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below them was still so vivid. Even now, he had dreams about it.
    But the summer came to an end and Joss went off to college down south. For a while, she returned his lovesick letters and spent time with him on the telephone, but at Thanksgiving she told him it was better that they be only friends. She had immersed herself in her new life at Vanderbilt. Strange how that Vanderbilt family had not only made its mark in his hometown but played a role in taking away the girl he adored.
    These past summers, Tommy had nevertheless waited for Joss to come back up north, hoping their paths would cross. And they did meet up, from time to time, at the bars and clubs that hopped during the vacation season. He suspected Joss was playing him when she flirted and pouted if he told her he had been dating other girls. He’d try to play it cool, but he’d quickly melt, confessing that no matter who he went out with, he always wished he was with her instead. He consoled himself with the fact that Joss never came out and told him there was absolutely no chance.
    Tommy fed the last sheet into the copier and lifted the still warm pages from the side of the machine.
    This would show Joss how much he loved her. He was risking his career for her.

  CHAPTER  
8
    It didn’t matter that the official results weren’t back yet. The bones in the tunnel were Charlotte’s. There was no question about it.
    How Charlotte got there was a long-ago, yet still painfully clear, memory. Everything had gone so utterly wrong. Whatstarted out as a desire to make things right had turned into the worst possible nightmare.
    Charlotte had been distraught but still breathtakingly beautiful as she’d agreed to go to the playhouse and talk away from the mansion, away from the chance that little Madeleine would overhear their conversation. As they’d talked, Charlotte accepted the handkerchief offered to wipe her tears, but there was no comforting her.
    If only she’d been more receptive. If only she’d offered some small solution to the problem. Instead, she had wept as she studied the photograph taken just hours before at the country club, unable to focus on anything else. She hadn’t seen the need in the eyes of her playhouse companion, hadn’t considered how their conversation would determine whether the future would be worth living.
    The rage at the idea of a dream shattered had been crushing. Even now, fourteen years later, it was hard to accept the blind fury that had led to grabbing the iron tool from the fireplace and smashing it against Charlotte’s head.

SATURDAY
    —— JULY 17 ——

  CHAPTER  
9
    The dentist had long since retired, but before he closed his practice he had sent his records on Charlotte Wagstaff Sloane to the Newport Police Department. For years the X-rays of Charlotte’s molars and bicuspids had gathered dust in the “cold case” file. The dental records, filed with the State Medical Examiner’s Office now, should be enough to identify the remains if they were those of her mother, but twenty-year-old Madeleine Sloane had given a blood sample in case DNA testing was necessary.
    As she drove her yellow Mustang convertible along Ocean Avenue, Madeleine took one hand off the steering wheel and ripped the Band-Aid off the inside of her elbow, not wanting to be reminded of any of it. Not the loss of her mother when Madeleine was six years old, not the years of living alone with her broken father, not the constant awareness that people still whispered and gossiped about what had happened.
    Under a clear sky and a blazing yellow sun, the sparkling deep blue waters of Rhode Island Sound glimmered to her left.
    On the horizon, white sails billowed in the breeze, giving their boat owners pure pleasure. On the other side of the road, kite enthusiasts flew their creations at Brenton Point State Park. Along with the traditional flat and box kites, brightly colored plastic frogs and whales and whirligigs danced in the ocean air,