“Fortunately for us, Peter Cohen doesn’t know that. Also, he only thinks about himself, so his memory for other people isn’t so awfully good. Otherwise we’d have some explaining to do.”

Richard laughed. “Come here, sis,” he said.

The dry, shuffly sound of bare feet crossing a hardwood floor, then the wet, smacking sound of two mouths kissing. For a moment or two, Alice listened in fascination and disgust. Then she turned, continued on her way back to her room. Alhough she didn’t bother to be quiet anymore; she doubted either her mom or Richard heard her.

• • •

Alice had a full two and a half hours before breakfast was served. Longer, probably, considering how doubtful it was that her mom and Richard would actually be making an appearance at the table this morning. She wasn’t able to take advantage of the extra time, though, cop a few much-needed Zs. She wasn’t able to cop even a Z. She was too wired for sleep, her mind going a million miles a minute. Just before her alarm was set to sound off, she hit the switch. Then she streaked across the hall and into her sister’s room, jumped into the bed.

Charlie turned to her sleepily, cracked one eye. “Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you awake?”

“Not by choice.”

“You have to be up, anyway. Breakfast is in ten minutes. We need to talk.”

Charlie groaned. “This second?”

“Yeah, this second.” Alice shook Charlie’s arm when she saw Charlie had let her lids drop again. “Hey, don’t go back to sleep, hey! There’s something I need to tell you.”

“If it’s not about what happened on the Buffy episode I missed last night, I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s about mom and Richard. I heard them talking in their bedroom.”

“And how did you do that? Put a drinking glass to the wall, press your ear to it?”

“Just, listen, okay?” Alice said. Then she gave a full recounting of the conversation, repeated it word for word. Or as close to word for word as memory would allow.

By the time she’d finished, Charlie was sitting up, her back against the headboard. She didn’t look sleepy anymore. “This just happened?”

“No, not just. A little bit ago. Around dawn.”

“What were you doing lurking in the hall at dawn?” Charlie said, the look in her eyes somewhere between intrigued and suspicious.