Remember When

the plates on the table as Max tapped his fingers and studied her. "I was afraid of that. Or not afraid, really, just resigned. A little short of the quarter share?"
    "About twenty-five carats short."
    "Uh-huh. Well, your client would accept, I'm sure, that the shares might not have been evenly divided. That the portions that are left might be just a little heavy."
    "But that wouldn't be the case, would it?"
    "No. No, I doubt very much that was the case."
    "He pocketed them. Your father."
    "He'd have taken his share out, selected a few of the stones, just as a kind of insurance, then he'd have put them into another container-the pig-and kept the insurance on him. In a money belt or a bag around his neck, even in his pocket. 'Put all your eggs in one basket, Lainie, the handle's going to break. Then all you've got is scrambled eggs.' You want coffee with this?"
    "I want a damn beer. I let him walk."
    "You'd have let him walk anyway." She got the beer, popped the top for him, then slid into his lap. "You'd have taken the diamonds back if you'd known he had them, but you'd have let him walk. Really, nothing's changed. It's just a measly twenty-five carats." She kissed his cheek, then the other, then his mouth. "We're okay, right?"
    When she settled her head on his shoulder, he stroked her hair. "Yeah, we're okay. I might put a boot in your father's ass if I ever see him again, but we're okay."
    "Good."
    He sat, stroking her hair. There were ham sandwiches on the table, soup on the stove. A dog snoozed on the floor. A few million-give or take-in diamonds sparkled in the kitchen light.
    They were okay, Max thought. In fact, they were terrific.
    But they were never going to be boring and normal.

 
    PART TWO
     
    All things change;
    nothing perishes.
    -OVID
     
    Commit the oldest sins
    the newest kind of ways.
    -WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

17
    New York, 2059
    She was dying to get home. Knowing her own house, her own bed, her own things were waiting for her made even the filthy afternoon traffic from the airport a pleasure.
    There were small skirmishes, petty betrayals, outright treachery and bitter combat among the cabs, commuters and tanklike maxibuses. Overhead, the airtrams, blimps and minishuttles strafed the sky. But watching the traffic wars wage made her antsy enough to imagine herself leaping into the front seat to grab the wheel and plunge into the fray, with a great deal more viciousness and enthusiasm than her driver.
    God, she loved New York.
    While her driver crept along the FDR as one of the army of vehicles battling their way into the city, she entertained herself by watching the animated billboards. Some were little stories, and as a writer herself, and the lover of a good tale, Samantha Gannon appreciated that.
    Observe, she thought, the pretty woman lounging poolside at a resort, obviously alone and lonely while couples splash or stroll. She orders a drink, and with the first sip her eyes meet those of a gorgeous man just emerging from the water. Wet muscles, killer grin. An electric moment that dissolves into a moonlight scene where the now happy couple walk hand in hand along the beach.
    Moral? Drink Silby's Rum and open your world to adventure, romance and really good sex.
    It should be so easy.
    But then, for some, it was. For her grandparents there'd been an electric moment. Rum hadn't played a part, at least not in any of the versions she'd heard. But their eyes had met, and something had snapped and sizzled through the bloodstream of fate.
    Since they'd be married for fifty-six years this coming fall, whatever that something had been had done a solid job.
    And because of it, because fate had brought them together, she was sitting in the back of a big, black sedan, heading uptown, heading toward home, home, home, after two weeks traveling on the bumpy, endless roads of a national book tour.
    Without her grandparents, what they'd done, what they'd chosen, there would have been no book.
    No tour. No homecoming. She owed them all of it-well, not the tour, she amended. She could hardly blame them for that.
    She only hoped they were half as proud of her as she was of them.
    Samantha E. Gannon, national best-selling author of Hot Rocks.
    Was that iced or what?
    Hyping the book in fourteen cities-coast to coast-over fifteen days, the interviews, the appearances, the hotels and transport stations had been exhausting.
    And, let's be honest, she told herself, fabulous in its insane way.
    Every morning she'd dragged