I read the text. It was short and simple, and it probably would have made perfect sense to Hilary. I found it a bit less enlightening.

Monday night. Same time, same place. I’m promising you the story of the century. Take the precautions we discussed.

P.S. This e-mail will self-encrypt when you close it.

That was it. Or almost it.

At the bottom of the e-mail the sender had included a quote. And I might not have had Luisa’s extensive grounding in political history, but I recognized it anyhow.

Workers of the world unite.

Perhaps I’d been a bit hasty in concluding that Hilary and my Marxist Santa Claus had nothing to do with each other.

18

It was only a few minutes after seven when I opened my eyes, but I was alone when I did, which didn’t surprise me. I’d never been the sort of person who leaped out of bed in the morning. In fact, I was more the sort of person who swatted blindly at the snooze button with one hand while the rest of me slept on, relishing the happy warmth and comfort under the covers. Peter, on the other hand, woke before the alarm had a chance to go off, literally bounding out of bed and into his day. Caro probably did, too, I thought, grumpy.

I was feeling extra sluggish this morning, undoubtedly as a result of the combined effects of caffeine deprivation and whatever was the opposite of a runner’s high. I rolled over a few times, giving my body the opportunity to sink back into sleep, but nothing happened, so I slowly propelled myself into a sitting position and just as slowly into a standing one. Then I extended a foot in the direction of the bathroom.

At which point I fell over.

I lay on the floor like a defective Weeble, cursing Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda, and everybody else who could be blamed for making it seem as if fitness should be a goal for anyone but elite athletes. Peter had said yesterday’s run would be “fun,” but not only was it not fun, the muscles in my legs were now so tight they couldn’t do the flexing they needed to do to walk. I was descended from a long line of wise, if pale, people who fastidiously avoided breaking a sweat, along with eating any vegetable that didn’t come out of a can, and most of them had lived well past the average life expectancy. It seemed as if we could all benefit from emulating their habits. There might even be a best-selling lifestyle manual in it.

I spent a few more minutes on the floor, fantasizing about my new life as a best-selling author of lifestyle manuals while trying to knead the stiffness from my calves. Then I dragged myself up into a standing position again and attempted forward movement. The massage had helped a bit, and if I walked only on my toes, taking mincing baby steps, I was marginally mobile.

The Forrests weren’t the kind of family that expected everyone to be fully dressed at all times, so I minced down the stairs in my robe and pajamas, which were actually an ancient pair of Peter’s pajamas I’d snagged from one of his dresser drawers. There was something cozy about their well-worn oversizedness, and I made a mental note to snag the remaining pairs to take back with me to New York. For all I knew, this trip would be my last chance to raid his adolescent wardrobe and I should make the most of it.

Peter and his parents were sitting in the breakfast room, looking chipper and with plates of traditional breakfast-type food in front of them, just like in a television commercial. I hadn’t realized real people ever ate breakfasts like this on a weekday.

“Is everything okay?” asked Peter after I’d safely lowered my body onto a chair. “We heard a crash. I was about to go up and check on you.”

“I-I just dropped something.” That something was myself, but there was no need for them to know that.

“Rachel, dear, would you like a soda?” asked Susan, proud to have remembered my preferred morning beverage. She probably found mine such a strange choice that remembering it wasn’t much of a challenge.

I wanted a soda so desperately I could chew off my own arm, but I managed to smile and shake my head. “I’ll just have some herbal tea again, thank you.”

Not only did Peter’s family eat breakfast as if they were in a commercial, they made conversation in the morning as if they didn’t feel it was necessary to be fully caffeinated before diving into personal interactions. At least, Peter and Susan made conversation while Charles read the paper. Peter told her about our changed itinerary and the planned field trip to Silicon Valley, although he fibbed and said it was because he wanted to show me around Stanford.

“And we’re going to meet up with Caro and Alex Cutler for tennis,” he added, neglecting to mention that Alex Cutler was most probably a criminal. He was still operating in innocent-until-proven-guilty mode on that front, which only validated my theory that he was exceptionally skilled at deluding himself about his personal relationships. “They both work near Palo Alto and said they could get away for a lunchtime game.”

“That will be fun,” said Susan with enthusiasm, but experience was teaching me that anything a Forrest thought would be fun was likely to be painful and potentially dangerous. She turned to me. “Be careful, dear. Caro has a killer serve. And her backhand is deadly, too.”

“Good to know,” I said, hoping even more intensely we would be able to unmask Alex Cutler as an evildoer before Caro could kill me with either her serve or her backhand. Neither seemed a particularly appealing way to die.

“Is Alex a good player, Peter?” asked Susan.

“I think so. I’ve never played with him before, but he said he plays a lot.” He took a sip of coffee. “I have to admit, I’m hoping it will be good for Alex and Caro to spend some more time together. Maybe they’ll hit it off.”

“Hit it off? You mean romantically?” asked Susan.

Peter nodded. “Sure.”

“Hmm,” said Susan, taking a sip of her own coffee. “I don’t know if I see them together, honey. Do you see them together, Rachel?”

Yet again, she’d caught me with my mouth full. All I could do was give a noncommittal murmur, though that’s all I would have produced even if my mouth had been empty.

“I just don’t know if I see them together,” she repeated.

“It can’t hurt to try, can it?” asked Peter.

“Of course not,” she said, but she sounded doubtful.

I thought I knew why she sounded that way, and it wasn’t because she suspected Alex of abducting my friend. How could she possibly see Caro with Alex when she still hoped Caro would end up with her own normal son?

Peter and I managed to get ourselves washed and dressed and into a hybrid by half past eight. Fighting traffic across the city was almost as difficult as it had been to fight off Susan’s offers of juice, cereal, toast, English muffins, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs and sausage, but it was less stressful because it wasn’t necessary to be polite to the traffic. Of course, Peter being Peter, he was polite anyway. Except he couldn’t stop humming.

“What are you humming?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Whatever my dad had on the stereo last night. I can’t get it out of my head.”

We made a pathetic pair: I still had “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat,” playing on in an endless mental loop and Peter was humming jazz. Caro probably loved jazz, I thought-all normal people did. To me it was the musical equivalent of Camilla Gergen’s voice but less pleasant. And neither Peter’s humming nor Rice-a-Roni were doing much for my mental state. My crankiness had not abated since yesterday; if anything, it was gathering force, and it didn’t help that to my various withdrawal and fitness-induced woes was added a fierce craving for pilaf.