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  Catherine smiled. “In all my years of school I’ve never been taught what exactly constitutes ‘weird.’ Personally, I think it’s both understandable and positive. Have you spent any time with Eric since Gretchen’s death?”

  Marissa drew a sharp breath. “It still upsets me to hear anyone mention Gretchen’s ‘death.’ Dillon Archer murdered her. Even though he never stood trial, was never even arrested, I saw it happen.”

  Catherine frowned. “Do you think Dillon might be in town?”

  Marissa tried to speak in a nonchalant voice, although her pulse had quickened. “You know rumors spark up every six months. No, I’m not worried. I don’t think he’d dare come here—at least not for a long time.”

  “Or with Eric Montgomery acting as sheriff.”

  “One of the last things Eric said to me before he broke our engagement was that he knew I was right—Dillon had murdered Gretchen. He was in that church, too. He just couldn’t see as well as I could. He trusted my version of events, though.” Marissa took a small bite of salad, thinking. “You asked me if I’ve spent any time with Eric after Gretchen’s murder. The answer is no. Not even immediately after the murder.”

  “How was that possible?” Catherine asked.

  “After someone called the police and the Montgomerys, the rest of the night on Gray’s Island was complete confusion. Eric’s parents were hysterical—he stayed with them. We were giving informal statements to the police and the next day we gave our formal statements. I called Eric and he sounded so distant, almost dazed. I offered to help prepare for the wake, but he said no.

  “He didn’t speak to me at the wake,” Marissa continued. “His parents looked like stone figures and barely spoke to me. Then I noticed they barely spoke to Eric, either. That seemed so strange. I would have thought after losing one child, they’d cling to him. Instead, they seemed to be shunning him.”

  “They were probably blaming him for what happened,” Catherine said softly. “They expected him to take care of Gretchen as if she were a toddler. It wasn’t fair.”

  “No, it wasn’t. But he tried his damndest.” Marissa took a sip of wine. “And then…” Marissa felt the sting of tears rising in her eyes. “And then Eric came to our house three—exactly three—hours after the funeral and told me he didn’t want me anymore.”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “No. He was courteous and that hurt more. He said he’d decided we were too young, we needed time to recover from Gretchen’s death…. I said we could postpone for six months, even a year, but he said no, it would be better to go our separate ways. I tried to give him the ring and he wouldn’t take it, so I grabbed his hand and stuck the ring in it. He just looked at me and the man I saw behind those beautiful brown eyes was not the man I’d fallen in love with years ago. Then he walked away.”

  “So, since Gretchen’s death, he’s slowly been changing into the man he is now and you never had even one talk with him. Marissa, people told you he’d changed, but that isn’t the same as actually facing it—facing him. I believe that’s why you weren’t terribly uncomfortable in his presence Saturday or today—he was Chief Deputy Montgomery, not your Eric.”

  “Well, if it isn’t the Gray girls!” Neither woman had noticed the mayor’s son, Wilfred “Will” Addison, approach them. He wore a long blue and coffee brown wool scarf with his camel hair coat, dark wash jeans, and a navy blue V-neck sweater over a pale blue shirt. His wavy brown hair fell in the deceptively casual cut that cost a fortune, and the skin on his slender, elegant face was almost as taut at twenty-seven as it had been at sixteen, except for the tissue paper crinkles beginning around his eyes.

  Will’s features were faultless from the high forehead to the straight nose, Marissa thought vaguely, yet she didn’t remember him setting female hearts racing when they were younger. Was it because he went to private schools and acted slightly superior to those not in his social class? Or was something missing in that perfect face? Strength? Genuine animation? A smile that usually never reached his dark gray eyes?

  “How great you both look,” Will went on without a pause for one of them to speak. “Yes, even you, Marissa. A puffy nose and bruised eyes can’t ruin that pretty face!” His smile disappeared. “Seriously, I felt awful when I heard about the wreck. What a horrible experience, but thank God you escaped relatively unscathed. I tried to send flowers the next day, but the damned florist won’t deliver on Sunday.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Marissa said.

  An awkward silence followed before Catherine asked, “Why don’t you join us if you’re not meeting anyone?”

  A look of relief, rather than pleasure, flashed in Will’s eyes. “I have no lunch date, which seemed unfortunate until I stumbled across the loveliest ladies in Aurora Falls. I’d love to join you.”

  Will whisked off his coat with flare, sat down beside Catherine, immediately signaled a waiter, and ordered a martini. Then Will grinned mischievously at Marissa. “You should know you’ve sent Mother into a real tailspin. You ruined her party—no newspaper story, no pictures for the Gazette, and word of your wreck reached the gala about an hour into the festivities. First the mood fell to the floor, and then people began leaving. She’s mad as hell at you, Marissa, but she can’t say so without sounding like a heartless bitch.”

  “Oh, what a quandary,” Marissa mourned in exaggeration.

  “Isn’t it? The troubles that woman has! But Mother always carries on.”

  Marissa and Catherine laughed, although they couldn’t miss the sarcastic edge beneath Will’s banter. Evelyn Addison’s suffocating love of her son, as well as his resentment of her, was no secret.

  Will looked at Catherine. “You’re more gorgeous every time I see you. What, or should I say who, is new with you?”

  Catherine’s lips parted slightly and her cheeks grew pink. Both sisters immediately knew Will had heard about Catherine’s date with James Eastman, and they guessed Will’s next comment would concern him.

  Marissa jumped to the rescue: “Poor Catherine has been so busy taking care of me that she hasn’t had time for anything else. She’s really been a saint, Will. I don’t know what I would have done without her. This morning she went with me to police headquarters so I could give my formal statement about what happened.”

  “Oh, that must have been fun.” His bright smile quivered before blazing back to life. “How is our humorless chief deputy?”

  “Fine. And Eric can be charming if he forces himself.”

  Catherine, who so far had done nothing but smile, suddenly began talking: “Will, when we were at headquarters, we heard something disturbing. Do you know anything about Dillon Archer being back in town?”

  The color fled from Will’s face as he raised his eyebrows. “No. Did Eric say Dillon was here?”

  “No. Jeff Beal,” Catherine said as Will reached for his martini before the waiter had time to set it on the table. “He’s a deputy. He just told Buddy he’d heard Dillon was back in town.”

  “Dillon Archer back in Aurora Falls—it’s just damned silly!” Will said loudly. “My God, this is the last place he’d come unless he’s gone crazy. Why would this Jeff person even say that to Buddy?”

  Marissa watched Will gulp a third of his martini. “Buddy, as usual, made some remarks he thought were funny. I suppose Jeff’s had enough of him and shot back a remark about Dillon Archer being back in town.”

  Immediately Will’s expression relaxed slightly. “Oh. Well, that explains things. Jeff wanted to embarrass him. No one has forgotten that Buddy was supposed to be watching Dillon and the idiot let Dillon talk him into going out fishing.” Will took another sip of his martini and smiled crookedly. “So poor old Buddy got knocked unconscious with a paddle by Dillon before he dived into the river never to be seen again. Buddy Pruitt will never live down that one!”

  “A lot of people think Mitch Farrell should have already arrested Dillon when that happened,” Catherine said.

 
“Farrell hadn’t arrested Dillon because he didn’t have any hard evidence against him,” Will answered sharply.

  “He had my sister’s formal statement.”

  Color flooded back to Will’s cheeks. “Yeah, what Marissa claimed she saw.” Catherine gave him a hard stare. “I mean I know Marissa was sure of what she saw, but as I remember, things were mixed up with Tonya what’s-her-name saying she saw something else and—hell! It was a long time ago. I don’t remember all the details and I didn’t mean to imply anything bad about you, Marissa. I’m just babbling—” Will’s suddenly desperate gaze circled the dining room. “Hey, there’s Kenny Wicks. I haven’t seen him in like…forever.” Will rose, grabbing for his coat and the martini glass. “It was great talking to you girls. Well, Merry Christmas and all that stuff!”

  Marissa and Catherine watched as Will hurried across the room, carelessly ruffling a few women’s well-coiffed hair with the coat thrown over his arm. He reached the table where Kenny Wicks sat with an attractive blonde, smiled for all he was worth, and sat down with them. Neither Kenny nor the blonde looked pleased.

  “Will used to be so charming—almost debonair,” Catherine said. “I haven’t been around him much the last ten years, but he’s lost a lot of that sophistication.”

  “Too much alcohol doesn’t improve anyone’s urbanity, and I know he’s been hitting the booze since his late teens and even harder after Gretchen’s death,” Marissa said.

  “I know they dated for a while. Even Evelyn approved of Gretchen for her darling Will.”

  Marissa shook her head. “They were close for a few months after Gretchen’s last Christmas.” Marissa lowered her voice: “He was her first lover. To her, that meant marriage in the future. But she worried about his drinking, which only increased toward spring. She told me their evenings together would start out fine and end with him either stumbling out the door or maundering about things not being his fault and saying, ‘I’m sorry; I’m sorry.’”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Gretchen didn’t know and he never gave any hints. She was worried about him, though. She wanted him to see a psychologist and do something about his drinking. She seemed almost frantic. I had no doubt she was in love with him and afraid he might do something to himself, accidentally or on purpose.” Marissa shook her head. “Then out of the blue, she broke up with him and started seeing Dillon.”

  “She might have been running from what she thought was Will’s self-destruction and started dating Dillon as a way of shaking up Will. As I remember, Will was almost as anti-Dillon as Eric. Maybe she thought Will would try to help himself rather than losing her or seeing her with Dillon Archer.”

  “I guess so. Will did seem to care for her. He wasn’t passionately in love with her—at least I don’t think so—but when I saw them together he was always tender and affectionate. And if she’d had just a few weeks longer, she might have had a positive effect on him. Unfortunately…”

  Catherine looked over at him speculatively. Half of the people in the room glanced at the table of Kenny Wicks and his blond companion, whom Will was embarrassing with a loud voice and flourishing arm movements. “Well, I think he’s already on his second martini today and it won’t be his last.”

  “Jeff rattled Buddy by saying Dillon’s back and we rattled Will by repeating it.” Marissa paused thoughtfully. “Strange. When they heard Dillon might be in town, they each looked almost afraid.”

  3

  Buddy Pruitt slumped through the movie theater lobby, looked at the posters promising him this movie would be a laugh riot, and wondered if anyone anywhere had even worked up a giggle during the one hour and fifty minutes of film. Well, that one guy in aisle five laughed constantly for the first twenty minutes, but the theater manager removed him when he spotted the guy raising a liquor flask to his mouth. With the exception of Mr. Entertainment, everyone else had seemed to be in the same state of mind as Buddy:

  Crummy.

  He thought it must be because he’d seen Marissa Gray today. Buddy hadn’t liked her since Marissa was sixteen. They’d been at Tonya Ward’s eighteenth birthday party. Tonya hadn’t invited Buddy—Dillon had just dragged him along. Buddy hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Marissa with her long blondish hair and velvet low-slung jeans and sparkly T-shirt. She’d gotten close to him and he smelled her perfume, which proved the final blow for Buddy’s self-control.

  Buddy had grabbed Marissa and kissed her. In return, she’d smacked him so hard he’d slipped and fallen on the floor. Everyone laughed and it was the first time Dillon had gotten mad at Buddy—really mad. Buddy hadn’t known Dillon liked Marissa—Dillon sometimes dated Tonya, but not Marissa. Anyway, afterward Buddy had felt bitter whenever he thought about Marissa, and he still thought about her a lot.

  Yes, it was seeing Marissa that made him feel the way he did tonight, he decided. She’d come strutting into police headquarters in her fur coat, not speaking to him, acting like the whole world should stop for her….

  Buddy closed his eyes and sighed. Even his thoughts wouldn’t give him peace. Probably no one even remembered his burst of unbridled lust so long ago, he admitted to himself. He was upset because Jeff’s young voice echoed relentlessly in his mind: “I’ve heard Dillon Archer has come back to town.” Dillon Archer. Dillon Archer. How Buddy wished he’d never heard that name.

  But he had. He’d heard the name; he’d called Dillon friend. Dear God, Buddy had considered Dillon Archer his first friend. Maybe Grandpa was right, Buddy thought. Maybe I haven’t gotten more out of life because I don’t know up from down. Worse, maybe I haven’t gotten more out of life because I don’t deserve it.

  Buddy jammed his hands into his pockets and tried not to shiver as he started toward home. He’d walked to work this morning, called home and lied to his mother, telling her that he had to work late, then gone alone to the movie. Spending every evening with her was becoming more than he could bear. The fact that he was twenty-seven and still living with his mother was bad—really bad when his mother clung like she did—but she was so alone. So was he, for that matter. He’d never had many friends. He hadn’t had any friends until Dillon Archer had come along.

  Buddy had been twelve when he’d met Dillon. He’d sweated through a dorky elementary school graduation ceremony feeling like a fool when his mother clapped madly for him as he scuttled across the stage in his paper graduation cap and gown and picked up a diploma printed on a school secretary’s computer.

  His grandfather had come with Buddy’s mother. Buddy couldn’t figure out why Grandpa had wanted to attend until the Old Man began snickering, muttering, and then outright laughing when Buddy crossed the stage. Bastard, Buddy had thought, his cheeks bright red. Grandpa had only come to embarrass him. Other people tried and failed to ignore the old geezer sneering and snorting at his ugly little illegitimate grandson, and Buddy had wished with all his heart God would strike him dead.

  Then Buddy had seen Dillon Archer—unusually handsome and poised for an adolescent—sitting in the audience like a young prince and looking at Buddy’s grandfather as if he were a squirming maggot. Like magic, on that beautiful day some of Grandpa’s power to hurt Buddy had drifted away like foul air.

  Now, a cold gust of wind lifted Buddy’s overly thick hair that would never naturally lie against his scalp. After many experiments throughout the years, he’d learned longer top hair worked best for him. Every morning after his shower, he carefully massaged in heavy-duty hair gel, placed three long metal clips on the top hair and two clips on his particularly rebellious cowlick to hold everything in place, blew it dry, then left in the clips another ten minutes for a firm set.

  One morning he’d been in a rush, forgotten to remove the clips, and worn them to work. Everyone at headquarters had fallen into hysterical laughter. Everyone except Eric Montgomery. With his own thick, loose curly hair, he’d simply muttered, “Getting my hair into any kind of shape is a pain, too. That’s why I don’t even try. It would b
e easier if you and I would just shave our heads, Buddy.” Then Eric had gone on working without even the twitch of a smile. Dillon had usually been nice to Buddy, but to his surprise, sometimes Eric was nice, too.

  Buddy turned down Oak Lane, which he’d always liked with its huge, billowing oak trees that everyone wanted to cut down because the trees shed literally thousands of leaves in the fall. This past autumn Buddy had taken about twenty photographs of the trees in their colorful glory—golden, dark purple, copper, lime, and yellow-edged emerald green. He’d taken four shots of his favorite tree—a huge old oak whose leaves had turned a uniform burnt orange. In the late afternoon autumn sky, the tree looked brilliantly aflame. His mother, Bea, had put them in an album she’d been keeping since he was thirteen titled “Buddy’s Photograph Album” and she looked at them every night, marveling over his talent.

  Not that anyone respected Bea Pruitt’s opinion of talent, and with good reason. Intellectual matters were not Bea’s strong point. Although Buddy loved his mother, he’d known since childhood she was sweet, kind, dumb, and silly. She dithered through her small circle of the world oblivious to her low intelligence and lack of perception. Luckily, other people’s poor opinion of Bea’s brainpower did not hurt her, because she simply didn’t feel it. Unkind actions, judgments, and even subtle insults simply passed by her. She rarely left the house, but within its dingy walls she was usually smiling and happy. She didn’t even sound bitter when she told seven-year-old Buddy she’d wanted to name him after her father, who had less than politely refused the compliment. Grandpa’s attempt to wound Bea hadn’t worked. Instead, she had cheerfully named her son after her beloved girlhood dog.

  Another gust of wind blew up and Buddy felt it lifting his stiff hair like a banner. He automatically pushed down the hair, but it didn’t matter. Large, lovely nineteenth-century houses once had lined the street. Most people had abandoned the houses after a flood twelve years ago, and hardly anyone lived here. Sometimes looking at the formerly opulent homes made Buddy sad; other times, he fantasized that his father had lived in a house like one of these in its prime.