River’s End

was beautiful.”
    “I don’t mean how she looked.” Her voice snapped out, surprising him into staring.
    “I mean how she was. Was she a good actress?”
    “Sure. Really good. She made you believe. I guess that’s what it’s all about.”
    Olivia’s shoulders relaxed. “Yes.” She nodded. “She left here because she wanted to act. I just wanted to know if she was good. ‘She made you believe.’ “ Olivia murmured it, then tucked that single statement into her heart. “Your father ... he came here because I asked him to. He’s a great man. You should know that. You have parents who care about things, about people. You should never forget that.”
    She got to her feet. “I’ll go get them so they can see the beavers before we head back.”
    Noah sat where he was. He hadn’t asked her the questions in his head, but she’d answered one of them. How did it feel to be the daughter of someone famous who’d died in a violent way.
    It felt lousy. Just lousy.

 
     
    Noah
     
    It takes two to speak the truth —
    one to speak, and another to hear.
    — Henry David Thoreau

 
    Nine
     
    Washington State University, 1993
    There was nothing to be nervous about. Noah reminded himself of that as he checked the address of the trim two-story house. He’d been planning this trip, this connection for a long time. And that, he supposed as he parked his rental car at the curb in the quiet tree-lined neighborhood, was exactly why he was nervous. Maybe he sensed his life could change today, that seeing Olivia MacBride again could alter the course he was on. He was willing to take that new direction. There was no gain without risk, after all. That’s where the damp palms and jumpy belly came from.
    It was nothing personal.
    He combed back his hair by using the fingers of his hands in two quick rakes. He’d thought about getting a trim before coming here, but hell, he was on vacation. More or less.
    Two weeks away from the newspaper, where his struggle to make a name for himself as a crime reporter wasn’t as satisfying as he’d thought it would be. Politics, print space, editors and advertising concerns got in the way of stories he wanted to tell. And he wanted to tell them his way.
    That was why he was here. To write the one story he’d never been able to forget, and to tell it his way.
    Julie MacBride’s murder.
    One of the keys to it lived on the second floor of this pretty house that had been converted into four apartments. They and others like it had been designed to accommodate the overflow from the college campus. For those who could afford separate housing, he thought. Who could pay the price for privacy. And who wanted it badly enough—who didn’t look for the pace and companionship, the bursts of energy in college life.
    Personally, he’d loved his years on campus at UCLA. Maybe the first semester had been mostly a blur of parties, girls and drunken late-night philosophical discussions only the young could understand. But he’d buckled down after that. He’d wanted his degree in journalism. And his parents would have killed him if he’d washed out.
    Those two incentives had worked for him in equal measure.
    And what, he wondered, was Olivia’s incentive?
    If after nearly three years on the job he’d learned he wasn’t a reporter at heart, he was still a good one. He’d done his research. He knew Olivia MacBride was majoring in natural resource science, that her grades were a straight four point oh. He knew she’d spent one year, her freshman year, on campus in a dorm. And that she’d moved out and into her own apartment the following fall.
    He knew she belonged to no clubs or sororities and was monitoring two extra classes while shouldering an eighteen-credit load during her spring semester. That told him she was focused, dedicated and probably a little more than obsessive about her studies.
    But there were things he couldn’t research through computers, through transcripts. It didn’t tell him what she wanted, what she hoped for.
    What she felt about her parents.
    To know all that, he needed to know her. To write the book that fermented in the back of his heart and his mind, he had to get inside her head. The two images of her that burned brightest in his mind were of the child’s tear-stained face and the young girl’s solemn eyes. As he walked into the house, noted the hallway cutting the space precisely in two, he wondered what he would see now.
    He climbed the steps, noted the