Maybe I shouldn't call yet.

No, I told myself. Enough with the stalling.

I picked up the phone and dialed her home. On the fourth ring, the phone was picked up. Adwoman’s voice said, "I'm not home, but at the beep please leave a message."

The beep came too fast. I wasn't ready for it. So I hung up.

Very mature.

My head swam. Twenty years. It had been twenty years. Lucy would be thirty-seven now. I wondered if she was still as beautiful. When I think back on it, she had the kind of looks that would do well with maturity. Some women are like that.

Get your head in the game, Cope.

I was trying. But hearing her voice, sounding exactly the same… it was the aural equivalent of hooking up with your old college roommate: After ten seconds, the years melt away and it's like you're back in the dorm room and nothing has changed. That was how this was. She sounded the same. I was eighteen again.

I took a few deep breaths. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in."

Muse stuck her head in the room. "Did you call her yet?"

"I tried her home number. No answer."

"You probably won't get her now," Muse said. "She's in class."

"And you know this because?"

"Because I'm chief investigator. I don't have to listen to everything you say."

She sat and threw her practical-shoed feet up on the table. She studied my face and didn't speak. I kept quiet too. Finally she said, "Do you want me to leave?"

"Tell me what you got first."

She tried hard not to smile. "She changed her name seventeen years ago. It's Lucy Gold now."

I nodded. "That would have been right after the settlement."

"What settlement? Oh, wait, you guys sued the camp, right?"

"The victims' families."

"And Lucy's father owned the camp."

"Right."

"Nasty?"

"I don't know. I wasn't that involved."

"But you guys won?"

"Sure. It was a summer camp with practically no security." I squirmed when I said that. "The families got Silverstein's biggest asset."

"The camp itself."

"Yep. We sold the land to a developer."

"All of it?"

"There was a provision involving the woods. It's fairly unusable land, so it's held in some kind of public trust. You can't build on it."

"Is the camp still there?"

I shook my head. "The developer tore down the old cabins and built some gated community." "How much did you guys get?" "After lawyer fees, each family ended up with more than eight hundred grand."

Her eyes widened. "Wow."

"Yeah. Losing a child is a great moneymaker."

"I didn't mean-"

I waved her off. "I know. I'm just being an ass."

She didn't argue. "It must have changed things," Muse said.

I didn't answer right away. The money had been held in a joint ac count. My mother took off with a hundred grand. She left the rest for us. Generous of her, I guess. Dad and I moved out of Newark, moved to a decent place in Montclair. I had already gotten a scholarship to Rutgers, but now I set my sights on Columbia Law in New York. I met Jane there.

"Yeah," I said. "It changed things."

"Do you want to know more about your old flame?"

I nodded.

"She went to UCLA. Majored in psychology. She got a graduate degree from USC in the same, another in English from Stanford. I don't have her entire work history yet, but she's currently down the road at Reston U. Started last year. She, uh, she got two DUIs when she lived in California. One in 2001. Another in 2003. Pleaded out both times. Other than that, her record is clean."

I sat there. DUI. That didn't sound like Lucy. Her father, Ira, the head counselor, had been a major stoner-so much so that she'd had no interest in anything that would provide a high. Now she had two DUIs. It was hard to fathom. But of course, the girl I knew was not even of legal drinking age. She had been happy and a little naive and well-adjusted, and her family had money and her father was a seemingly harmless free spirit.

All that had died that night in the woods too.

"Another thing," Muse said. She shifted in the seat, aiming for nonchalance. "Lucy Silverstein, aka Gold, isn't married. I haven't done all the checking yet, but from what I see, she's never been married either."

I didn't know what to make of that. It certainly had no bearing on what was going on now. But it still pierced me. She was such a lively thing, so bright and energetic and so damn easy to love. How could she have remained single all these years? And then there were those DUIs.

"What time does her class end?" I asked.

"Twenty minutes."

"Okay. I'll call her then. Anything else?"

"Wayne Steubens doesn't allow visitors, except for his immediate family and lawyer. But I'm working on it. I got some other coals in the fire, but that's about it for now." "Don't spend too much time on it." "I'm not.

I looked at the clock. Twenty minutes.

"I should probably go," Muse said.

"Yeah."

She stood. "Oh, one more thing."

"What?"

"Do you want to see a picture of her?"

I looked up.

"Reston University has faculty pages. There are pictures of all the professors." She held up a small piece of paper. "I got the URL right here." She didn't wait for my reply. She dropped the address on the table and left me alone.

I had twenty minutes. Why not?

I brought up my default page. I use one with Yahoo where you can choose a lot of your content. I had news, my sports teams, my two favorite comic strips -Doonesbury and FoxTrot – stuff like that. I typed in the Reston University Web site page Muse had given me.

And there she was.

It wasn't Lucy's most flattering photograph. Her smile was tight, her expression grim. She had posed for the picture, but you could see that she really didn't want to. The blond hair was gone. That happens with age, I know, but I had a feeling that it was intentional. The color didn't look right on her. She was older-duh-but as I had predicted, it worked on her. Her face was thinner. The high cheekbones were more pronounced.

And damn if she didn't still look beautiful.

Looking at her face, something long dormant came alive and started twisting in my gut. I didn't need that now. There were enough complications in my life. I didn't need those old feelings resurfacing. I read her short bio, learned nothing. Nowadays students rank classes and professors. You could often find that information online. I did. Lucy was clearly beloved by her students. Her rankings were incredible. I read a few of the student comments. They made the class sound life altering. I smiled and felt a strange sense of pride.

Twenty minutes passed.

I gave it another five, pictured her saying good-bye to students, talking to a few who loitered behind, packing her lessons and sundries in some beat-up faux leather bag.

I picked up my office phone. I buzzed out to Jocelyn.

"Yes?"

"No calls," I said. "No interruptions."

"Okay."

I pressed for an outside line. I dialed Lucy’s cell phone. On the third ring I heard her voice say, "Hello?" My heart leapt into my throat but I managed to say, "Its me, Luce." And then, a few seconds later, I heard her start to cry.