B008KQO31S EBOK by Deborah Cooke, Claire Cross Page B

the house.
    Wouldn’t they have been?
    But then, what did he really know of police procedure? Maybe this last half hour would have progressed very differently if he had gone into the house instead of Phil.
    He would have bet good money his brother knew the answers to most if not all of those questions. He should probably visit Sean, demand an explanation and see this resolved.
    But that might be exactly what his brother would be expecting. There was nothing that could be done for Lucia at the moment and He wasn’t inclined to make things easy for his brother, at least not this time.
    Let Sean wait. Let him worry. Let him wonder.
    He had more important things to do. He found himself straining to make out a hulking green silhouette rollicking down the road ahead. Phil’s truck was already indistinguishable from the line of commuters.
    But the hurt in Phil’s voice was going to haunt him for a long, long time, unless he fixed this. She was wrong—they were friends.
    It stung that she thought him guilty of the kind of cheap trick Sean had once pulled on her. But then, it seemed he hadn’t left things as pristine behind himself as he had always thought.
    If he was going to walk away now without leaving some kind of scar behind him, then he had to straighten this out and make sure Phil knew the truth.
    He could only hope that by the time he caught up with her, she would have calmed down enough to at least listen to him.
    It was a long shot, by any accounting.
    * * *
    Once upon a time, in a pragmatic New England town where skepticism held sway and all things unseen had bad PR, a magical transformation took place. That this went unnoticed by most isn’t surprising, but doesn’t make the event any less important to the participants.
    One participant in particular.
    You see, there was a girl in this town, a girl who had never fit in and never failed to disappoint her family, a girl who by the ripe old age of fourteen had decided that things would pretty much stay that way for the rest of her life and that maybe, just maybe she even deserved the things that happened to her.
    Though it was her nature to be as cheerful as a ray of sunshine, this epiphany made her sparkle a little less. She took consolation in simple sugars and starches, not the wisest choice in hormonally rampant teenage years, and she had both the thighs and the pimples to show for it. The other boys and girls taunted her, because she was so trusting that she made an easy mark for their malice and so plump that they never lacked for ammunition.
    They called her Fat Philippa, which hurt, just as they had known it would. She knew that no worldly means could bring about her acceptance, so she did what she could. She pressed four leaf clovers and followed rainbows, she avoided cracks in the sidewalk and tucked a rabbit’s foot into her pocket.
    And one day, just when she might have given up, her efforts bore fruit. On the cusp of her fifteenth birthday, her body was making a metamorphosis of its own, her ample figure developing some dips and curves that showed some promise for the future.
    She was sure that no one noticed—until Sean Sullivan invited her to senior prom.
    Sean was a dashing rogue of a football player, well deserving of the hero’s role in any fairy tale. He was a boy that all the girls whispered about and one who starred in any number of teenage fantasies. He certainly starred in several of our heroine’s, though she would have died if anyone had guessed.
    Yet, as though some otherworldly force drew them together, he had invited her to the prom. Things were coming up roses, her ship was in, the future looked bright. That the prom was to be held on the night of her fifteenth birthday was the perfect guarantee.
    Her mother was even pleased by this social coup. She insisted that our heroine have a proper dress, borrow her pearls, learn to walk in high heels, twist her hair up into an elegant chignon, wear lipstick. For a brief shining moment, she was