He shook his head.

“A couple of years ago Sophie was working in her garden, and this puppy came up to her. She didn’t like dogs. Something had happened to her as a kid, I think. Anyway, she shooed him away. Five minutes later, there he is again. Just sitting there. She chased him off again; five minutes later he’s back. That’s why she started calling him Bernie—same as her ex-husband, he was hard to get rid of. He was a husky. He was going to be huge, you could just tell, and he had this enormously fluffy white coat. I mean, he was supposed to be pulling sleds in Alaska, you know? And here he was roasting in Los Angeles.” Laney shook her head.

“Anyway, Sophie finishes, goes inside, makes herself a sandwich. Only, Bernie just climbs up on her porch and flops down in the shade. And Sophie being Sophie, even though she doesn’t like dogs, she goes back out, looks more closely. He doesn’t have a collar on. And he’s got scars, places where the fur is missing or lopsided. He’d been mistreated, or maybe just had to fight, but she can’t let that go. So she opens the door, gives him water and the rest of her sandwich. Lets him fall asleep on her couch.”

“She adopted him?”

Laney laughed. “No, she posted signs looking for his owner. Called her neighbors. But nobody knew the story. He’s a stray. He could be dangerous. They have children. People tell her to call the pound.”

Daniel thought he saw where it was going. “But she won’t. She may not like dogs, but she likes strays.”

“Uh-huh. She couldn’t stand to imagine him rotting in a cage, waiting to be put down. So she puts an ad in the paper. ‘Puppy looking for good home.’ ”

“That’s nice.”

“I’m not finished. She gets all kinds of calls. But somehow she can’t do it, won’t go through with it. Something about just passing him off, it bugged her. So she puts another ad in the paper. ‘Purebred husky, smart, loyal, four hundred dollars.’ ”

“She sold him?”

“Only after she’d gotten three people interested, played them against each other, and raised the price to six hundred.”

In spite of everything, Daniel laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. See, the way Sophie looked at things, if she’d given him away, he would always be a stray. This way he was something special. Plus she used the money to throw a dinner party. BernieFest.”

Daniel smiled, rubbed his eyes. His belly ticked with the approach of another plane. He thought of sitting at Sophie’s table, sipping coffee. Of the way she wouldn’t let him talk. Those photos on the wall, her life in pictures. None of those versions of her earlier self could have imagined what was to come for her. The plane roared overhead.

“Stop it,” she said.

“Huh?” He looked up, surprised.

“You’re blaming yourself.”

“How did you—”

“Because I know you. You’re sitting there thinking it’s your fault.”

“It is my fault.”

“No, you egotistical ass. It’s not. You didn’t hurt her. Bennett did. You didn’t kill her. Bennett did.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And if I really had gone over that cliff, that wouldn’t have been your fault either. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. Bennett came for me, not you.”

“Yeah—”

“But maybe that’s not far enough back. Maybe the jerks I was with in high school are to blame, for making me think that was how boys treated girls. Maybe Marlon Brando is to blame, for teaching girls to like guys who ride motorcycles. Maybe my parents are to blame for conceiving me.”

“Come on. I came up with that stupid plan that got her killed.”

“No. You called her and told her to run. It’s not your fault that he found her. And you still don’t get Bennett. He was going to kill her regardless. That’s how he stays alive. No one knows anything about him. He doesn’t trust anyone. It’s just Bennett, self-contained and all alone. Sophie knew too much.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“How soon after you left the pier did your cell phone ring?”

“I don’t know, maybe two minutes—” He caught her line of thinking.

“You see? She was already gone.” Laney leaned forward. “You’re a good man and a smart guy. But just because you see life as scenes in a story doesn’t mean you’re responsible for how everything works out. You don’t write the goddamn world.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

She slid back on the bed, patted a space beside her. “Come here.”

Daniel set his cup on the windowsill, walked across the room. He kicked off his shoes, then lay down beside her. She leaned back, her head nestling in his chest, her arm across him. His nose was buried in her hair, and he could smell her skin, the clean scent of soap from her bubble bath. She yawned, burrowed closer. They lay still. It should have been wonderful, a sanctuary. Everything he thought he had lost, returned to him. But his brain wouldn’t let him enjoy it. When he closed his eyes, he saw Sophie’s face. When he opened them again, the bare drop ceiling stared hopelessly back.

Into his chest, she said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Daniel stroked her hair, a gesture so familiar he knew he must have done it a thousand times.

“Everything. All of this.”

“It’s not . . . You didn’t know. You were a kid. He’s to blame, not you.”

“I know. But still.” Her head rose and fell with his breath. “What do we do now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If we can figure out where the necklace is—”

“No.” He cracked the word. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we can’t go to the police. But I’m not paying him. Not after what he did to her.”

“But if we don’t, he’ll keep hurting people.”

She was right. They were trapped. Every road led to hell. The only question was how direct a route.

His eyes were dry and raw, and his head throbbed with every beat of his heart. His whole self ached. To have lost and gained and stand poised to lose so much again, all in the space of such a short time. To discover that the distant past could shatter the present. A mistake Laney had made before Daniel had even met her. Before they had started to forge all the memories he had since lost.

Outside the windows, the traffic moved down the freeway, steady and implacable as waves on a beach. A rap star pretending to be an actor pretending to be a gangster aimed false menace down from a bright billboard, while real evil lurked in the shadows, only attacking where they were weak. His own past played hide-andseek, while their future raced toward them like an express train off