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  “Well, if you need anything from the store or whatever, maybe she can get it for you . . . or call my cell.” When he hesitated and looked at her, Kiera thought for a moment she caught a trace of genuine concern in his eyes. “You sure you’ll be all right?”

  “I’m sure. I’m going to take it easy this morning. I’m playing tennis with Jon and Liz this afternoon. Alex Burdette is going to join us for doubles.”

  “At the high school courts?” Nate asked.

  Kiera thought she caught a look of momentary anxiety in his eyes before he smiled.

  “We always play there,” she said.

  His question struck her as odd, and she wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her, but she let it drop. If she started in with him now, they’d end up arguing and ruin the day for both of them. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of her playing tennis with Alex . . . or maybe it was Jon, who she had dated years ago, back in high school.

  As if he has any right to be jealous, she thought. Is that it? . . . Does he think I’m not going to be playing tennis at all? . . . Does he think I’m having an affair with Alex or Jon?

  That struck her as rather ironic because, for all his faults, Nate never struck her as the suspicious type. She was about to mention it but decided not to.

  Let him have his little suspicions, she thought. It might do us some good for him not to take me so much for granted.

  “What time’s your game?” Nate asked.

  Now that she was looking for it, Kiera was positive she caught a hint of suspicion in his tone. What was he going to do, skulk around and spy on her? Maybe he could see the tennis courts from his classroom window. What if he set up a telescope in his room to watch her, to make sure that’s what she was doing?

  Kiera found that amusing. Their relationship certainly wasn’t the best thing going, but cheating was the farthest thing from her mind, even with Jon O’Keefe. They had dated in high school, but that had been so long ago it seemed like another life. If she was ever going to have an affair, overweight, balding, married Jon O’Keefe was low on the list.

  No, if she needed anything, it was just a little more attention from her husband. It struck her as more than a little sad how out of touch they had grown over the years, and how both of them seemed to accept it as the natural course of events.

  Or maybe it had always been that way, and something—something was building up inside her now that was just making her see it.

  “I guess I’m off then,” Nate said, leaning forward and giving her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. It still seemed like he was holding back on her, as though he didn’t quite trust her. “I’ll keep my cell on, so call me if you need anything.”

  “Yeah. Sure thing,” Kiera said, twisting in her seat and watching as he grabbed his car keys from the counter, patted his back pocket to make sure he had his wallet, and went out the door into the garage.

  The garage door rattled up, and she cringed, her teeth on edge when his car started up. Thankfully, the migraine didn’t return. Nate’s tires made a high-pitched chirping sound on the cement floor as he backed out into the driveway perhaps a little too fast. Kiera stayed where she was, staring at the closed door and listening as the garage door rattled back down. The sound masked the receding sound of Nate’s car as he pulled out onto the street. Only once the house was quiet again . . . quiet except for the low humming of the refrigerator . . . did a thought occur to Kiera.

  What if Nate’s acting so strange . . . not because he thinks I’m having an affair . . . but because he is?

  They had dealt with that issue a few years ago, and she had thought . . . had hoped they had worked it all out, but as she got up to clear the kitchen table, Kiera told herself she had to be vigilant and watch for any signs that things might be getting bad again.

  2

  The thwock and ping of the tennis ball as it bounced off the asphalt and strings of tennis racquets echoed in the little hollow where the town had built the high school’s four tennis courts. Even this late in the day, the afternoon was hot and humid. A bank of thunderheads as dark as ripe plums lined the western horizon. Kiera hoped it would rain later to break the sticky heat. Even before they’d finished warming up, she was dripping with sweat, but it felt good not to have any lingering traces of the migraine.

  Today, she and Jon were partners, pitted against Jon’s wife Liz and Alex Burdette, the local pharmacist and another friend of theirs from high school days. After two sets, Kiera and Jon were ahead two to nothing, but Kiera knew she wasn’t playing her best game, not with the worry that, at any second, her migraine might come roaring back.

  She couldn’t help but notice how comfortable she felt playing partners with Jon. They hadn’t seen each other and had barely stayed in touch by letter or telephone over the years, but she had been happy when he and Liz, whom he met and married while in college in Boston, moved back to Stratford after living in Denver for the last twenty years. The reasons for Jon’s return to Maine were sad. His father, Sam, had died, and Jon, being an only child, had come back home to help his aging mother, who died less than six months after his return. Still, after more than twenty-five years—ever since high school graduation, really—Kiera felt a connection with Jon that she didn’t feel with any of her other friends.

  Of course, the secret she and Jon shared bound them in ways much deeper than most friendships, but they never spoke about it, even though it seemed—at least to Kiera—always to be hovering between them like a dark, dangerous storm cloud. It was something she could honestly say she thought about every day for the past twenty-five years, and she knew she would carry it around with her until the day she died.

  It was Kiera’s serve, but even though they had been playing only a short time, she felt absolutely exhausted as she positioned her feet on the baseline and gripped her racquet. She bounced the ball a few times at her feet, but before she took her first serve, she had to step back from the line.

  “Can we take a little break?” Her voice sounded thin, shaky. “I don’t know about you guys, but this heat is killing me.”

  Everyone agreed to a break, so they walked over to the shaded side of the court. It didn’t help much with the humidity, but at least it was shade. Kiera let out a sigh as she sat down on the asphalt and fished a bottle of Gatorade from her pack. Her hands felt almost too weak to unscrew the top, but she finally managed. Leaning her head back, she took a huge gulp, gasping as the cool liquid dropped like a sledgehammer into her stomach.

  Jon, who was standing close beside her, toweled his face. Other than the three times a week they played tennis, he didn’t get outside much. His face was flushed and red, and his thinning hair, which was going white above his ears, was plastered in thin strands against his forehead.

  “You feeling all right?” he asked Kiera before leaning his head back and taking a noisy gulp from his Poland Spring water bottle. His wife was standing a little to one side and seemed more interested in adjusting the strings on her racquet than in anything Jon or Kiera might have to say. Alex had walked up the hill to his car to have a smoke.

  Kiera squinted and looked up at him. Seeing him silhouetted against the hazy sky reminded her of the figure she had seen this morning and last night . . . the figure of someone reaching out to her from the slash of frozen white lightning.

  “Yeah . . .” she said, swallowing hard. “I’m okay.” She wiped her face on the sleeve of her tennis shirt and forced a smile. “It’s just . . . the heat’s got me down.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you,” Jon said. “It was hot in Denver, too, but I don’t remember the humidity ever being this bad.” He pinched his damp shirt on the shoulder and pulled it away from his skin. “Not like this.”

  “It’s global warming,” Liz piped in, but she said it with such a neutral tone Kiera couldn’t tell if she was supposed to take her seriously or not. Liz was a few years younger than she and Jon, and Kiera didn’t always get her sense of humor.

  “Global warming’s
got nothing to do with a few exceptionally hot days,” Jon said, sounding a bit perturbed as he glanced at his wife. “Global warming has to do with the average world temperature, which doesn’t vary all that much but is rising—”

  “I know what global warming is,” Liz said. “I was making a joke.”

  “Well sor-ry,” Jon said, rolling his eyes when he turned his back on Liz and looked at Kiera.

  For her part, Kiera didn’t want to get between them. From the time Jon moved back home, Kiera had picked up a not-so-hidden tension between him and his wife. Maybe it was that way in all relationships; she just had never noticed it before. But she couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with Jon seeing her after so many years.

  The bottom line was, she didn’t care.

  As much as she enjoyed being around Jon again and doing things like playing tennis or going to a movie, she didn’t feel anything like the old spark she’d once had for him. There was almost nothing of the young man she’d known and dated back in high school in this overweight, balding real estate agent. He was like a new person. And she couldn’t help but wonder if the young girl she felt she still was in so many ways was just as lost to him.

  “You know,” Kiera said, changing the subject, even though she didn’t think global warming warranted any kind of argument, “when it’s really hot like this, we should play after dark and use the floodlights.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Jon said.

  “What’s this about playing after dark?” Alex said, smiling wickedly as he opened the door to the court and walked over to them. “I’m always up for a game after dark.”

  Kiera groaned at Alex’s feeble attempt at innuendo, and Jon gave him a not-so-light punch on the arm.

  “Oh, good,” Alex said, rubbing his upper arm. “Hurt my right arm so my game will be off . . .”

  “Your game’s off whenever we play,” Jon said. “Whenever you’re on my team with doubles, I feel like I’m playing with three women.”

  Kiera couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but it seemed as though Alex was getting a little mad.

  “Hey, I got your doubles right here,” Alex said as he grabbed his crotch and shook his hand. “Any day you wanna go one-on-one, buddy, I’ll beat your sorry ass in straight sets.”

  “Your mouth is writing checks your ass can’t cash,” Jon said. He still had a good-humored lilt in his voice, but Kiera sensed there was more to this just below the surface. She wondered why she was always looking for deeper meaning in things people said. Jon and Alex always acted like this in high school, so maybe it was just the way guys—at least these guys—related. To her, it didn’t sound like very much fun, though, and it never had.

  “Enough, already,” Liz said, her upper lip curling with undisguised disgust. “If you boys are done with your macho bullshit, can we play some tennis?”

  Kiera caught the look Alex flashed at Jon that all but said: Sorry you married such a bitch, but everyone tossed their drink bottles and towels aside, grabbed their racquets, and trotted back onto the court.

  Even on her first serve, though, Kiera knew she didn’t have her game back. As she bounced the ball a few times and adjusted her grip, she felt a little off-balance and paused to take a deep breath. When she looked at Alex, who was waiting in the far court to receive her serve, a rim of darkness at the edges of her vision started to close in like a stage curtain, collapsing shut. She squinted and shook her head, unnerved to see that the outline of Alex’s body was hazy, indistinct.

  Jon, waiting at the net for the serve, seemed to catch her hesitation and glanced at her over his shoulder. A frown of concern wrinkled his forehead. His eyes, Kiera thought, glowed with an unusual brightness, giving her the impression they were filled with some internal light.

  Kiera sucked in a breath, concentrating as she bounced the tennis ball a few more times and then tossed it above her head. She cocked her arm back, twisted slightly, and then swung at the ball when it was at its peak. Her racquet whistled through the air, the strings vibrating and creating a deep thrumming that momentarily took her focus off the ball. As she brought her swing down, she missed the ball entirely, and it bounced off the top of her head. At the end of her swing, she let go of the racquet, and it flew from her hand, clattering as it skittered across the asphalt.

  For a split second, Kiera just stood there, hunched over and looking down at her feet. The bright green asphalt glowed and vibrated with frightening intensity. She had the disorienting impression she had actually sunk ankle-deep into the hot asphalt. A tiny whimper escaped her as her vision dimmed.

  “Jesus, Kiera. Are you all right?” Jon called out as he dashed over to her. His voice echoed in her ears with a muffled thud. As he came forward, he extended his arms to catch her before she fell. Kiera braced herself and shook her head.

  “Yeah . . . I just—” She shivered as she wiped her face on her shirtsleeve. “I just feel . . . I dunno . . .”

  Jon was a few feet away from her, close enough so she could see beads of sweat on his face and smell the soap and aftershave he had used.

  “If the heat’s really getting to you, we don’t have to play, you know.”

  Kiera looked from him to Liz and Alex, who were standing on the other side of the net. They both had funny expressions, like they had no idea what to say or do.

  “I’ll be all right,” Kiera said, trying to shake the feeling off and wishing she could muster more strength in her voice.

  Jon regarded her steadily for another few seconds and then went to retrieve her racquet. He inspected it before handing it back to her. Kiera saw scuff marks on the handgrip, but she held it tightly as she fished another tennis ball from her pocket.

  “Maybe we’ll keep it to one set today,” she said weakly as she went back to the line and got ready to serve. She was praying she could get control of herself, but she was concerned about what had happened to her vision. The darkness closing in from the edges and the sudden intensity of Alex’s figure when she had looked at him were truly frightening. She feared her migraine was coming back, but she told herself just to keep playing. It would be all right.

  Just go with the flow . . . Relax . . . Take it easy . . . This is supposed to be fun, she told herself, but she had a lump in her throat when she tossed the ball up and swatted at it with her racquet.

  The impact sent a mild electric jolt up her arm to her shoulder, and she smiled with satisfaction when she carried through on the serve and watched the ball hit inside the service court and then shoot like a bullet past Alex before he even had time to set his swing.

  “Ace! Way to go!” Jon said, turning around and smiling at her.

  “I thought you’d ease up on your second serve,” Alex said, smiling and shaking his head at his error.

  “Technically, that was my first serve,” Kiera said, trying to get into the spirit of things, but she still felt odd. “I didn’t make contact with that first one.”

  “Technically,” Alex muttered as he moved in toward the net, and Liz stepped back to receive the next serve.

  Kiera realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out slowly as she stepped up to the line and prepared to serve again. She had a ritual of bouncing the ball three or four times while spinning her racquet in her hand. When she had first started playing tennis, her coach had cautioned her not to do that, but it was a habit she found impossible to break.

  In the far court, Liz bounced up and down on her toes as she waited for the serve. Just as Kiera tossed the ball into the air, Liz set her feet and crouched, leaning forward.

  Kiera’s serve was another solid one. It sprang off the strings of her racquet in a near perfect line and hit inside the centerline, but Liz was ready for it, and she gave the ball a firm return. Jon, at the net, darted for it and, with a light touch, dropped it only a few feet away from the net for the point.

  “Pure luck,” Liz said with a derisive snort as she approached the net, and Alex got set to receive.

  “Pur
e skill’s more like it,” Jon said, smirking.

  “Thirty love,” Kiera said, not wanting them to get started again. She bounced the ball at her feet and spun her racquet to get a grip. When she was ready, she delivered another solid serve. As she watched Alex go for it, she was thinking how peculiar it was that, after that brief episode of whatever had just happened, she seemed to be fine. Whatever it was, it seemed to be gone now.

  She watched as Alex, ready this time, made a solid return. The bright green ball made a thunk sound as it skipped off the court. Jon swung at it and missed completely, but Kiera, honed and ready, planted her feet, cocked her racquet back, ready to swing, but she suddenly froze. In an instant, it was as if everything had stopped. An odd sepia-toned light suffused the court, and she had a brief impression that everything around her was trapped in amber.

  Everything, that is, except the tennis ball.

  It hummed as it flew through the air, getting steadily larger in her vision until it looked like a cannonball coming straight at her. She cringed and tried to swing her racquet or get out of the way, but her body wouldn’t move. The racquet suddenly felt too heavy to hold. If she could have moved her fingers, she would have dropped it.

  The tennis ball loomed in front of her with frightening intensity. At the very last instant, Kiera squealed as she turned her head to one side and ducked. The ball made a loud thwack when it smacked her in the side of the head just above her left ear. A brilliant flash of light exploded across her vision and was replaced an instant later by a shower of white sparks that corkscrewed into the sky like a display of fireworks. A loud sizzling sound filled her head, and everything around her disappeared into a blinding glare as her knees crumpled, and she went down, hard.

  3

  The next thing Kiera remembered, she was listening to voices. At first, they didn’t make much sense.

  “. . . just standing there . . .”

  “. . . never even saw it coming . . .”

  “. . . lucky it didn’t kill her . . .”