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earning her the evil eye from Wynona, who was still recovering from being overheard.

    ―Yes, you did. We all did,‖ Wynona snapped.

    ―Who invited you?‖ Genevieve suddenly demanded of all of the guys. ―Huh? Who invited you?‖

    ―Jesus, Knapp. PMS, why don‘t you.‖ Kirk Grassi yawned and added, ―Your ass is tight enough to hold water.‖

    There were sniggers from the rest of the guys and Genevieve scoured them all with a baleful look. ―We were having a private meeting,‖ she said with a bit of acid.

    ―I‘ll say,‖ Vic Franzen said. He burped heartily and lifted his beer can in a salute to himself.
    ―Greer there was telling how she and Coach Renfro did the dirty.‖ He gave Wynona some hip action to emphasize his point.

    Wynona‘s face was pale, deep circles beneath her eyes. ―It wasn‘t Coach Renfro.‖

    ―Sure it was,‖ Vic said.

    ―It wasn‘t!‖ she declared.

    ―There‘s nobody else,‖ he responded.

    ―Shut the fuck up,‖ McKenna told him coolly.

    ―Sure thing, lesbo.‖ Vic smirked and looked around for support from the rest of his buds, but they had collectively cast their eyes aside, not willing to get into that do gfight.

    Ellen said in a near whisper to Coby, ―Maybe we should go back.‖

    ―Maybe we should all have another drink,‖ Kirk suggested, looking straight at Ellen.

    Coby glanced over at Wynona, who seemed shrunken in on herself. She thought how she would feel if the guys had appeared when she was telling her supposedly most private, deepest, darkest secret. Or Ellen. What would have happened if they‘d heard about her abortion? Or of Yvette having sex at thirteen?

    Some secrets just shouldn‘t be shared with a group, she concluded, and it was her last serious thought of the evening before the effects of alcohol took over and they all let go of their annoyance over the boys‘ intrusion and settled in to party.

Chapter 2

    Coby paid for her coffee, jammed her rain hat on her head, and stepped back through Halfway There‘s vestibule into the miserable weather outside. If this current November storm was any indication, the winter ahead was going to be a doozy.

    Hurrying through the rain, she paused to look at her axle, couldn‘t tell anything more, jumped in her car, and switched on the ignition. Tossing her hat into the passenger seat, she snapped the seat belt, then slowly backed out onto the highway again. She eased the accelerator down and was gratified when the car seemed to be holding its own, not straying to the right as it had been. She held her breath, expelled it, then held it again, for several miles, and when nothing worse happened decided that maybe the car had been pulling to the right because of the wind and rain, that the pothole she‘d banged through hadn‘t damaged the axle. Anyway, she would go on that assumption until she found out differently. She just would drive more slowly than she wanted, which was practically a prerequisite anyway given the shitty weather.

    Her mind tumbled back to that long-ago beach party as if it were stuck in a groove. Every time she drove to the coast her brain traveled this same path, some times worse than others, like tonight.

    The day following that fateful night of the campfire, Lucas Moore‘s body was found floating in the surf. He‘d fallen from a cliff above onto rocks below, and the waves had dragged him into the ocean and then back to the tide pools where he‘d gotten hung up, his arms and legs and hair pulled and pushed by the ebb and flow of the water. All the girls were devastated. Not just because one of their group had died, because it was Lucas. Lucas! Who seemed touched by the gods. That morning they were wailing and screaming and pulling at their hair, even fainting, in grief and denial, and when Detective Clausen showed up it was a melee.

    Tell me what happened, in your own words.

    She‘d told Clausen about the beach party, how they‘d been sitting around a campfire, just