Everafter Page 3

  “I’m sorry, Will, for all the pain I’ve caused you.”

  “I thought that I had been duped—like I really didn’t know you, like I had fallen for someone who didn’t really exist. But the Ivy I knew is back now.” He smiled. “You didn’t change after all.”

  Ivy felt a lump in her throat. “Friends?”

  He took her hand in his, then lay his other hand on top. “Friends happily everafter.”

  LATER THAT DAY, WITH AUNT CINDY AND BETH’S mother headed to Provincetown and herself assigned to preparing late afternoon refreshments for guests, Ivy had the perfect opportunity to copy the key to the Steadmans’ house. Alone in the kitchen, she lifted it from the pegboard.

  “Hey, Ivy.”

  She quickly turned around, shoving the key into her back pocket.

  “Hey, Kels. Dhanya,” she answered as they entered the kitchen, surprised that they were still hanging around. “What’s up?”

  Kelsey flopped in a kitchen chair. “Bore-dom. I am totally, horribly bored!”

  Observing the tins and plates Ivy had laid out on the kitchen island, Dhanya opened them and began arranging the tea cookies. “There’s a seventy percent chance of storms, but Kelsey doesn’t want to shop,” she said with a shrug.

  “Where’s Bryan?” Ivy asked.

  “He went back to the rink—has to work this afternoon and tonight. His uncle pushes him too hard,” Kelsey complained. “He’s always working.”

  “Or saying he has to,” Dhanya suggested quietly.

  Kelsey reached for a cookie. “I’d know if he was cheating.”

  “Want to go shopping, Ivy?” Dhanya asked.

  But an idea was forming in Ivy’s mind. “What if we surprise Bryan?” she proposed. “Why don’t we go skating this evening?”

  Ivy figured that, juggling both his job and Kelsey, Bryan would be kept busy and she’d have an opportunity to check out the photographs hanging at the rink for a glimpse of the cufflink.

  “Now, that’s an idea!” Kelsey said

  “Mind if I invite Chase?” Dhanya asked.

  “We should invite everybody,” Ivy replied. The more distractions for Bryan, the easier her sleuthing job would be. “Make it a party,” she advised Kelsey. “You don’t want him to think you’re desperate to see him.”

  Kelsey grinned. “Really, Ivy, you know more about dating than you let on.”

  When tea was over Ivy drove to a shopping area, where she made a copy of the key to the Steadmans’ house, then purchased with cash two no-contract phones. With the GPS turned off and no account traceable, communication between her and Tristan would be more secure.

  Just before eight, Chase picked up Dhanya and Kelsey, and Will and Beth rode with Ivy to the rink. Max caught up with them in the parking lot. Bryan saw them as soon as they walked through the entrance. “Hey! What a nice surprise!”

  “We would have invited you,” Kelsey told him, “but you were working.”

  He gave her a bemused smile. Kelsey, dressed in skin-tight biking shorts and a workout top with a plunging neckline, was obviously asking for attention.

  “It was Ivy’s idea,” she added.

  Bryan’s smile faded. “Really,” he said to Ivy. “I didn’t realize you were a big fan of skating.”

  “I’m sure I told you—last winter Beth and I skated every weekend.”

  His eyes narrowed ever so slightly; he was suspicious and would be watching her.

  “Beats jogging,” Beth added.

  He flashed Beth a smile. “Beth, glad you’re back! In your honor, free passes!” He went to the counter and grabbed tickets for all of them, including other skaters who were entering at the same time, making a show of it.

  Beth blushed.

  “Come on, everybody, get your skates.” He herded them to the rental desk, back in his old role of boisterous camp counselor, the kind of guy liked by team members, little hockey campers, parents, frat brothers. . . .

  To Ivy, Bryan was more frightening than Gregory, when Gregory was alive. Her stepbrother had never pretended to like anyone but a chosen few. Bryan was everybody’s pal, and could turn on you without notice.

  “Hey, Chase, you’ve got your manly look going tonight!” Bryan teased as they exchanged their shoes and sandals for skates.

  Will grinned, but Chase didn’t appear to appreciate the remark, despite the fact that his ruggedly handsome look—unshaven face plus uncombed head of dark curls—must have been deliberate. He was hanging back with Dhanya, and looked as if he had come only because she had wanted him to.

  Max, who owned his skates and was sitting on a bench lacing them, looked up. Ivy caught the wistful look on his face as he watched Dhanya smile and touch Chase’s rough cheek.

  Max’s slight build and monochrome coloring—light brown hair, light brown eyes, and year-round tan—made him the physical antithesis of Chase. But, as always, Ivy found attractive the people she liked and had begun to see the appeal in his boyish smile and the intriguing, almost amber depths of his eyes.

  “Maxie, you’ve got your usual look going,” Bryan joked.

  Max responded with a shrug and a smile. Ivy wondered if Max had any idea what his good friend was capable of. No way, she thought.

  Her rental skates laced, she stood up, eager to get to the hallway leading to the rink. She remembered from their last time here that there were photos on the walls of the passageway as well as in the snack bar. But she remained where she was, shifting her weight from skate to skate, not wanting Bryan to notice her perusing the photos.

  While the others were still lacing up, Bryan’s uncle emerged from the hallway.

  “Hey, looks like the party’s at my house tonight!” he said in the same loud, laughing voice as his nephew. “Grab your skates, Bryan. You’ve earned it.”

  Bryan gave his uncle a salute and headed off. As soon as he and Uncle Pat were out of sight, Ivy started toward the hallway.

  Most of the photos were of teams, rows of identical-looking kids in hockey helmets, with the team name and year printed at the bottom. But there were a few additional pictures. She recognized Uncle Pat, receiving some kind of award, standing in front of a banner that said CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. There was a black-and-white photo of him with a young Ted Kennedy, and a color one with Mitt Romney.

  “Well, I’m impressed,” Chase said sarcastically, joining Ivy at the wall of pictures.

  Ivy pointed. “Who’s that?”

  “Tom Brady. Patriots quarterback.”

  “And this guy?”

  “Wayne Gretzky, I think. Hockey megastar.”

  Dhanya walked toward them. “Wow,” she said. “Bryan’s uncle is friends with a lot of famous people!”

  “He’s been photographed with them,” Chase corrected.

  “Hey, what’s everybody looking at?” Bryan had returned, skates in hand.

  “Your family’s fabulous connections,” Chase said.

  Bryan laughed. “That’s my uncle for you, hanging out with the rich and powerful. Actually, he’s done a lot of fund-raisers for the community.”

  As the group moved on, Ivy hung back, her eyes drawn to a photo at the end of the hall. Two kids, seven or eight years old, wearing oversize hockey shirts and Santa caps, stood on ice skates, grinning at the camera, their arms around each other. Little Bryan and Luke, long ago, probably during a Christmas vacation.

  “Recognize him?” Bryan’s voice sounded close to her ear.

  Ivy glanced sideways. The others had gone on. “How could you have turned on your best friend?”

  “Easy,” Bryan said. “Luke wasn’t going anywhere. But I was, Ivy, and still am. Tragic, isn’t it?” he added, then laughed in the same deceptively easygoing way he had laughed about his uncle’s connections. It chilled her to the heart.

  “Want to be my skating partner?” he asked.

  “You’ve got one waiting,” she replied, with a nod toward Kelsey, who had turned back, looking for Bryan.

  “Oh. Her.” He smiled
at Ivy, then moved on.

  Ivy reluctantly followed, promising herself she’d return to the photos as soon as she could sneak away. For a while she skated with Max. Each time she banked the curve at one end of the oblong rink, she stole a glance at the snack bar, wishing her friends would quickly get thirsty so she’d have an excuse to check out the photos. There were dividers between the concessions and the risers that surrounded the rink, but the food area was still visible, and Bryan would be watching if she left the ice alone.

  At the moment, he was skating with Kelsey and a little girl. The child, wearing a hockey camp T-shirt and helmet, her braids flying behind her, was grinning from ear to ear.

  Max followed Ivy’s eyes. “The kids love Bryan. He’s a great coach. My dad says he’d make a great salesman.”

  Ivy moved a stride ahead of Max and turned to skate backward, facing him. In her search for someone who may have seen something without realizing its importance, Max was a good place to begin. “When did you guys first become friends?” she asked.

  “In college.”

  “Not till then?”

  “It was during hockey season, actually, a party after a big game. It kind of surprised me that Bryan would hang with me—you know, him being a star on campus.”

  It didn’t surprise Ivy. Bryan would like a rich friend with expensive toys—like a boat.

  Max smiled. “Then when we found out he was working just ten miles from my house every summer, it was awesome!”

  Ivy nodded. “I guess so! You liked the beach. You both were boaters.” She continued to skate backward, observing Max’s face.

  “Well, Bryan didn’t know much about boating, but he really liked it.”

  “Yeah?” Ivy said. Max allowed Bryan to drive his cars. Would he hand over the key to a boat? Probably.

  “We started coming down weekends in May to putter around.”

  At what point, Ivy wondered, had Bryan formed his plan to kill Luke and dump him in the ocean? And how successful had he been at washing away every bit of evidence? Maybe, if he was in a hurry—

  Ivy saw Bryan coming up behind Max, staring hard at her. She turned to skate side by side with Max, so their conversation wouldn’t look like an interrogation.

  “Would you take me out in your boat?” she asked.

  “Sure. Which one?”

  She hesitated. “The powerboat.”

  “That’d be great.”

  They skated a few more loops together, then Ivy saw Dhanya and Chase leave the ice, and hurried to join them. “Hey, guys.” She dropped down on the lowest bench of the riser. “Hungry?”

  Dhanya glanced at Chase. “Maybe food would help. . . . He’s not feeling so good,” she told Ivy. “The lights are bothering him.”

  Ivy glanced up at the rink lights, then studied Chase’s face.

  He shielded his eyes with his hand. “Maybe food would help, if it’s not all-American greasy stuff.”

  “I doubt it’s tofu and green tea, but there might be something plain, like a soft pretzel,” Ivy said, and led the way.

  The concession area had wooden tables and chairs painted in bright orange and blue, a cheerful contrast to the warehouse gray of the rink. The mosaic of framed photos, hanging on facing walls, began with black-and-white and changed over to color. While Dhanya and Chase surveyed his options, Ivy checked out the pictures, starting with what appeared to be the most recent ones. In addition to the posed team pictures, there were action shots, and Ivy recognized Bryan in several of them in which he appeared to be teaching younger players.

  Her heart skipped a beat: Bryan in a sport coat. She pushed a chair out of the way to get closer to the photo.

  No use—she couldn’t see his shirt cuff. It looked like a ceremony in which he and his uncle were giving out trophies to kids.

  There was another photo of Bryan and Luke, which must have been taken in high school. Ivy swallowed hard. It was strange to see a face she now thought of as Tristan’s staring back at her, looking like a relaxed and cocky hockey player.

  “Are you stuck on him or me?” Bryan asked in a quiet voice.

  Ivy jumped. “Him, of course. When was this taken?”

  “Senior year, just before we won the city championship. Just before Luke dropped out of school.”

  “Did he? That’s too bad,” Ivy said.

  “Less than three months till graduation, and Luke dropped out. He didn’t care about anything except hockey and Corinne—and me,” Bryan added, grinning. “Luke cared about me.”

  Ivy wanted to slap him. She hated Bryan’s reckless indifference. And she was afraid of it. There was no appealing for fairness, much less mercy, when a person was devoid of feelings for others.

  To Ivy’s relief, Kelsey was coming toward them with two tall cones, and Will and Beth had just taken a break. After excusing herself, Ivy joined them for ice cream, then returned to the rink.

  “C’mon, Ivy. Like we used to,” Beth invited her. They moved around the ice arm in arm, in perfect rhythm, as they had last winter. Beth sang with the canned music; Ivy provided harmony.

  As they skated, Ivy kept looking around, trying to figure out the layout of the building. She saw signs for the men’s and women’s lockers and doors to other rooms that appeared to be used for maintenance and storage. Somewhere Uncle Pat had to have an office. It was her last hope for an incriminating picture: a shrine of family photos.

  Will joined them, and they skated three across with Ivy in the middle. After several laps, Ivy let go of their hands. “Catch up with you later,” she said. When the two of them didn’t close the gap between them, Ivy put Beth’s hand in Will’s, then skated off.

  Uncle Pat had put on his “date music,” and out of the corner of her eye, Ivy had seen Bryan and Kelsey step onto the ice at the far end of the rink. Ivy made a beeline for the locker room. Inside a bathroom stall, she undid one skate, then slipped its lace under the blade of her other, rubbing back and forth until it broke. Now she had an excuse for padding around in her socks and, if necessary, pretending to be lost on her way to the rental desk. Between the food and lobby areas, she found the door she wanted, one with a plaque that read PATRICK CAVANAUGH, OWNER, MANAGER, THE BOSS, AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!

  The office was lit and the door partway open. She listened intently for a moment, then nudged it. There was no response from within. After peeking around the door, she slipped inside.

  Just as she had hoped! Sports photos, family photos, and framed clippings from newspapers.

  “Looking for something?”

  Ivy froze, then turned slowly to face Bryan.

  “Oh! Mr. Cavanaugh!”

  “That’s what it says on the door.”

  Ivy nodded. “You sound just like Bryan. I’m Ivy, a friend of Bryan’s.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Ivy held up the skates and the broken lace.

  He raised an eyebrow. “The rental shop’s that way,” he said, pointing.

  “I know.” Ivy had grown alarmingly good at lying, and one of the tricks she had learned was to tell as much truth as possible in a lie. “I shouldn’t have come in, but I wanted to look at your photographs. I saw some in the snack bar. You have a few really good ones of Bryan coaching.”

  The man smiled. She had hit the target, an uncle’s extreme pride in his talented nephew. “He’s great with those kids. He could make a living coaching, if he wasn’t so damn good at it himself.”

  “Bryan said his mom was a player.”

  Uncle Pat chuckled. “Yeah, I bet he told you she was better than me and my brothers.”

  “Was she?”

  “Yeah.” His laughter boomed. “Here she is,” he said, pointing to a photo, which allowed Ivy to move farther into the room.

  Ivy grinned: sturdily built, Bryan’s mother looked like him with a ribbon in his hair. Next to her photo was a newspaper clipping, yellowed with age, the photo showing a much younger, slimmer Uncle Pat, and the headline announcing ANOTHER CAVANAUGH LEAD
S TEAM TO CHAMPIONSHIP. Buying time, Ivy stopped to read the article, and when she heard Bryan’s uncle move toward his desk, she quickly shifted her eyes to scan the wall of photos. There it was! A picture of Bryan in a tux, accepting a trophy. From where she stood, she couldn’t see enough to tell if a cufflink was showing. She dragged her eyes back to the old article about Uncle Pat.

  “It’s kind of awesome,” she said, “to hand down a sport in a family. It says in this article your dad was a great goalie. Is he still around to see Bryan play?”

  “No, but he saw him as a youngster. You kind of interested in Bryan?”

  Uncle Pat had just handed her the excuse she needed. She forced herself to gush. “I’d love to see him play!”

  “Bryan gets tickets from the university for the home games. You should ask him.”

  “Maybe I will,” Ivy said, feigning a shy smile. She moved along the wall toward her goal. “That’s a good picture of him. What award is he getting?” She peered closely at the photo. With his elbows bent and his hands grasping the trophy, Bryan’s cufflink was clearly visible. When enlarged, would it provide sufficient evidence? She almost gasped when she saw the familiar date written on the photo’s mat: the day of the hit-and-run.

  “He was a finalist in the Northeast Interscholastic Athletic Association.”

  NIAA, Ivy said to herself over and over, memorizing it.

  “To get that far he had to be voted Providence’s High School Player of the Year—not just among hockey players, but all athletes.”

  “Awesome!” She read the white script in the bottom corner of the photo: D. L. Pabst, she repeated to herself—the professional photographer, the person who would have the electronic file.

  “There must be a lot of pressure on Bryan.”

  “Well, if anybody can handle it, he can.” Uncle Pat looked at her thoughtfully. “You know, you should really be having this conversation with Bryan. Most guys are flattered by a pretty girl’s interest.”

  Ivy tried to look sweet and wistful. “The thing is, he’s my roommate’s boyfriend. Please—please, don’t tell him I asked about him.”

  Uncle Pat winked. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thanks for the photo tour.”