The lights were still on at the aptly named Hard-core Gym (motto: You’re Not Hard-core Unless You Lift Hard-core). Adam took a quick gander at the parking lot and spotted Kristin Hoy’s car. He hit the speed dial for Thomas’s cell phone—again, no point in calling the home phone; neither boy would ever answer it—and waited. Thomas answered on the third ring and gave his customary distracted and barely audible “Hullo?”

“All okay at home?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“And by nothing, you mean?”

“Playing Call of Duty. I just started.”

Right.

“Homework done?” Adam asked out of habit. It was an oft-repeated parent-child verbal hamster-wheel of a question, never going anywhere, though somehow still mandatory.

“Pretty much.”

He didn’t bother telling him to “pretty much” finish it first. Pointless. Let the kid do it on his own. Let go a little.

“Where’s your brother?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he’s home, right?”

“I guess.”

Brothers. “Just make sure he’s okay. I’ll be home soon.”

“Okay. Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s away,” he said again.

“Where?”

“It’s some teachers’ thing. We can talk about it when I get home, okay?”

The pause was long. “Yeah, okay.”

He parked next to Kristin’s Audi convertible and headed inside. The bloated musclehead behind the desk looked Adam up and down and clearly found him wanting. He had the Cro-Magnon brow. His lips were frozen in a sneer of disdain. He wore some kind of sleeveless unitard. Adam feared the man might call him Brah.

“Help ya?”

“I’m looking for Kristin Hoy.”

“Member?”

“What?”

“You a member?”

“No, I’m a friend. My wife’s a member. Corinne Price.”

He nodded as if that explained everything. Then he asked, “She okay?”

The question surprised Adam. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

He might have shrugged, but the bowling balls flanking his head barely budged. “Big week to miss. Competition next Friday.”

Corinne, he knew, didn’t compete. She was nicely built and all, but there was no way she’d don one of those skimpy suits and start posing. She had, however, attended nationals with Kristin last year.

Musclehead pointed—he actually flexed when he did so—toward a corner in the back of the gym. “Room B.”

Adam pushed through the glass door. Some gyms were quiet. Some featured loud music. And some, like this one, echoed with primordial grunts and the clank of heavy metal weights. All the walls were mirrored, and here, and only here, primping and posing for self-pleasure was not only acceptable but expected. The place reeked of sweat, disinfectant, and what he imagined from the commercials Axe cologne smelled like.

He found room B, knocked lightly, and pushed it open. It looked like a yoga studio with blond wood floors, a balance beam, and, yep, tons of mirrors. A super-toned woman tottered out onto the floor in a bikini and ridiculously high heels.

“Stop,” Kristin shouted.

The woman did so. Kristin strutted over in a skimpy pink bikini and the same ridiculously high heels. There was no totter, no awkwardness, no hesitation. She stalked across the floor as though it owed her something.

“Your smile is weak. You look as though you’ve never been in high heels before.”

“I don’t normally wear them,” the woman said.

“Well, you’re going to have to practice. They will judge you on everything—how you enter, how you exit, how you walk, your poise, your smile, your confidence, your demeanor, your facial expression. You get one chance to make that first impression. You can lose the competition with your very first step. Okay, all of you sit.” Five other super-toned women sat on the floor. Kristin stood in front of them, pacing back and forth. Her muscles coiled and uncoiled with each step.

“You should all still be leaning out,” Kristin said. “Thirty-six hours before competition, most of you will carbo-load. This will prevent your muscles from flattening out and get them to have that natural puff look we’re going for. Right now, you should still be eating ninety percent protein. You all have the specific diet plan, am I right?”

Nods.

“Follow it like a religious scripture. You should all be drinking one and a half gallons of water per day. That’s a minimum. We’ll start scaling that down as we get closer. Only sips the day before Nationals and no water at all on competition day. I have water pills if any of you are still retaining water weight. Any questions?”

One hand went up.

“Yes?”

“Will we rehearse the evening gown competition?”

“We will. Remember, ladies. Most people think this is a bodybuilding competition. It is not. The WBFF is about fitness. You will have your poses and pose-off, just as we’ve been doing. But the judges now are looking for Miss America, Victoria’s Secret, Fashion Week, and yes, MuscleMag all wrapped into one elegant package. Harriet will help you coordinate your evening gowns. Oh, and now let’s go over travel necessities. Please bring with you the following: butt glue for your bikini, tape for the top of your suit, E6000 glue, breast pad petals, blister bandages, shoe glue—we always have last-minute strap disasters—tanner, gloves for your tanner, tan-block cream for those palms and feet bottoms, teeth whitener strips, red-eye drop—”

It was then that she spotted Adam in the mirror. Her face changed all at once. Gone was the taskmaster preparing for the WBFF nationals. Back was the friend and fellow teacher. It was amazing how easily we all slip in and out of roles, Adam thought.

“Work on your starting poses,” Kristin said, her eyes on Adam now. “When you first walk out, you do one front, then one back, then you walk away. That’s it. Okay, Harriet will lead you out. I’ll be right back.”

Kristin headed toward him without pause, again crossing the room in the high heels that made her nearly as tall as he was. “Anything new?” she asked him.

“Not really.”

Kristin led him into the corner. “So what’s up?”

It shouldn’t be awkward talking to a woman standing in ridiculously high heels and sporting a skimpy bikini. But it was. When Adam was eighteen, he spent two weeks in Spain’s Costa del Sol. Many of the women went topless, and Adam had fancied himself too mature to ogle. He didn’t ogle, but he did feel a little awkward. That feeling was coming back to him now.

“I guess you’re preparing for a show,” Adam said.

“Not just any show, but Nationals. If I can be selfish for a moment? Corinne left at a bad time. She’s my travel partner. I know in the scheme of things, this doesn’t seem like much, but this is my first show since turning pro and . . . okay, that’s a dumb thing to care about. But that’s a small part of how I’m feeling. The bigger part, though, is I’m really worried. This isn’t like her.”

“I know,” Adam said. “It’s why I want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

He didn’t know how to do it, so he just dove in. “It’s about her pregnancy two years ago.”

Pay dirt.

His words hit Kristin Hoy like a surprise wave at the beach. Now it was Kristin’s turn to teeter on the ridiculously high heels. “What about it?”

“You look surprised,” he said.

“What?”

“When I mentioned her pregnancy. You looked like you’d seen a ghost or something.”

Her eyes darted everywhere but on him. “I guess I was surprised. I mean, she disappears, and for some reason, you start asking about something that happened two years ago. I don’t see the connection.”

“But you remember her pregnancy?”

“Of course. Why?”

“How did she tell you?”

“About being pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I don’t remember.” But she did. He could tell. Kristin was lying to him. “What’s the difference how she told me?”

“I need you to think. Do you remember anything odd about it?”