Lived.

There’s a knock on the apartment door. Jaycee quickly deletes the browser history, closes the laptop, and goes to answer.

Cory is standing there.

“What’s going on?” she asks, stepping aside for the one person in this world who always knows exactly where to find her, even when she’s hiding.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be up.”

“So you came anyway? Were you going to wake me up?”

“Absolutely.”

He’s clean-shaven, wearing jeans and a polo shirt beneath a rain jacket, his reddish hair spiking up over his forehead to make him look like a boy rather than a grown man. On a good day, he reminds her of Kevin Bacon—young Kevin Bacon, from the Footloose days—and she adores him. On a bad day . . .

On a bad day, she doesn’t want to deal with him, period. Because she only wants to be left alone.

But most of the time Cory refuses to allow that. And once in a while she winds up grateful for his persistent presence in her solitary life.

“It’s a crappy day out there,” he announces. “Humid as hell, and it’s supposed to rain.”

Yeah, well, it’s a crappy day in here, too—this being the anniversary and all. That fact won’t have escaped Cory, she knows.

“Thanks for the weather report,” she tells him. “Is that why you’re here? Because I usually just check Accuweather online if I want—”

“I brought you a newspaper,” he says, thrusting it at her, along with a white paper bag, “and a bagel.”

“Thank you.” She opens the bag, peers inside to see that it’s sesame, toasted, plain, cut into four pieces. Just the way she likes it. “I’d say come in . . . but oh, look, you’re already in. As usual.”

“Love you, too,” he says easily on his way to the kitchen.

She closes the door behind him, locks it, and follows him.

He helps himself to a cup of coffee from the pot she just brewed. “Did you use the Costa Rican beans Adam gave you the other day?”

Adam is Cory’s longtime boyfriend. A travel agent, he’s always jetting off to exotic places and bringing back gifts for his friends. Jaycee is touched that he considers her one of them—even now, after all these years, after . . . everything.

She wonders, sometimes, whether he knows . . . everything. But the past never comes up. Nor does the future. Usually, they just talk about his travels, and food, books, films . . .

Things normal people discuss.

Right. Because you like to pretend you’re a normal person. It’s a nice . . . escape.

“I haven’t used the Costa Rican beans yet,” she tells Cory. “This time, I used good old American beans I bought myself.”

“Where, at Starbucks?”

“How did you guess?”

“You’re a fan.” He makes a face. “And it’s so . . .”

“Ubiquitous?” she supplies. They’ve had this conversation before. Ad nauseam.

“Exactly.”

“Some of us appreciate that.”

“Some of us don’t.” He opens the fridge to look for milk.

“So tell me . . . what’s the point of this visit?”

“Open the paper,” he says without turning around. “Page eight.”

Uh-oh.

I should have known.

She puts the paper down on the counter.

Opens it to page eight.

Scans the page, then looks up at him, shaking her head. “I thought you said we were going to get past this. It’s been—”

“I know how long it’s been. What you need to do is—”

“I know what I need to do, Cory,” she says grimly. “I’ve been trying to do it. It’s impossible, okay?”

“Nothing is impossible.”

He’s wrong about that.

If only she could go back in time and erase not just the past seven years, but the past twenty—pick up where she left off in that dreaded, dismal little town she left behind years ago . . .

It would be easy, then, to change the course of her life, become someone else.

Someone whose name had never been heard beyond a five-mile perimeter; someone no one imagined was capable of becoming a success, or making a fortune, or . . .

Or committing a murder, even when you’re only doing what has to be done . . .

The alarm goes off, jarring Elena from a sound sleep.

Lying in her bed in that split second before she opens her eyes, she knows that something is off, but what is it?

She forces her eyelids open. The room is dark—rainy day dark, though, not night dark. According to her digital alarm clock, the time is wrong. It’s an hour later than she usually gets up, which is . . .

Wait a minute. This isn’t a weekday, it’s a Saturday.

She usually sleeps in on weekends, but this morning she only gets an extra hour because she has a flight to catch because she’s going to—

Starting to roll over, Elena gasps.

That’s it. That’s what’s off. Not the time or the dreary light that’s falling across her bed, but the fact that someone is sharing it with her.

Lying absolutely still so as not to wake whoever it is, she thinks back to last night. She was at the staff party, held at a banquet hall located about halfway between the school and the town where she lives. She remembers the speeches—she even delivered one, in honor of the retiring Betty Jamison—and she remembers the dinner, but not the dessert, and . . .

Wine . . . there was a lot of wine. Too much wine.

Again.

Dammit. When will she ever learn?

The waiter kept refilling my glass . . .

Yes, sure, it’s the waiter’s fault.

She remembers thinking that he was cute and wondering whether he was straight or not. She remembers that he was looking at her sympathetically, probably keeping the wine flowing because . . .

Oh, God.

She closes her eyes again, listening to her visitor’s rhythmic snoring in time to the rain pattering on the roof.

She has a wicked headache; her mouth is dry, stomach queasy . . .

Queasy not just because of the wine, but because she just remembered the reason the waiter took pity on her.

She arrived late and got stuck at the end of the table next to the one person no one else wanted to sit near.

Now she forces herself to roll over, open her eyes, and confront the ugly truth snoozing away right here in her bed, covers thrown down to reveal his hairy chest.

Tony Kerwin.

Landry had been worried about making her relatively tight connection in Atlanta, but thanks to thunderstorms rolling across Georgia, the outbound flight is going to be delayed at least an hour.

Settled into a seat at the gate, facing a wall of plate glass so that she can watch the torrential rain, she calls home to let Rob know she made it this far.

“How was the flight?” he asks.

“Fine. Landing was a little bumpy because of the weather.” She tells him about the delay, then asks to talk to the kids.

“Addison went out for a run, and Tucker’s still in bed.”

“Okay. Tell them to call me if they want. I have nothing to do but sit here and wait.”

“I’ll leave a note. I’m headed out golfing.”

“Oh, right.” He goes early to beat the afternoon thunderstorms that tend to roll in at this time of year.

“I was thinking that later, after I get out of work, I’ll take them for crab claws and po’boys at Big Daddy’s.”

“Wish I could go.”

“No claws and po’boys in Cincinnati?”

“I doubt it.”

She can hear clattering plates and silverware in the background and knows he’s emptying the dishwasher. For some reason, that makes her even more homesick than the sound of his voice . . . and she’s only been gone a few hours.

After hanging up with Rob, she wonders briefly if she should text both Elena and Kay to let them know she might be arriving late, but decides against it. The memorial service doesn’t start until three o’clock. Even with the delay, she’ll be arriving with plenty of time to spare.

What now?

She has her laptop with her. She’d been thinking she might find time during the weekend to write a new blog post, something she hasn’t done all week. She hasn’t had the heart to write about the tragedy, or the interest in anything else.