Now You See Her Page 0,5

would be here, Marcy decided. Her daughter had never been very good with formal institutions of any kind. She’d been even less good with money.

Marcy shuddered, remembering the time she’d berated Devon for taking forty dollars from her purse. Such a paltry sum and she’d made such a fuss. You’d have thought Devon had stolen the crown jewels, for God’s sake, the way she’d carried on.

“I was just borrowing it,” Devon had insisted stubbornly. “I was going to pay it back.”

Marcy had protested in turn. “It’s not that. It’s a matter of trust.”

“You’re saying you don’t trust me?”

“I’m saying I don’t like it when you take things without asking.”

“I just borrowed it.”

“Without asking.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was such a big deal.”

“Well, it is a big deal.”

“I apologized, didn’t I? God, what’s your problem?”

What was her problem? Marcy wondered now, her eyelashes so heavy with rain—or was that tears?—that she could barely see the sidewalk in front of her. Why had she made such a nothing incident into such a huge issue? Didn’t all teenage girls occasionally steal money from their mothers’ purses? So what if Devon had been almost twenty-one at the time? She was still a child, still living at home, still under her mother’s protection.

Her mother’s protection. Marcy scoffed silently. Had Devon ever felt protected in her mother’s house?

Had Marcy in hers?

Everything that happened is my fault, Marcy told herself silently, slipping on a patch of slippery pavement and collapsing to the sidewalk like a discarded piece of crumpled paper. Immediately the wetness from the concrete seeped into her trench coat and right through her navy slacks, but she made no move to get up. Serves me right, she was thinking, recalling that awful afternoon when the police had shown up at her door to tell her Devon was dead.

Except she wasn’t dead.

She was here.

Right here, Marcy realized with a start, her head shooting toward a young woman exiting a two-story gray brick building directly across the street. Not only was Devon still alive, she was here in Cork. She was standing right in front of her.

Marcy pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the concerned whispers of several passersby who’d stopped to help her up. Unmindful of the traffic that was coming at her in both directions, she darted across the street, forgetting that cars drove on the opposite side of the road from those in North America and almost colliding with a speeding motor scooter. The driver swore at her, a good Anglo-Saxon four-letter word that exploded up and down the street, drawing the attention of everyone in the vicinity, including Devon, whose head snapped toward the angry expletive.

Except it wasn’t Devon.

Marcy could see immediately that this wasn’t the same young woman she’d been chasing after. This girl was at least three inches taller than Devon, who’d always complained that, at five feet, four and a half inches, she was too short for the current vogue. “Why’d I have to get your legs and not Judith’s?” she’d asked Marcy accusingly, as if such things were in Marcy’s control.

Marcy had sympathized. “I always wished I had her legs, too,” she said, seeking common ground.

“Marcy!” she heard a voice calling faintly in the distance, her name sounding strange, even meaningless, to her ears. “Marcy Taggart,” she heard again, the name expanding like a sponge, gaining weight, becoming more solid, if not more familiar. Someone was suddenly beside her, touching her arm. “Marcy, are you all right?”

A man’s face snapped into focus. He was deeply tanned and his dark hair was graying at the temples. A nice face, Marcy thought, saved from blandness by a pair of unsettlingly blue eyes. Why hadn’t she noticed them before?

“It’s Vic Sorvino,” the man said, his hand lingering on her arm, as if afraid she might bolt again at any second.

“I know who you are,” Marcy said impatiently. “I’m not crazy.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“I didn’t just lose my memory all of a sudden.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was just worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Well, the way you took off …” He paused, glanced up and down the street, as if looking for someone. “I take it you didn’t find her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The girl you went chasing after. Devon, I think you called her.”

“Did you see her?” Marcy demanded. “Did she come back?” Why hadn’t she thought to go back to the pub instead of stumbling down a bunch of blind alleys, chasing uselessly after her own tail?

“No. I