Midnight

mud. Pigs sleep in the mud. You must say you roughed it or camped out, but never that you slept in the mud. Even unpleasant experiences can be worthwhile if one keeps one's sense of dignity and style."
    "Yes, Mom, I know. My point was that Cove Lodge isn't great, but it's better than sleeping in the mud."
    "Camping out."
    "Better than camping out," Tessa said.
    Both were silent a moment. Then Marion said, "Dammit, I should be there with you."
    "Mom, you've got a broken leg."
    "I should have gone to Moonlight Cove as soon as I heard they'd found poor Janice. If I'd been there, they wouldn't have cremated the body. By God, they wouldn't! I'd have stopped that, and I'd have arranged another autopsy by trustworthy authorities, and now there'd be no need for you to get involved. I'm so angry with myself."
    Tessa slumped back in the pillows and sighed.
    "Mom, don't do this to yourself. You broke your leg three days before Janice's body was even found. You can't travel easily now, and you couldn't travel easily then, either. It's not your fault."
    "There was a time when a broken leg couldn't have stopped me."
    "You're not twenty any more, Mom."
    "Yes, I know, I'm old," Marion said miserably.
    "Sometimes I think about how old I am, and it's scary."
    "You're only sixty-four, you look not a day past fifty, and you broke your leg skydiving, for God's sake, so you're not going to get any pity from me."
    "Comfort and pity is what an elderly parent expects from a good daughter. If you caught me calling you elderly or treating you with pity, you'd kick my ass halfway to China."
    "The chance to kick a daughter's ass now and then is one of the pleasures of a mother's later life, Teejay. Damn, where did that tree come from, anyway? I've been skydiving for thirty years, and I've never landed in a tree before, and I swear it wasn't there when I looked down on the final approach to pick my drop spot."
    Though a certain amount of the Lockland family's unshakable optimism and spirited approach to life came from Tessa's late father, Bernard, a large measure of it—with a full measure of indomitability as well—flowed from Marion's gene pool.
    Tessa said, "Tonight, just after I got here, I went down to the beach where they found her."
    "This must be awful for you, Teejay."
    "I can handle it."
    When Janice died, Tessa had been traveling in rural regions of Afghanistan, researching the effects of genocidal war on the Afghan people and culture, intending to script a documentary on that subject. Her mother had been unable to get word of Janice's death to Tessa until two weeks after the body washed upon the shore of Moonlight Cove. Five days ago, on October 8, she had flown out of Afghanistan with a sense of having failed her sister somehow. Her load of guilt was at least as heavy as her mother's, but what she said was true: She could handle it.
    "You were right, Mom. The official version stinks."
    "What've you learned?"
    "Nothing yet. But I stood right there on the sand, where she was supposed to have taken the Valium, where she set out on her last swim, where they found her two days later, and I knew their whole story was garbage. I feel it in my guts, Mom. And one way or another, I'm going to find out what really happened."
    "You've got to be careful, dear."
    "I will."
    "If Janice was … murdered—"
    "I'll be okay."
    "And if, as we suspect, the police up there can't be trusted …"
    "Mom, I'm five feet four, blond, blue-eyed, perky, and about as dangerous-looking as a Disney chipmunk. All my life I've had to work against my looks to be taken seriously. Women all want to mother me or be my big sister, and men either want to be my father or get me in the sack, but damned few can see immediately through the exterior and realize I've got a brain that is, I strongly believe, bigger than that of a gnat; usually they have to know me a while. So I'll just use my appearance instead of struggling against it. No one here will see me as a threat."
    "You'll stay in touch?"
    "Of course."
    "If you feel you're in danger, just leave, get out."
    "I'll be all right."
    "Promise you won't stay if it's dangerous," Marion persisted.
    "I promise. But you have to promise me that you won't jump out of any more airplanes for a while."
    "I'm too old for that, dear. I'm elderly now. Ancient. I'm going to have to pursue interests suitable to my age. I've always wanted to learn to water-ski, for instance, and that documentary you did on dirt-bike racing made those