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way of being cute that stung later, like an internal wound that never broke the skin's surface. Louise rarely thought of her ex-husband anymore, but when it happened, she was always surprised to discover a deep well of resentment even after nearly a year. She told herself over and over she'd pulled through the divorce just fine. She had Lisa and the big West Side apartment, a successful career designing fabrics. But the undeniable fact remained that Dave had left her for another woman. And that hurt.
    At the Seventy-second Street Station, they just missed the downtown train and walked down to the steamy lower level to wait for another. With the shocking condition the transit system's finances were in, plus the holiday, Louise knew she and Lisa might wait up to twenty minutes in the grimy station before another train came.
    Five minutes of silence later, Lisa pulled herself from her mother's grip and sauntered down the platform, ogling the obscenity-covered posters and advertisements on the wall.
    "Lisa, come back here," Louise said, her voice betraying her dampening enthusiasm as the heat began to wilt her.
    "I want to look at the pictures, Mommy," Lisa complained with a touch of defiance in her voice.
    "I want you back here now!" Being in an empty subway station made Louise nervous. There were just too many horrible stories for her even to think of relaxing. "Lisa, it's for your own safety."
    "It's okay, we're the only ones here," Lisa observed as she moved still farther down the platform away from the stairway where her mother had posted herself.
    Ten minutes later Louise was ready to call it a day. Her light cotton dress was soaked and her hair was matted across her forehead. Her mood had swung from cautious optimism to angry impatience. The train was late. She could barely breathe. And Lisa was being downright ornery about obeying her orders. Well, let her be stubborn! If something dreadful happened to her, never let it be said Louise hadn't warned her.
    Angry voices from the upstairs station echoed down the stairway and caught Louise's attention. An unseen man was reviling the token clerk, who, in turn, matched insult with insult over the microphone that linked him with the world outside his booth. The ferocious, mainly sexual imprecations of the argument had an other-worldly quality that somehow fit the hot subway station perfectly. Louise listened intently for a minute or two, and when the voices ceased, she yawned and returned her attention to her daughter.
    The platform was empty.
    Lisa was gone.
    Louise blinked, and a line of perspiration set free by the gesture trickled into her eyes and forced them shut. With two frantic swipes she cleared them and looked again. Still nothing.
    "Lisa?" she yelled, at the same time falling into a walk that quickly became a trot "Lisa? Where are you?" There was another stairway at the far end of the platform. She was probably there playing a trick. Some trick, scaring her mother half to death! "Lisa, are you hiding from me, honey?" She heard the panic in her voice and with that recognition was instantly engulfed in terror. "Lisa, where are you?"
    She was running full out now, sailing past the graffiti-covered posters Lisa had been examining, barely noting the same obscenities that, shouted out, had distracted her a few fateful minutes before.
    "Lisa, dammit, you'd better come out or . . ." Louise's voice shattered the heavy silence. There was no place for her to hide. She had to have left the station, unless...
    Louise scrambled to the edge of the platform and nearly tipped onto the tracks from the momentum of her flight. She scanned the roadbed north, then south, almost hoping to see her daughter's body there; bruised, perhaps, but still within reach, within safety. The tracks were vacant. She peered far into the tunnel, thinking for a moment she'd caught sight of some movement, something that fleetingly captured her peripheral vision. There was a flutter of gray against the