’s Caesar salad. And salmon cakes.”

“Salmon cakes?” Tess had a vision of the prepared food at Eddie’s, arrayed beneath the glass counter, the people lined up two to three deep. There was fried chicken and tenderloin and pasta and London broil and turkey meat loaf and whipped potatoes. There were sesame noodles and barbecue ribs and pork chops and couscous and red pepper hummus. “Why would anyone eat salmon cakes?”

“They’re very good with saltines.”

“How did someone with such bad taste in food ever develop an eating disorder?”