One summer she’d sneaked out of her cabin in the middle of the night and gathered up every ball in the equipment shed—volleyballs, soccer, tennis, softballs. It had taken her half a dozen trips to carry them all to the lake and throw them in the water. The counselors had never discovered the culprit. Certainly no one had suspected quiet, brainy Molly Somerville, who’d been named Most Cooperative despite spraying her bangs green.

“I’m a better athlete than Phoebe,” she said.

Kevin shuddered. “The guys are still talking about the last time she played softball at the Stars picnic.”

Molly hadn’t been there, but she could imagine.

He swung into the left lane and said, with an edge, “I wouldn’t think spending a few weeks every summer at some rich-kid’s camp damaged you too much.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Except she never went for a few weeks. She went all summer, every summer, from the time she was six.

When she’d been eleven, there was a measles outbreak and all the campers were sent home. Her father had been furious. He couldn’t find anyone to stay with her, so he’d been forced to take her with him to Vegas, where he’d set her up in a suite separate from his own with a change girl as a baby-sitter, even though Molly kept telling him she was too old for one. During the day the girl watched the soaps, and at night she crossed the hall to sleep with Bert.

They’d been the best two weeks of Molly’s childhood. She’d read the complete works of Mary Stewart, ordered cherry cheesecake from room service, and made friends with the Spanish-speaking maids. Sometimes she’d announce to her sitter that she was going down to the pool, but instead, she’d wander around near the casino until she found a family with a lot of kids. Then she’d stay as close as she could and pretend she belonged to them.

Normally, the memories of her childish attempts to create a family made her smile, but now she felt another prickle of tears and swallowed. “Have you noticed there’s a speed limit?”

“Making you nervous?”

“You should be, but I’m numb from too many years of riding with Dan.” Besides, she didn’t care that much. It shocked her—the realization that she had no interest in the future. She couldn’t even muster the energy to worry about her finances or the fact that her editor at Chik had stopped calling.