Jaycee hears a rustling behind her. After a few moments Elena says, “Two more hang-ups just since we’ve been sitting here, and a third call with a message.”

“Listen to it.”

“Okay. You know, I hate myself for wasting all this time and energy on him. And I hate him for making me . . .” Another long pause. “Oh, God. You have to hear this message. I’ll put it on speaker, here, listen.”

Despite the coffeehouse background buzz, the call is clearly audible to Jaycee.

“Babe, it’s Tony. Where the hell are you? Why aren’t you calling me back? I told you I just want to talk to you. Are you ignoring me, or did something happen to you? Call me as soon as you get this. I mean it.”

Everything about the call—the harsh words, the menacing tone—sends chills down Jaycee’s back.

Where the hell are you . . . ?

How many times has she heard it before? Sickened, it’s all she can do to stay seated, back turned to the three of them, pretending to sip from a cup that’s long since been empty.

“Why is he calling you ‘Babe,’ as if he’s your boyfriend or something?” Landry asks.

“Because he’s creepy and crazy and he probably thinks he is. He’s delusional.”

“Delusional?” That’s Kay, worried.

“Definitely. That’s what my friend Sidney is always saying, and I’m starting to think she’s right.”

“Well, I definitely think he sounds like a jerk,” Landry says. “If I were you, I’d call him back and tell him off. Maybe that’s what he needs to hear.”

“Maybe. But I don’t feel like dealing with him. Maybe I’ll just call the cops instead.”

“Seriously?”

“No. I guess I can always block his number from getting through to my phone. There’s a way to do that. I really don’t need this kind of stress in my life. It’s dangerous, like Meredith was always saying, remember?”

“What?” Landry sounds shocked. “Meredith talked about being stalked by someone crazy and delusional?”

“No! God, no! I meant stress!” Elena says. “She blogged a few times about those studies showing that breast cancer patients who have daily stress have much shorter survival times.”

“Oh—I misunderstood.”

“Geez, Landry, a few minutes ago we were talking about Meredith’s murder. Do you really think I wouldn’t have brought it up then if I knew she had a crazy stalker?”

Elena’s tone is sharp, Jaycee notices. She seems to have a quick temper. Or maybe she’s just aggravated by the situation, and who—having overheard that phone message from crazy Tony—can blame her?

Landry—good for her—changes the subject, announcing that it’s getting late. They decide they should get back to the hotel. From the sounds of it, the detective is meeting them there.

Behind Jaycee, chairs scrape. She takes another pretend-sip, distracting herself from panic with the amusing notion that if the cup weren’t empty, she’d have downed a gallon of coffee by now. She focuses on her phone, thumb-scrolling through her in-box as if she’s absolutely absorbed by her e-mail.

Then it happens.

She hears a clatter on the floor, and something skitters under her chair. Glancing down, she sees a cell phone coming to a stop between the pointy toes of her two black pumps.

Elena’s cell phone, judging by which of the three voices utters a curse.

“Sorry about that,” Elena says—to her? Is she talking to her?

Not daring to turn around, she holds her breath.

“Ma’am?”

She’s talking to me! Oh, no!

Jaycee’s mind runs wildly through her options.

She can continue to sit frozen, completely ignoring Elena and forcing her to crawl under the table to retrieve her own phone—which will certainly attract attention not only from the three women behind her, but from everyone around her, increasing the likelihood that they’ll scrutinize her and perhaps recognize her.

Or, she can remind herself—again—that there’s no way Elena or the others would possibly realize she’s Jaycee the blogger, and she can do what any normal person would do in this situation, which is pick up the phone and hand it back to its owner with a polite smile.

That is precisely what she does, facing Elena head-on with a pleasant, “Here you go.”

“Thanks. Sorry about that,” she repeats.

“No problem.”

They nod politely at each other, and then Elena walks away with Landry and Kay.

Heart beating as if she really did drink a gallon of coffee, Jaycee watches them go, feeling as though she’s just had a close call, when really it wasn’t.

To them, she was just a stranger.

Then she sees Landry turn back over her shoulder. She levels a long, searching look at her, frowning, almost as if . . .

She knows!

No, wait—how can she know?

It’s impossible. She can’t recognize her as Jaycee.

She can, however, recognize Jenna Coeur, just as the lady detective did.

And Landry, like the detective, has Meredith’s murder on her mind. What if she starts to wonder how Jenna Coeur could possibly have known Meredith Heywood?

I shouldn’t have come. This was stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

Sweet Dreams

When I first found my way here, I was exhausted. Not just from the physical and emotional burden of illness, but from sheer lack of sleep. I had always been a person who could climb into bed, close my eyes, fall asleep, and not wake up until morning.

Now I spent night after night lying awake, tossing and turning.

Oh, how I wanted to escape. But there was no escape, not really. Sleep—whenever I finally managed to find it—might have brought a few blessed hours’ respite, but then I’d jerk my eyes open, panicked by the vague sense that something terrible had happened, and the realization—Bam!—that it had. It was the exact opposite of waking from a terrible nightmare to the broad daylight relief that it was just a dream. The nightmare greeted me with the dawn and haunted my every waking moment. In the end, that was worse than not sleeping at all.

It was on one of those sleepless nights that I stumbled across a cancer blog for the first time. And on another, I worked up the nerve to make a comment. Not long after that, I remember, I began to chat privately with some of you, and those sleepless nights became a little less lonely, and less scary.

I remember one online exchange I had with Meredith when she wrote, Some morning—not soon, but someday—you’re going to wake up and not have that awful feeling that something is terribly wrong.

Wake up? I wrote back. You’re implying I’m actually going to sleep again.

You will, Meredith told me. I promise.

She was right.

Eventually, I started sleeping again. Eventually, I started waking up the old way—slowly stirring to consciousness. Eventually, things were back to the way they used to be. Back to normal.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late. I’m going to climb into bed, close my eyes, fall asleep, and not wake up until morning.

—Excerpt from Landry’s blog, The Breast Cancer Diaries

Chapter 11

Back at the hotel, Landry returns to her room under the pretext of freshening up before Detective Burns arrives.

But the moment she closes the door behind her, she dials Rob’s cell phone. He picks up on the first ring: “How was it?”

“The funeral? It was . . . you know. Hard. Sad. Awful.”

“I’m sorry.”

She changes the subject. “Did you find the insurance cards?”

“Yeah, you were right. They were on the bulletin board. I don’t know how I missed them when I looked.”

She closes her eyes for a second, smiling. Then it’s back to the business at hand: “Listen—I just wanted to run something by you quickly.” She tells him about the conversation with the detective at the funeral home, and that the detective asked to meet them there at the hotel to discuss the case further.