The Girl Who Survived(80)

Marlie had taken Kara’s hand and pulled her farther away from the house, where lights glowed in the windows creating patches of light on the yard. Grinning widely, Marlie whispered. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.” Kara loved secrets.

“You have to promise, though. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” Kara had vowed, grateful that her older sister was entrusting her with something she didn’t want shared.

“Pinky swear?”

“Pinky swear.” For a brief second they locked their smallest fingers. “For sure.”

“Okay. Good.”

“So what is it?” Kara asked.

“I’m going to marry him,” Marlie announced, hunching down so that her face was close to Kara’s. “I’m going to marry Chad!” She straightened, wrapping her arms around herself and twirling, her silhouette visible against the lights of the city winking in the distance.

“For real?”

“For real!” Marlie stopped whirling long enough to pick up Kara and swing her over the frosty grass and the night had spun around them, Marlie beaming and Kara giggling wildly. “I’m going to be Mrs. Chad Atwater!” She’d stopped twirling and been dizzy, her legs wobbly. Both she and Kara tumbled together on the grass, Marlie breathing hard as they stared into the night-dark sky where thousands of stars glittered.

Kara said, “Do I have to call you that?”

“Mrs. Atwater?” Marlie asked, laughing. “Nah, you just call me Marlie and I’ll call you Kara-Bear. Just like now. That doesn’t change. Okay?”

“ ’Kay.” Kara felt better.

“Good girl.” Marlie had clasped Kara’s hand again. “Oh, Kara, we are going to be so, so happy.”

“But you’ll still live with us, right?” Kara had asked.

“No.” Marlie got a little more serious. “But we’ll be close. I’ll make sure of it. We’d like a farm or a ranch with dogs and horses,” she confided, dreaming.

She’d always been an athlete and had loved animals almost as much as she loved competition. In an effort to keep up with her brothers, she’d taken up archery and target shooting, just to prove she was as good as they, that girls could keep up with boys. “Actually, I’m better than all of the brothers,” she’d confided in Kara just last week. “They just won’t admit it.”

Now, gazing up at the stars, Marlie said, “Maybe we’ll go up to the lake, you know, maybe Dad and Mom would let us keep the place up. But whatever, it’s going to be so, so cool.”

Kara didn’t like the sound of her living as far away as the mountain house, but Marlie didn’t notice that she’d gotten quiet. “Just remember: This is our secret. Right? You can’t tell a soul. Not Mama or Daddy, not Jonas, not Donner or Sam or anyone!”

And Kara hadn’t.

Not to this very day.

A sadness stole through her as she thought of the sister she’d lost, a sibling whom she had been closer to than her own mother. And now she was getting messages about her.

You don’t know that. The text and voice said, “She’s alive.” You decided that whoever is behind it is talking about Marlie. That’s a leap, Kara. A big leap.

But who else?

She glanced back at the notes again, to the names Tate had listed. Her father’s one-time business partner, Silas Dean, had been written on the yellow page, as well as her parents’ ex-husbands and wives. Leona and Natalie, both married to Kara’s father, and Walter Robinson, her mother’s ex-husband. So many marriages, so many names. Each with his or her own agenda.

And then there was Marlie. Who someone insisted was alive. Could she tell Tate about the text and voice message? Could she trust him with that information? Could she confide to him that she’d thought she was being followed. To that end she walked to the tall window and stared outside to the desolate night. The streets were nearly empty, the river a dark swath with white caps reflecting white from the vaporous illumination of the streetlamps near its banks.

For an instant she thought that someone, anyone, could be looking up at her, her entire body silhouetted by the soft glow of interior light. For an instant her blood ran cold and she took a step backward.

God, she could use a drink.

Swallowing back her fear, mentally chastising herself for being a paranoid ninny, she thought she heard voices rising from the floor below. Oddly it was comforting to hear Tate talking to the delivery person.

Tonight she wasn’t alone.

But he’s a virtual stranger to you, Kara. A man with his own purpose. A reporter who wants your story, the son of a man who died saving you. You cannot trust him; not fully. Don’t drop your guard.

Uneasily she walked back to his desk and the papers strewn upon it. Again she eyed the list of people connected to the tragedy of her family. She noticed arrows and smaller notes scribbled in the margins, words and phrases she couldn’t quite read, but Jonas’s name had been circled several times, and arrows connected it with Lacey Higgins and Donner.

Lacey.

Kara traced the name on the paper with the tip of an index finger.

What about Lacey?

A girl no longer, she reminded herself, though she still remembered Lacey as she had been then, a seventeen-year-old in the virginal white dress, her most famous quote about Jonas still burning in Kara’s memory: