On Thin Ice by Linda Hall Page A

her blue eyes.
    “Your eyes. Such a pretty color. I don’t remember them being that way. Maybe it’s because you wore glasses then.”
    She leaned back from him and laughed. “They’re contact lenses, Alec. You can get them in all different colors. If you get close enough, you can tell they’re contacts.”
    He put one hand on her hair and drew her to him. Their lips found each other as if by instinct.
    The kiss seemed to take both of them by surprise.
    On the way back to the car, he took her hand and said, “I know this is awkward.”
    “But lovely just the same,” she said.
    They held hands as they made their way back to his car in the cold. He wished it could stay like this, just him and Megan, the way it used to be.
    But it wasn’t. It never would be. As he got back in the driver’s seat he realized just how far they were from normalcy.
    He had just kissed the woman he loved, yet a murderer was still out there, a murderer who could be following them at this very moment. He adjusted his mirror and headed back toward Whisper Lake Crossing.
    Why did that dark thought intrude upon his thinking right now? He tried to push it aside, but while he heldMegan’s hand he remembered the line in the back cover of Bryan’s yearbook. Megan will always be mine. Why had he been so quick to say it wasn’t Bryan’s handwriting?
    The truth was that he wasn’t sure.
     
    The rest of the way home Megan thought about that kiss and about Alec. She thought about the almost tentative way his mouth had probed hers. He had called it “awkward.” And it certainly was. It was because she didn’t know what it meant or how she really felt. He had wanted to know if there was a chance for them. She wanted there to be, but she was afraid. When they got back into Alec’s car, they didn’t talk much. It was as if they were both trying to process what had happened back there. They were attracted to each other, that much was for certain, but could she trust him? Could she trust her rapidly beating heart? Could she trust anyone? She didn’t know the answer to that.
    She needed to come to terms with the past. But on cold, lonely nights, her mind would go back to the day that her grandmother fell. Alec and his mother and father had come to the hospital when she had frantically called them. They sat with her and talked with the police about the suspicious fall. But then her grandmother, in her feeble voice, had pointed to Alec’s parents and said, “Your son did this. He pushed me.” Megan had immediately gasped, looking at Alec, her hand on her mouth.
    Instead of saying something like, “That’s not true,” Alec had gotten red in the face, stood up and walked out of the hospital room with not a word to anyone. After a moment of surprise, his parents had followed him.
    Her grandmother quickly corrected herself and said, “Not Alec. The other one. Bryan.” But by this time Megan was alone in the room.
    At the time, it seemed that Alec knew something about her grandmother’s fall, something he wasn’t telling her.
    She looked over at him. Because she had to know she asked, “You never told me in so many words, but do you still think your brother is innocent?”
    It took him a long time to answer, so long that she actually looked away from him and at the white scenery speeding by. His silence said it all. He still didn’t believe his brother had pushed her.
    His answer then surprised her. “I don’t know.” He said each word carefully, clearly. He shook his head slowly and said it again. “I really don’t know. At the time, yes, I thought he was innocent, because I couldn’t imagine why he would do anything to harm your grandmother. She was a lovely lady. It made no sense. But in the years that have passed, I have wondered.” She nodded up at him and swallowed. “I’m being honest with you, Megan.”
    “Does your mother think Bryan is innocent?”
    “She says she does, but there are times when I thinkshe’s saying that