Tommy’s tense face relaxed into a smile as the memory broke through the surface. “Oh yeah. The junior mixed-doubles championship. We won because of her. She was a much better player than I was, completely carried me. That was a fun day,” he said, and then, abruptly, the smile was gone, replaced by a scowl. “It was also a long time ago. Things change.”

“I know you probably think it’s weird that I’m asking you about her. That I’m weird. That I’m curious or morbid, or whatever. But I can’t help myself. I’m just at such a disadvantage here. A living girl I could compete with. At least try to. How am I supposed to fight a dead one?”

For a while Tommy was silent. And then he rubbed his face roughly with the heels of his hands. Sighing, he said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did love her once. But I hated her every bit as much. And it got so ugly at the end, I guess it colored the time before in my mind. And as for that other thing you said, that you’re only here with me because you remind me of her. You couldn’t be more wrong. Okay, yes, I first noticed you because you looked so much like her, but I wanted to be around you because of how different from her you are.”

Now it was Alice’s turn to go silent for a while. And then she said, “You said it got ugly at the end. Ugly in what way?”

“Camilla wasn’t what you thought she was, Alice. She wasn’t what anyone thought she was. Straight-A student, nationally ranked tennis player, volunteer at the YMCA and Meals on Wheels program. Or she was that, but that was only half the story. She also had a dark side. Not that you’d have known it if you’d met her.” His voice growing bitter, “You’d have probably been taken in like the rest, thought she was the best-looking, smartest, kindest, most generous person you’d ever had the privilege to meet. She was so good at sizing people up, telling them what they wanted to hear, showing them what they wanted to see.”

After a beat, Alice said, “How dark was this dark side?”

“Dark. She always had it. It was there when we were kids. She was the first person I knew smoking pot, getting drunk. And she lost her virginity young, like scary young. To a nineteen-year-old.”

“God.”

“I felt so bad for her when she told me about it. I wanted to kill him, but he was already long gone by then.”

“Who was he?”