“Well, I hope they catch him,” said Matthew.

“Me, too. Otherwise, how will I ever finish the book?” Hilary replied.

“We all hope they find him and we’re all looking forward to you finishing the book. Now can we talk about something else already?” interjected Luisa, sounding nearly peevish.

So we talked about Emma’s latest gallery show and the new series she was starting, and Matthew’s clinic and which room Jane and Sean would use for the nursery. Luisa was sufficiently beyond her breakup with Isobel to relate several amusing stories about the lesbian dating scene in Latin America. Between the champagne and the red wine we drank with dinner, the comfortable conversation among familiar faces, and the savory meal, I was feeling more relaxed than I had in days.

My friends didn’t bring up Peter or Jonathan, but I knew they were just waiting. Sean and Matthew had probably been prepped to excuse themselves after dinner, leaving the former roommates alone to talk about touchy personal subjects.

“Who wants dessert?” asked Jane.

“I don’t think I can handle dessert just yet,” said Emma. “Why don’t we get this stuff cleared up first?”

I was excused from the clearing up after I chipped a platter that had belonged to Jane’s great-grandmother, and Luisa wanted a cigarette, so at her invitation I stepped out onto the back porch with her to keep her company.

The snow had really begun to fall, and the backyard was already blanketed in white. A pool of light spilled out from the kitchen windows, and our shadows cast long dark silhouettes on the otherwise unsullied expanse. Luisa lit her cigarette with an engraved lighter and took a luxurious drag. “Much better,” she said, with obvious relief.

“Much colder,” I pointed out.

“That, too,” she acknowledged. She took another drag. “Rachel, there’s something we need to tell you.” She sounded suddenly serious. “And I drew the shortest straw.”

“What?” I asked, concerned. “Is everything all right?”

She glanced back toward the window. Inside, we could see our friends busily tidying the kitchen. “I’m not quite sure how to say this, so I’m just going to come right out with it. When we went to Newbury Street yesterday, Jane and I saw Peter.”

“Oh?” That seemed harmless enough. The convention center was only a block away, on Boylston Street.

“He was coming out of Cartier.” My heart gave a little lift. Maybe he’d been buying me a present, to make up for his neglect this past couple of days? And at Cartier, to boot. That could only be good. What a fool I’d been, doubting him.

“And?” I asked eagerly.

“And he was with a woman. Tall, with long dark hair.”

My heart promptly sank. “Did she look like Christy Turlingon, only even more gazellelike?”

Luisa nodded and took another drag. “We wanted to say hello, and we called out to him. They were across the street, and I don’t think they heard us. So Jane and I followed them. They went down Newbury and into Shreve, Crump & Lowe.” Another jewelry store. My heart was now lodged somewhere between my knees and my ankles.

Abigail. The woman they’d seen could only have been Abigail. Peter had been too busy to have dinner with me, but he had plenty of time to hang out in jewelry stores with Abigail.

I was shaking, and not just from the cold. “Did they look-” I wasn’t sure how to frame the question. “Did they look like they were together?”

She shrugged. “It was hard to tell. They seemed to be talking and laughing up a storm.” She hesitated. “And she had her hand on his arm. But the sidewalks were icy-he might have just been helping her.”

I fought back a wave of nausea. I didn’t know what to say.

“Rachel? Are you all right?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Look, Rachel. It was probably nothing. Jane and I weren’t even sure we should say anything, but we eventually agreed that we’d both want to know if we were in your shoes.”

“No, you’re right. It’s better to know.”

We were silent for a couple of minutes. Luisa finished her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray that she’d carried with her.

“Let’s go inside,” Luisa suggested. “You could probably use another glass of wine.”

Sean had taken Matthew to his basement workroom, where he was apparently building a cradle from scratch. The rest of us took our drinks and sat before the fire, and I spilled out everything that had been happening with Peter, and with Jonathan.

Hilary, of course, minced no words. “How dare Peter go jewelry shopping with any woman who’s not you? Do you want me to talk to him for you, Rach? Give him a piece of my mind? I’ve had a lot of experience ditching people.”

“That’s kind of you to offer, Hil, but not right now.”

Emma was less sanguine. “This doesn’t sound like the Peter we know. He doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who would cheat on you. And you said he was completely normal on Wednesday night. I don’t see how so much could have changed in forty-eight hours.”

“He could just be genuinely swamped with what he says he’s swamped with. Maybe they were looking for a gift for you. Or for their potential client?” This was from Jane, the eternal optimist.

A gift for their client? “Like what?” asked Hilary impatiently. “A pair of earrings? I think you should cut your losses and move on, Rach. I remember this Beasley guy, and he was hot. The best cure for one guy is another guy.”

“He is incredibly good-looking,” I acknowledged. “And he’s smart and nice and everything.” I took a big swig of wine. “Oh, Christ. I don’t know what to think, much less what to do.”

As if on cue, I could hear my phone ringing in my purse.

“Maybe it’s him,” I said.

But I wasn’t sure which him I wanted it to be.

B ut it wasn’t Peter, or even Jonathan. It was Edie Michaels.

Her words tumbled out in a breathless rush. Sara had gone into cardiac arrest. She was stable now, but the doctors at UHS had called in the police.

“The police?” I asked, confused.

“I know-I didn’t get it either. But it’s the same detectives who are investigating the attack at the boathouse. They must think that the seizure or episode or whatever you call it didn’t happen naturally.”

I’d had a couple glasses of wine and was having trouble computing her words. “You mean-they think someone caused this?”

“Uh-huh. Don’t ask me how. But it’s sort of terrifying. If the nurse hadn’t come in when she did…” Edie’s voice trailed off.

“Are you at UHS now?”

“Yes. Standard visiting hours have pretty much gone out the window. And the police asked me to hang around so they could talk to me-they said that they’re going to want to talk to everyone who visited Sara, and of course I was here this afternoon and then again earlier this evening. I’d brought Sara dinner, but she didn’t have much of an appetite.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I’d been there that day, so surely I was one of the people the police would want to talk to. It was good to have an excuse to find out in person what was going on.

“I’ll be in Sara’s room, if they let me. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

As soon as I ended the call the phone rang again. This time it was Jonathan Beasley. Edie had called him, too, and he was on his way to UHS. I told him I’d see him there.

I turned to my friends, who had been unabashedly eavesdropping on my conversation. “Somebody tried to kill Sara Grenthaler,” I said.

“I thought that happened yesterday,” said Luisa.

“No. I mean yes. But it happened again.” I realized that on some level I’d been hoping that yesterday had been a random attack, regardless of police suspicions about serial killers and my own theories about stalkers and roommates. But it was becoming all too clear that whoever had attacked Sara the previous morning had intended to do far more than give her a headache. He’d meant to take her out, and tonight he’d come back to finish the job. Or she. And there was nothing random about it.