“It’s not that interesting anyway. It doesn’t say, ‘We will go to Lawrence and hide beneath the football stadium.’”

I snatched it from her, angry but wanting to see it for myself. It didn’t, in fact, reveal anything useful. Ferring had one of those classically trained actor’s voices, recognizable from the video in the field but richer on this clip. She was acting for August, telling a dramatic tale of her childhood in Kansas. At the end she held out her hands in a pleading gesture, saying, “I know it’s an imposition, but if you could drive me down, I’d like to go soon.”

No wonder August had packed up and taken off with her. The tone, the emphasis, made her sound like Violetta or Mimi collapsing from consumption—just one last dance before the end.

“Where’s Angela?” I asked Bernie when Ferring’s interview had drawn to a close.

“She was afraid of the demerits for missing practice.”

“And you’re not?”

“We don’t practice on Sunday. With my help we can find August before they miss me. You know Uncle Sal would say I should be here.”

That being Mr. Contreras. At least he was in St. Croix, one small blessing.

I smiled grimly. “Instead you’re going back to Chicago tomorrow. I will drive you to the airport, even if it means handcuffing you to the floorboards. But for now I’ve had a long, stressful day. It’s my bedtime. You get the chair.”

Bernie had brought a toothbrush and a nightshirt in her backpack. The armchair opened into a narrow bed. I found a set of sheets on a shelf in the closet and made it up.

Despite my anger and my worries, I fell deeply asleep. My dreams were turbulent, though: Bernie’s arrival added to my worries.

My hopes that she’d be back in Chicago by Sunday night were undone by her father’s phone call Sunday morning. He spoke to us on a conference hookup—he wanted to make sure I knew exactly what he was saying to his daughter. He was as furious as Arlette that Bernie had come down from Chicago without permission from her coach or from the school. He wanted to pick her up and take her back home himself to make sure she apologized to her professors and her coaches.

“Otherwise she will do what she has done since she was three years old: try to charm her way out of trouble. But I cannot be in Kansas before Tuesday, Vic, so I must ask you to shoulder this burden for another forty-eight hours. And, Bernadine, you are in deep disgrace. You have known since you first put on skates that you do what your coach says, hein? If this happens a second time, you will leave university and return to Quebec. Comprise?”