Julia craned her neck to see what song Dorie had chosen. “Right. I’m the birthday princess and you all have to do what I say. So, what are we singing?”

“You’ll see,” Dorie said, slamming the book shut. “When it’s our turn.”

*   *   *

He’d found the house with little difficulty, thanks to the faded EBBTIDE sign by the mailbox. He’d cruised past half a dozen times during the day, but there was a surprising amount of activity, some kind of construction project going on, with cars and trucks coming and going. At one point, he’d even ventured down the driveway, simply following a caravan of pickup trucks full of workers. He’d spotted Maryn’s Volvo, parked off to the side of the house, and smiled to himself. She was still here.

After six, when the workers left for the day, it was easy to pull into the lot next door, and hide his vehicle behind the foundation of a burnt-out old house.

It had been ungodly hot, waiting, but finally, darkness fell, and he could see silhouettes of the women moving around inside the house. So far, he hadn’t spotted Maryn, but it didn’t matter. She was there, he knew that. And he could afford to be patient.

Finally, close to nine o’clock, he saw the lights in the house being switched off, one by one. He got out of his vehicle, crept to the edge of the stack of lumber that had been unloaded only hours earlier, and watched while the women filed out of the decrepit old house and piled into a red van. The other three women were dressed stylishly, as if for a night out, but not her. He smiled, seeing Maryn dressed incongruously in cheap jeans and an oversized T-shirt, with her hair tucked up beneath a long-billed baseball cap. As though that would make her unrecognizable to anybody who knew the real Maryn.

Ebbtide was a ramshackle old wreck of a house, with thick beams, walls of cedar planks, and solid wooden doors. The locks, however, were a different matter. He’d easily jimmied the rusted lock on the kitchen door at the back of the house. Once inside, he’d quickly moved through all the bedrooms to ascertain which one was Maryn’s. He’d cursed silently when he discovered that she, alone among the women, had locked her bedroom door. Not that it had slowed him down much. He’d seen the open window from the beach side of the house, and the old-fashioned catwalk that led to it from another third-floor door. It had been easy enough to find the door to the attic, and the corresponding window. And somebody, it appeared, had recently taken that same route to Maryn’s room, judging by the fresh-looking splinters on the attic access door.

And how convenient, he marveled, that he’d been provided such a neat and convenient escape route—the steel spiral staircase leading directly from Maryn’s room to the ground floor, and the burnt-out skeleton of the house next to Ebbtide, where his vehicle awaited, behind a clump of shrubbery.

From the looks of things, his timing was impeccable. Their departure was imminent. Maryn’s duffle bag was packed. It took him only a moment to find the laptop case, shoved to the back of the shelf in the closet. He sat down on the room’s only chair to wait. He had all the time in the world.

*   *   *

Eleven o’clock came and went. Julia caught Dorie’s eye and glanced meaningfully at her watch. “Hey, Dorie,” she said. “How much longer before our number comes up?”

“Oh,” Dorie said, catching the meaning. “Uh, well, there were a bunch of requests in front of mine.”

Ellis picked up Julia’s drink and took a sip. “What’s the hurry? The party’s just getting started.”

Julia reached over and put her hand to Ellis’s forehead. “Are you hallucinating? I can’t believe you’re not champing at the bit to get home and finish packing. You didn’t even want to come tonight.”

Ellis pushed her hand away. “I changed my mind. Is that a crime?” She turned to Dorie. “Hey, pass me that karaoke thing.”

Dorie rolled her eyes. “Really? You? You’re going to do karaoke? By yourself?”

But Ellis was flipping through the pages of the catalog, pausing only when she came to the next to the last page. She looked up and glanced over at the bar, and she was sure Ty looked away.

“Yep, this is the one,” she said, getting to her feet. She grabbed a wad of bills from her pocketbook and pushed her way through the crowd towards the karaoke mistress.

“Is she drunk?” Madison asked, looking from Dorie to Julia.

“Drunk or in love. Either way, this ain’t the Ellis we know,” Julia said grimly, and Dorie nodded in agreement.

When Ellis got back to the table, she had another drink. As soon as she wasn’t looking, Julia dumped most of the contents of Ellis’s cup into her own.

Two songs later, the emcee called out, “Ellis. Ellis, baby, where you at?”

A moment later, an Ellis they’d never seen before was prancing around the vest-pocket-sized stage, doing her best to channel Cyndi Lauper singing the anthem that had been theirs in parochial school, when they’d prance around Julia’s princess pink bedroom in their Our Lady of Angels Peter Pan blouses and blue-plaid jumpers, pretend microphones in hand, warbling about how “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Despite dissolving into a fit of nervous hysterical laughter halfway through the first verse when she forgot the words, Ellis’s enthusiasm and confidence grew with every beat, so that by the end of the song, seemingly every woman in the club was on her feet, snaking around the dance floor in an impromptu conga line, chanting over and over, “they just wanna, they just wanna-uh-uh-uh…”

Stuck behind the bar, Ty had to scramble on top of an empty bar stool to catch a glimpse of her. When he did, the slow grin spread across his face again. “Attagirl,” he said softly, to nobody in particular.

When Ellis made it back to their table, pink faced and sweat drenched, the three women stood and applauded. Ellis collapsed into her chair. “I did it!”

“You sure did,” Julia agreed, glancing at her watch. “Now we really probably need to get you home.”

“No!” Dorie cried. “We are not leaving here tonight until we all do our group number.” She gave Julia an accusatory look. “You promised.”

“Fine,” Julia said. She plucked a ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook and strode towards the karaoke mistress.

“Think you could move Dorie and friends in the lineup?” she asked, cupping her hands to the woman’s ear. “One of the girls is pregnant, and we need to get her home pretty soon. And it’s our last night at the beach. Our swan song, you might say.”

The karaoke mistress palmed the bill. “No problem,” she said. “One more song, and you guys are on.”

Julia nodded her thanks and went back to the table, nonchalantly glancing in the direction of the bar. To her satisfaction, she saw Ty, deep in conversation with an older, blond woman. He was gesturing angrily at his watch. She was shaking her head, but a moment later, Julia saw Ty head for the front door.

“We’re next,” Julia announced.

But Ellis wasn’t listening. She’d been surreptitiously watching the bar, wondering if Ty would approach the table, maybe try to catch her attention, or even draw her outside to talk. Now though, she saw him scurrying for the front door, and her heart sank. He hadn’t come anywhere near the house all day. As far as Ty was concerned, she thought bitterly, they’d already said their good-byes.

She picked up her neglected drink and knocked back half its watery contents, then turned her attention back to the stage, where a gaggle of drunken chicks were inexpertly grinding away at The Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha.”

And then the karaoke mistress was calling. “Dorie and friends! All the way from Savannah, Georgia. Come on up here, girls, and show ’em how it’s done!”

Madison crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. But Julia Capelli was having none of it.

“Let’s go,” she said, jerking Madison’s chair backwards. “Showtime!”