He took pictures of children on the playground, chatted up their mothers, handed out his business cards. No one seemed bothered or suspicious of him because he appeared to be friendly and open. He smiled a lot. He wore a baseball cap backward on his head because it gave the message that he was open—as opposed to wearing the bill low over his eyes, which gave the impression of wanting to hide the face.

He made his way back to the tennis courts by way of several other sports. The courts were busy with players in serious combat, casual matches, having lessons. He walked the perimeter, stopping to snap a shot here and there. He would choose an individual, take a face shot first, then zoom in, continuing his study of segments of the athletes’ bodies. He shot both men and women, young and old.

Eventually his lens found a pair of girls having a lesson with a male pro. A tanned girl in a white skirt and a hot-pink top that lifted to show a strip of tanned belly every time she raised her racquet over her head. She had small breasts and an impossibly thick mane of variegated blond hair. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen.

The other girl was taller, dressed in a pair of black shorts that showed off coltish legs, and a black polo shirt worn untucked. She might have been slightly older than the blonde girl. His focus remained on her body for a while. The lines were elegant, lithe, slender, strong. A dancer’s body. And somehow vaguely familiar, he thought.

He lifted his lens a few inches and zoomed in on the girl’s face, and something like a bolt of lightning went through him.

Leslie Lawton.

No. Not Leslie Lawton. The younger sister.

Leah.

Chapter 37

37

Lauren turned into the sports complex, dreading the evening ahead of her. She wanted to pick Leah up and just leave—abandon dinner with Wendy and her mother, abandon Oak Knoll, abandon the last four years of her life.

I want a do-over, she thought, fully aware of how childish that sounded.

Oh, for the luxury of being a child. She couldn’t make a wrong decision if the decision-making process was taken away from her.

But then she thought of Leah, and Leah’s plea that morning: What about me? To have no control of the decisions didn’t change the impact of the consequences.

There was no running from the heart of the torment, at any rate. The tragedies that had changed their lives couldn’t be left behind. The grief and the need for closure would always be in Lauren like a malignant tumor. The only thing that could remove even part of it would be justice.