Snapshots. Pamela Browning

How until recently the future had always seemed just around the corner, bright and shining as the sun.

      If Rick had learned anything in his thirty-two years, it was that life had a way of rearing up in your face or skidding along in unexpected twists and turns, like now. And the worst of it was that you couldn’t go back and change any of it afterward.

      Chapter 2: Rick

      2004

      After Martine’s accident, Trista and Rick alternated shifts at the hospital, and Rick was thankful that Trista could stay on in Miami to help him out. They didn’t see each other often, mostly brief hellos and goodbyes as one left Martine’s bedside and the other arrived.

      Though Martine was more alert by the third day after the accident, she didn’t talk to him much. The nurses told him that she needed her rest while her body healed. Rick suspected that Martine was more forthcoming with Trista, and he considered whether she might be filling her sister in on their personal situation during the long hours when Trista sat at her bedside. Even if that was what was going on, he knew that Trista would respect Martine’s confidence and that she would never speak of their marriage difficulties with him.

      Rick returned to work in Homicide, but his heart wasn’t in it. More than anything, he wanted to patch things up with his wife, but he was reluctant to broach the subject while she was recovering. He was still wallowing in guilt. In his heart, he believed that the kidnapping would never have happened if he hadn’t gone against Martine’s wishes by choosing police work as a career.

      Five days after the accident, Rick was sitting in the backyard of their house, watching the light from the moon dancing in the dense tropical shrubbery and thinking things over. Not that he got very far with it—his mind kept playing back the scenes with Padrón and the horror of watching the car roll over and explode into flames. When he heard the glass door behind him slide open on its track, he snapped out of his reverie and swiveled quickly in alarm. Since the break-in, he’d remained jittery and on edge. He sagged in relief when he saw that it was only Trista advancing toward him through the shadows.

      “Hi, Rick. Martine practically pushed me out of her room and told me to get lost,” she said.

      It struck him how pretty she was, and though her features were the same as Martine’s, Trista’s were softer somehow, as if they were the same picture captured by a more flattering lens.

      “She seems to be feeling better today,” Rick said. He’d been encouraged by the color in Martine’s cheeks and the fading of her bruises.

      “So what are you doing out here all by yourself?” Trista asked.

      “Thinking,” he said.

      She paused, skewering him with a glance. “About?”

      He sighed. “A lot of things.”

      “Do I have to drag it out of you?” she asked with an impish grin, but he wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

      “I need to figure out where to go from here. I thought I could do a lot of good by working in law enforcement, and yet I endangered Martine. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

      Trista’s expression changed, became serious. “You didn’t cause Padrón to do what he did. He’s responsible for his own actions.”

      “Tris, I’ve learned the hard way that when you’re dealing with the criminal element, you open yourself to things that should never happen.” He was more than serious. Somber, even.

      “We both figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?” Trista said, and he knew she was remembering her father, a prominent South Carolina attorney. Seven years ago, Roger Barrineau had been murdered by a former client, gunned down in cold blood on the steps of the Richland County Courthouse.

      He nodded. His father-in-law had been Rick’s friend and role model, and the shock and grief of his murder had never completely gone away. Now, years later, to be faced with nearly losing his wife in a similar situation had not only been terrifying, it had brought him up short. He didn’t want to live his life like this anymore. He wanted things to be peaceful, calm, nice.

      Of course, the case could be made that Rick had lost his wife before Padrón ever forced her into his car, but he wasn’t about to discuss that with Trista unless she brought it up first.

      Thankfully, she didn’t. She stretched, smiled at him and stood. “That chair in Martine’s hospital room has put a permanent kink in my spine. I could use a glass of wine to start the unwinding process. How about you?”

      “I’ll get it.” He started to rise, but she stayed him with a light hand on his arm.

      “No, let me. I’m going inside to change shoes, anyway. I’m ready to kick back some.”

      He looked at her feet, small for such a tall woman. She wore espadrilles with cork wedge heels that made her ankles seem impossibly slim.

      “All right, if you insist. I like the Delicato chardonnay. It’s in the refrigerator.”

      “I’ll try it,” she said.

      When Trista returned wearing bedroom slippers, which were incongruously fuzzy and pink, she carried two glasses on a narrow tray. “I couldn’t find any crackers or cheese. Maybe I should stop by the store on my way back from the hospital tomorrow.” She sat down beside him and eased the back of her patio chair down a notch.

      “I don’t expect you to do the shopping. I’ll be happy to pick up some food tomorrow. You’ve helped so much with Martine, and I’m grateful you’re here, believe me.”

      She regarded him over the top of her wineglass. “Where else would I be?” she asked. “I belong with you and Martine at a time like this.”

      “I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he said, thinking back to all the other occasions when he and Martine had depended on Trista. The time they’d won a Caribbean cruise in a raffle and she’d house-sat, overseeing the building of their new Florida room while they were gone. Trista had rearranged her vacation days in order to accommodate them. And a few years ago when Martine had injured her knee while skiing, Trista had uncomplainingly occupied their guest room for two weeks, doing all the cooking and keeping Martine company. Martine declared that she would have gone stark raving mad sitting around the house by herself all that time.

      “So what do you think of the Carolina Panthers’ chances when they play the Dolphins next season?” Trista asked, and since this was something on which Rick held a well-thought-out opinion, he gratefully entered into a discussion. It amazed him that he was capable of this when he was hurting so much inside, but it had become second nature to pretend everything was okay when it wasn’t.

      The conversation progressed to updating her about his parents and their work in China and inquiries about Virginia Barrineau, who now lived with her sister in Macon, Georgia. It was easy talk, unchallenging and comforting because it required no thinking, no decision making.

      “I like this chardonnay,” Trista said when the conversation began to wane. She swirled the pale liquid in her glass, studying it. “You have good taste in wine.”

      “You used to be disappointed that wine didn’t taste like Kool-Aid,” Rick reminded her, recalling their first foray into alcohol together. When they were high-school juniors, he’d snitched a bottle of pinot grigio from his parents’ bar at Sweetwater Cottage, and they’d drunk every last drop from paper cups on the beach. The wine had given them only a mild buzz, and Martine had declared that she liked beer better, so what was all the fuss about?

      He and Trista had jumped all over Martine, demanding that she tell them when she’d had occasion to drink beer, and she’d laughingly informed them that she and her current steady date customarily downed a six-pack every weekend; they’d park in the lover’s lane overlooking the lake behind their subdivision in Columbia and chugalug until the beer was gone. Then they’d make out.

      If Trista recalled that long-ago discussion, she