“I’m delighted you sought me out,” the reverend said. “Sometimes I think today’s papers are so frightened to explore religion they veer too far toward an atheist’s position.”

After getting Catherine Marsh’s name, Addie had looked her up in the local phone book. The Right Reverend Ellidor Marsh was listed in Goffeysboro, a tiny town thirty miles east of Loyal. Addie had called, knowing he would never invite her to his home to discuss the statutory rape of his daughter, and pretended to be a reporter on a nonsecular beat.

“I have something to confess,” she said now, setting her iced tea down.

The reverend smiled and tugged at his white collar. “I get a lot of that,” he joked. “But technically, I’ll have to send you down the road to Father Ivey.”

“I’m not a reporter,” Addie blurted out.

Catherine Marsh’s gaze lifted for the first time since she’d come, at her father’s beckoning, to join them. “I’m here because of Jack St. Bride,” Addie said.

What happened next was like an unexpected nor’easter: The Reverend Marsh’s complacent demeanor was swept away only to be replaced with a cold fury so intense that it was easy to imagine him hurling damnation from a pulpit. “Do not mention that man’s name in my presence.”

“Reverend Marsh-”

“Do you know what it’s like to realize that your daughter’s been ruined by a man twice as old as she is? By a man whose moral compass is so defunct he can’t see the wrong in seducing an innocent?”

“Daddy-”

“No!” Ellidor thundered. “I won’t hear any of it, Catherine. I won’t. And you, weak as any woman . . . weak as your own mother . . . believing that you loved him.”

“Reverend Marsh, I just wanted to know-”

“You want to know about Jack St. Bride? He’s a calculating, depraved pervert who baited my daughter like a Pied Piper and used her own innocence against her to get her into his bed. He’s a sinner of the worst kind-the sort of man who pulls angels out of heaven and drags them down for the fall. I hope he rots in Hell for what he did to my child.”

Catherine’s features twisted in agony, or memory. Ellidor stood abruptly and hauled his daughter up against his side. “Please leave,” he bit out, and he started inside.

Addie’s head whirled. As condemnations went, this was fairly clear-Marsh truly believed his daughter had been wronged. And who knew a child better than her parent? It meant that the charge of sexual assault against a minor a year ago in Loyal had not been a misunderstanding. A horrible offense had occurred, and Jack had been at the root of it.

He had lied to her about Catherine Marsh. And, most likely, about Gillian Duncan.

Still, something made her call out at the last minute. “Catherine!”

The girl turned, anchored by the reverend.

“Is that what happened?” Addie asked softly.

Catherine’s glance slid to her father. She nodded, then let herself be swallowed up by his anger and buoyed into the house.

And that, more than anything, made Addie give up hope of Jack’s innocence. After all, she had been like Catherine, years ago. She had survived a rape. And that was something no woman would ever consciously choose to claim as a memory-no, it was something that scarred you so deeply you couldn’t forget.

Sitting up is so hard, when her head is this heavy. Heavy as the moon, dropped to the ground. Heavy with thoughts . . . things she should not be doing, things she can’t quite remember now.

Someone comes to help her. A hand with hair on the back, sprinkled like pepper. Those hands, the pepper hands, reach for her, cup her breast as she tumbles down again. Her own hand, smooth and white, pushing at the ridge of his erection.

Blessed be.

Meg sat up in bed, wild-eyed, the covers falling away from her. The memories were like the ocean at the Cape, where they’d gone on vacation last summer. They kept running after her, and no matter what she did to try to keep them away, they managed to find her feet and suck her more firmly into the sand.

The hose sprayed wildly, soaking the girls who gathered barefoot around the Range Rover. Shrieks cut through the buzz of the summer air, falling flat into the puddles of soap on the driveway. Meg turned the nozzle away from Chelsea and Whitney and onto Gillian, who squealed and jumped out of the way.

“At this rate,” Charlie said, watching from the deck behind the Duncan house, “your car won’t be washed until October. I don’t think they’ve managed to hit a sponge on anything but each other yet.”

Amos only smiled. “I could care less about the Rover. Look at her.” Gillian turned, a smile on her face, her short hair sticking up in porcupine spikes. “They make her act like the girl she used to be.”

“I know, Amos.” Charlie tried to say more, but there was a lump in his throat. How many times had he sat with his old friend after hours, drinking a beer, watching their daughters play? Who would have guessed that those children would grow up overnight? He set his bottle on the armrest of his Adirondack chair. “How’s she doing?”

Amos took a pull of his beer and grimaced. “She goes to the appointments with Dr. Horowitz and sometimes it makes her cry, sometimes it makes her angry, sometimes it makes her just want to be alone. She still has nightmares.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Amos looked at his daughter. “Every night.”

“It must be hard on you, too. Having to deal with this all by yourself.”

“No, I thank God that Sharon died before she had to see this happen. This would have killed her if the breast cancer hadn’t. I mean, Christ, Charlie. I’m her father. I’m supposed to love her and watch over her. So how could I have let this happen?” Blowing softly over the lip of the bottle, he made it sing like an oboe. “I would trade every cent I have,” Amos said quietly, “for a chance to make her mine again.”

Gilly had grabbed the hose now and was launching an attack on her friends. She laughed, showering the others until they were soaked from head to toe. In that moment, she looked like any teenager.

Charlie rubbed his thumbnail along a hairline crack in the green paint of his chair. “Do you ever wonder if there’s someone up there keeping count, Amos?” he asked softly. “You know . . . if you wind up getting what’s coming to you?”

Amos frowned. “Gillian didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

“No,” Charlie murmured, staring at him. “Not Gilly.”

Selena figured it was like this: A girl who lied to her daddy about sneaking out of the house was probably hiding other things from him, too. And a girl whose daddy was the richest guy in town probably had been given a charge card billed to that same daddy sometime in the vicinity of her sixteenth birthday.

Hacking was illegal, but investigators knew how to bend laws to suit their needs. The first step, of course, was to make sure your uptight attorney was out for the night, and it didn’t hurt to know his son had gone on a date, either. The second step was to mentally gather together everything you’d learned in years of investigative work . . . such as the fact that the average person’s passwords were not nearly as complex as they ought to be. Selena guessed that Gillian’s birthdate, in some permutation, was the key to her America Online account, and after three tries, she got it right. It was a little trickier to find her most recent online purchases-Selena abortively tried Amazon.com and Reel.com before finding a CD store with an account set up in Gilly’s name. Breaking through the encryption in their secure ordering system took another ten minutes, and finally Selena had an American Express number.

She called the customer service line, and gave Amos Duncan’s mother’s maiden name when prompted-something she’d traced through public records.

“Yes, Gillian,” the representative said. “What can I do for you today?”