Long Lost - By Harlan Coben Page 0,20

you something now, okay? But I want you to promise me something first."

"What?"

"Promise me you won't try to comfort me," she said.

"I'm not following."

"I know you. You'll hear this story and you'll want to reach out. You'll want to hug me or hold me or say the right thing because that's the way you are. Don't. Whatever you do, it will be the wrong move."

"Okay," I said.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

She cringed even deeper into the corner. The heck with after-I wanted to hold her now.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"Yeah, I do. I'm just not sure how."

I said nothing.

"I met Rick during my freshman year at Wesleyan. I came in from Shady Hills, Indiana, and I was the perfect cliche-the prom queen dating the quarterback, most likely to succeed, sweet as sugar. I was that annoying, pretty girl who studied too hard and got all anxious she was going to fail and then she finishes the test early and starts putting those reinforcements in her notebook. You remember those little white things-looked like flat peppermint Life Savers?"

I couldn't help but smile. "Yes."

"I was also that pretty girl who wanted everyone to dig beneath the surface to see I was more than just pretty-but the only reason you'd want to dig was because I was pretty. You know the deal."

I did. To some this might sound immodest. It wasn't. It was honest. Like Paris, Terese was not blind to her looks, nor would she pretend otherwise.

"So I dyed my blond hair dark so I would look smarter and went to this small liberal arts college in the Northeast. I arrived, like so many girls, with my chastity belt firmly attached and only my high school quarterback had the key. He and I were going to be the exception-we were going to make a long-distance relationship last."

I remembered those girls from my Duke days too.

"How long do you think that lasted?" she asked me.

"Two months?"

"More like one. I met Rick. He was just this whirlwind. So smart and funny and sexy in a way I had never seen before. He was the campus radical, complete with the curly hair, the piercing blue eyes, and the beard that scratched when I kissed him..."

Her voice drifted off.

"I can't believe he's dead. This is going to sound corny, but Rick was such a special soul. He was genuinely kind. He believed in justice and humanity. And someone killed him. Someone intentionally ended his life."

I said nothing.

"I'm stalling," she said.

"No rush."

"Yeah, there is. I need to get this over with. If I slow down, I'll stop and I'll fall apart and you'll never get it out of me. Berleand, he probably knows this already. It's why he let me go. So let me give you the abridged version. Rick and I graduated, we got married, we worked as reporters. Eventually we ended up at CNN, me in front of the camera, Rick behind it. I told you that part already. At some stage we wanted to start a family. Or at least I did. Rick, I think, was more uncertain-or maybe he sensed what was coming."

Terese moved toward the window, gently pushed the curtain to the side, and looked out. I moved a foot closer to her. I don't know why. I just somehow needed to make that gesture.

"We had fertility problems. It's not uncommon, I'm told. Many couples have them. But when you're in the throes of it, it seems as though every woman you meet is pregnant. Fertility is also one of those problems that grows exponentially with time. Every woman I met was a mother, and every mother was happy and fulfilled and it all seemed to come so naturally. I started avoiding friends. My marriage suffered. Sex became only about procreation. You become so single-minded. I remember I did a story on unwed mothers in Harlem, these sixteen-year-old girls getting pregnant so easily, and I started to hate them because, really, was that cosmically fair?"

Her back was to me. I sat on the corner of the bed. I wanted to see her face, just part of it anyway. From my new vantage point, I was getting a sliver, maybe quarter-moon view.

"I'm still stalling," she said.

"I'm here."

"Maybe I'm not stalling. Maybe I need to tell it this way."

"Okay."

"We saw doctors. We tried everything. It was all pretty horrible. I was shot up with Pergonal and hormones and Lord knows what. It took us three years, but finally we conceived-what everyone called a