uby cranked the Volkswagen's radio to full blast. A raucous Metallica song blared through the small black speakers. Her whole body was moving to the beat.

Fifty thousand dollars.

She wanted so badly to share this day with someone. If only she had Max's new number; she'd call him and tell him what he'd missed out on. She would have spent a lot of this money on him... on them...

The thought brought a quick thrust of sadness, and The drive into Beverly Hills. Usually, she didn't pissed her off. Max didn't deserve one cent of this fortune.

She drove into Beverly Hills. Usually she didn’t even drive past this area; it was too depressing to see all the luxuries she couldn't afford. But today, she was flying high. She felt invincible.

When she saw an open spot on Rodeo Drive, she pulled over and parked. Grabbing her purse (with the yellow deposit slip for twenty-five thousand dollars inside), she got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind her. For once, she didn't bother locking the car; if someone was desperate enough for transportation to steal this one, they were welcome to it.

She strolled around for a while, passing pods of women dressed in expensive, beautiful clothing. No one made eye contact with her. In this part of the world, a twenty-seven-year-old woman dressed in what could only be called "grunge" simply didn't exist. And fifty thousand dollars wasn't nearly enough to get these women's attention.

Then she looked into a store window and saw a sheer, beaded, silvery blue dress with a plunging V neckline and a split in the side that came up to mid-thigh. It was the most perfect dress she'd ever seen, the kind of thing she'd never imagined she could own.

She held her handbag close and pushed through the glass doors. A bell tinkled over her head.

Over in the corner, across an ocean of white marble flooring and chrome-topped rounders of clothing, a woman looked up. "I'll be right with you, dear," she said in one of those cultured, sorority-girl voices.

Ruby felt uncomfortable. She wished she could tape the deposit slip to her forehead.

Finally the saleswoman came over. She was tall and reed-thin, dressed in black from head to foot. Not a hair was out of place. She gave a little sniff when she saw Ruby, but her voice was kind. "May I help you?"

Ruby pointed helplessly toward the window. "I sawa blue dress in the window."

"You have excellent taste. Would you like to try it on?"

She nodded.

"Wonderful."

The woman led Ruby to a dressing room that was bigger than the average bedroom. "Would you like a glass of champagne?

Ruby laughed. Now, this was shopping. "I'd love some."

The saleswoman raised her hand; just that, and within a minute, a man in a black tuxedo was handing Ruby a sparkling glass of champagne.

"Thanks," she said, collapsing onto the cushy seat in the dressing room. The champagne's bubbles seemed to float through her blood, making her instantly giddy. For the first time in years, she felt like somebody.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Come in."

The saleslady peeked her head in. "Here you go.

I'm Demona. Just holler if you need me."

Ruby trailed her fingers down the beaded, sheer-as-tissue fabric, then quickly undressed and slipped into the dress.

It was like stepping into another personality... a different life. Self-consciously, she peeked out of the dressing room. The coast was clear. She walked over to the wall-size mirrors in the corner.

Her breath caught. Even with her hair too short and her makeup too heavy, and her feet wedged into scuffed old Reeboks, she looked... beautiful. The plunging neckline accentuated her small breasts; her waist appeared tiny, and the slit slimmed her fleshy thighs.

This was the woman she had hoped someday to become. How had she veered so far off the path?

"Oh, my," Demona said wistfully, "it's perfect. And you don't need a stitch of alterations. I've never seen anything fit so well right off the rack."

"I'll take it," Ruby said in a thick voice.

At least she could have this moment, she thought, this memory of a perfect day. The dress would hang in her closet forever, a pristine reminder of the woman Ruby wanted to be.

She wrote a check--almost thirty-five hundred dollars, including the tax and shoes--and hung the dress carefully in the backseat of the Volkswagen.

Then, cranking the music back up-Steppenwolf this time--she sped toward the freeway. She was almost home when she passed the Porsche dealer.

Ruby laughed and slammed on the brakes.

Nora lay curled on the elegant sofa in her darkened living room. Hours ago, she'd sent Dee home and disconnected the phones.

Then she'd watched the news.

Big mistake. Huge.

Every station had the story; they played and replayed the same footage, showed the lurid blacked-out photographs again and again, usually followed with sound bites of Nora expounding on the importance of fidelity and the sanctity of the marriage vows. What hurt the most were the "man in the street" interviews. Her fans had turned on her; some women even cried at the betrayal they felt. "I trusted her" was the most common refrain.

She was finished. Never again would someone write her a letter and ask for advice; never again would people stand in line in the pouring rain outside the station for a chance to meet her in person.

She knew, too, what was happening in the lobby downstairs. She'd called her doorman several times today, and the report was always the same. The press was outside, cameras at the ready. One sighting of Nora Bridge and they would spring on her like wild dogs. Her doorman claimed that the garage was safe--they weren't allowed in there-but she was afraid to chance it.

She sat up. Huge glass windows reflected the town's bright lights, turned them into a smear of color. The Space Needle hung suspended in the misty sky, an alien ship hovering above the city.

She walked toward the window. Her reflection, caught in the glass, looked bleary and small.

Small.

That's how she felt. It was a familiar feeling, one that had defined her life long ago. It was this sense of being... nothing... that had set her on the path to ruin in the first place, and she didn't miss the irony that she was here again.

If her father were alive, he'd be laughing. Not so big a star now, are you, missy?

She walked into the kitchen and stood in front of the makeshift "bar" she kept for company. Nora hadn't taken a drink in more years than she could count.

But now she needed something to help her out of this hole. She felt as if she were drowning...

She poured herself a tumbler full of gin. It tasted awful at first-like isopropyl alcohol-but after a few gulps, her tongue went dead and the booze slid down easily, pooling firelike in her cold stomach.

On her way back into the living room, she paused at the grand piano, her attention arrested by the collection of gilt-framed photographs on the gleaming ebony surface. She almost never looked at them, not closely. It was like closing her hand around a shard of broken glass.

Still, one caught her eye. It was a picture of her and her ex-husband, Rand, and their two daughters. They'd been standing in front of the family beach house, their arms entwined, their smiles honest and bright.

She tipped the glass back and finished the drink, then went back for another. By the time she finished that one, she could barely walk straight; there seemed to be a sheet of wax paper between her and the world.

That was fine. She didn't want to think too clearly right now. When her mind was clear, she knew that she'd been on the run for all of her life, and--at last--she'd hit a brick wall. The world knew the truth about her now, and so did her children.

She swayed drunkenly, staring at the photographs. On one side of the piano were family pictures--Christmas mornings, little girls in pink tutus at dance, family vacations taken in that old tent trailer they'd hauled around behind the station wagon.

On the other side were photographs of a woman who was always alone, even in the biggest of crowds. She looked beautiful--makeup artists and hairdressers and personal trainers saw to that. She was flawlessly dressed in expensive clothes, often surrounded by fans and employees.

Adored by strangers.

She stumbled away from the piano and plugged the phone into the wall. Bleary-eyed, she dialed her psychiatrist.

A moment later, a woman answered. "Dr. Allbright's office."

"Hi, Midge. It's Nora Bridge." She hoped she wasn't slurring her words. "Is the doctor in?"

A sniff. That was the only sound, but Nora knew. "He's not in, Ms. Bridge. Shall I take a message?"

Ms. Bridge. Only days ago it had been Nora.

"Is he at home?"

"No, he's unreachable, but I can put you through to his service. Or he left Dr. Homby's number for emergency referrals

Nora struggled to remain steady. Call waiting beeped. "Thanks, Midge. There's no need for that." She waited an endless second for Midge to respond, and when the silence began to ache, Nora hung up. Then she ripped the cord out of the wall again.

In some distant part of her mind, she knew that she was sinking into a pool of self-pity, and that she could drown in it, but she didn't know how to crawl out.

Eric.

He would be on the island by now. If she hurried, maybe she could still make the last ferry...

She grabbed her car keys off the kitchen counter and staggered into her bedroom. After cramming a blond wig over her cropped auburn hair, she put on a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. On the bedside table, she found her sleeping pills. Of course it would be bad--wrong--to take one now; even in her drunken state, she knew she couldn't mix booze and pills. But she wanted to.

God, she wanted to...

She tossed the brown plastic bottle in her purse.

The only thing she took from her condominium was an old photograph of their family, one taken at Disneyland when the girls were small. She shoved it in her handbag and left without bothering to check the lock.

She banged along the wall, using it as a guardrail as she tottered toward the elevator. Once inside, she clung to the slick wooden handrail, praying there wouldn't be a stop in the lobby. She got lucky; the mirrored elevator went all the way down to the parking garage, where it stopped with a clang.

The doors opened.

She peered out; the garage was empty. She careened unsteadily toward her car, collapsing against the jet-black side of her Mercedes. It took her several tries to get the key in the lock, but she finally managed.

She slid awkwardly into the soft leather seat. The engine started easily, a roar of sound in the darkness. The radio came on instantly. Bette Midler singing about the wind beneath her wings.

Nora caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror. Her face was pale, her cheeks tear-streaked. She'd chewed at her lower lip until it was misshapen.

"What are you doing?" she asked the woman in the sunglasses. She heard the slurring, drunken sound of her voice, and it made her cry. Hot tears blurred her vision.

"Please, God," she whispered, "let Eric still be there."

She slammed the car into reverse and backed out of the spot. Then she headed forward and hit the gas. Tires squealed as she rounded the corner and hurtled up the ramp. She didn't even glance left for traffic as she sped out onto Second Avenue.

Dean stood on the slatted wooden dock. The seaplane taxied across the choppy blue waves and lifted skyward, its engine chattering as it banked left and headed back to Seattle.

He'd forgotten how beautiful this place was, how peaceful.

The tide was out now, and this stretch of beach, as familiar to him once as his own hand, smelled of sand that had baked in the hot sun, of kelp that was slowly curling into leathery strips. He knew that if he jumped down onto that sand, it would swallow his expensive loafers and reclaim him, turn him into a child again.

It was the smell that pulled him back in time, that and the slapping sound of the waves against barnacled pilings. A dozen memories came at him, gift-wrapped in the scent of his parents' beach at low tide.

Here, he and Eric had built their forts and buried treasures made of foil-wrapped poker chips; they'd gone from rock to rock, squatting down, scraping their knees on driftwood in search of the tiny black crabs that lived beneath the slick gray stones.

They had been the best of friends in those days, inseparable brothers who seemed so often to think with a single mind.

Of the two of them, Eric had been the strong one, the golden boy who did everything well and fought for his heart's desires. At seven, Eric had demanded to be taken to Granddad's island house on Lopez, the one they'd seen pictures of. And it was Eric who'd first convinced Mother to let them stay.

Dean could still remember the arguments. They were hushed, of course, as all Sloan disagreements were required to be, full of sibilant sounds and pregnant pauses. He remembered sitting at the top of the stairs, his scrawny body pressed so tightly against the railing that he'd worn the marks later on his flesh, listening to his older brother plead for the chance to go to the island school.

Absurd, Mother had declared at first, but Eric had worked on her relentlessly, wearing her down. As a child, Eric had been every bit as formidable as their mother, and in the end, he'd won. At the time, it had seemed a monumental victory; with age came wisdom, however. The truth was, Mother was so busy running Harcourt and Sons that she didn't care where her children were. Oh, occasionally she tried to do the "right" thing, as she called it-make them transfer to Choate-but in the end, she simply let them be.

Dean closed his eyes, then opened them quickly, startled by the sound of laughter.

But it was only an echo in his mind, an auditory memory. He hated what had brought him home at last, hated that it had taken a disease to bring him back to his brother. Even more, he hated the way he about Eric now; they'd grown so far apart. And all of it was Dean's fault. He saw that, knew it, hated it, and couldn't seem to change it.

It had happened on a seemingly ordinary Sunday. Dean had moved off of the island by then, gone to prep school; he'd been a senior, nursing a heart so broken that sometimes he'd forgotten to breathe. Eric had been at Princeton. They were still brothers then, separated only by miles, and they'd spoken on the phone every Sunday. One phone call had changed everything.

"I've fallen in love,... get ready a shock... " name is Charlie and he..."

Dean had never been able to remember more than that. Somehow, in that weird, disorienting moment, his mind had shut down. He'd felt suddenly betrayed, as if the brother he'd known and loved was a stranger.

Dean had said all the right things to Eric. Even in his shocked confusion, he'd known what was expected of him, and he'd complied. But they'd both heard the lie beneath the words. Dean didn't know how to be honest, what words he could mold into an acceptable truth. He'd felt-ridiculously-as if he'd lost his brother that day.

If they'd gotten together back then, talked it through, they might have been okay. But they'd been young men, both of them, poised at the start of their lives, each one faced in a different direction. It had been easy to drift apart. By the time Dean graduated from Stanford and went to work for the family business, too much time had passed to start again. Eric had moved to Seattle and begun teaching high-school English. He'd lived with Charlie for a long time; only a few years before, Dean had received a note from Eric about Charlie's lost battle with AIDS.

Dean had sent flowers and a nice little card. He'd meant to pick up the phone, but every time he reached for it, he wondered what in the world he could say.

He turned away from the water and walked down the dock, then climbed the split-log stairs set into the sandy cliff. He was out of breath when he finally emerged on top of the bluff.

The sprawling Victorian house was exactly as he remembered it-salmony pink siding, steeply pitched roof, elegant white cutwork trim. Clematis vines curled around the porch rails and hung in frothy loops from along the eaves. The lawn was still as flat and green as a patch of Christmas felt. Roses bloomed riotously, perfectly trimmed and fertilized from year to year.

It was something his mother never forgot: home maintenance fees. Every house she owned was precisely cared for, but this one more than most. She knew, or imagined, which to her was the same as certainty--that Eric occasionally visited the summer house with that man. She didn't want to hear any complaints from them about the property.

Dean headed toward the house, ducking beneath the outstretched branches of an old madrona tree. As he bent, a glint of silver caught his eye. He turned, realizing a moment too late what he'd seen.

The swing set, rusted now and forgotten. A whispery breeze tapped one of the red seats, made the chains jangle. The sight of it dragged out an unwelcome memory...

Ruby. She'd been right there, leaning against the slanted metal support pole, with her arms crossed.

It was the moment-the exact second-he'd realized his best friend was a girl.

He'd moved toward her.

What? she'd said, laughing. Am I drooling or something?

All at once, he'd realized that he loved her. He'd wanted to say the words to her, but it was the year his voice betrayed him. He'd been so afraid of sounding like a girl when he spoke, and so he'd kissed her.

It had been the first kiss for both of them, and to this day, when Dean kissed a woman, he longed for the smell of the sea.

He spun away from the swing set and strode purposefully toward the house. At the front door, he paused, gathering courage and molding it into a smile. Then he knocked on the door.

From inside came the pattering sound of footsteps.

The door burst open and Lottie was there. His old nanny flung open her pudgy arms. "Dean!"

He stepped over the threshold and walked into the arms that had held him in his youth. He breathed in her familiar scent-Ivory soap and lemons.

He drew back, smiling. "Hey, Lottie. It's good to see you."

She gave him "the look"-one thick gray eyebrow arched. "I'm surprised you could still find your way here."

Though he hadn't seen her in more than a decade, she had barely aged. Oh, her hair was grayer, but she still wore it drawn back into a cookie-size bun at the base of her skull. Her ruddy skin was still amazingly wrinkle-free, and her bright green eyes were those of a woman who'd enjoyed her life.

He realized suddenly how much he'd missed her. Lottie had come into their family as a cook for the summer and gradually had become their full-time nanny. She'd never had any children of her own, and Eric and Dean had become her surrogate sons. She'd raised them for the ten years they'd lived on Lopez.

"I wish I were here for an ordinary visit," he said.

She blinked up at him. "It seems like only yesterday I was wiping chocolate off his little-boy face. I can't believe it. Just can't believe it." She stepped back into the well-lit entryway, wringing her hands.

Dean followed her into the living room, where a fire crackled in the huge hearth. The furniture he remembered from childhood still cluttered the big space. Cream-colored sofas on carved wooden legs faced each other. A large, oval-shaped rosewood coffee table stood between them, a beautiful Lalique bowl on its gleaming surface.

The room was gorgeously decorated in a timeless style. Not a thing was trendy or cheaply made. Every item reflected his mother's impeccable taste and boundless bank account.

The only thing missing from the room was life. No child had ever been allowed to sit on those perfect sofas, no drink had ever been spilled on that Aubusson carpet.

Dean glanced toward the stairway. "How is he?"

Lottie's green eyes filled with sadness. "Not so good, I'm sorry to say. The trip up here was hard on him. The hospice nurse was here today. She says that the new medication--something called a pain cocktail--will help him feel better."

Pain.

That was something Dean hadn't thought about, although he should have. "Jesus," he said softly, running a hand through his hair. He'd thought he was ready. He'd been mentally preparing himself, and yet now that he was here, he saw what an idiot he'd been. You couldn't prepare to watch your brother die. "Did Eric call our parents?"

"He did. They're in Greece. Athens."

"I know. Did he speak to Mother?"

Lottie glanced down at her hands; he braced himself. "Your mother's assistant spoke to him. It seems your mother was shopping when he called."

Dean's voice was purposely soft. He was afraid that if he raised it, even a bit, he'd be yelling. "Did Eric tell her about the cancer?"

"Of course. He wanted to tell your mother himself, but... he decided he'd better just leave a message.

"And has she returned his call?"

"No.

Dean released his breath in a tired sigh.

Lottie moved toward him. "I remember how you boys used to be. You'd walk through fire for one another."

"Yeah. I'm here for him now."

"Go on up." She smiled gently. "He's a bit the worse for wear, but he's still our boy."

Dean nodded stiffly, resettled the garment bag over his shoulder, and headed upstairs. The oak steps creaked beneath his feet. His hand slid up the oak banister; polished to sleek perfection by the comings and goings of three generations.

At the top of the stairs, the landing forked into two separate hallways. On the right was his parents" old wing; his-and-hers bedrooms that hadn't been occupied in more than fourteen years.

To the left were two doors, one closed, one partially open. The closed door led to Dean's old room. He didn't need to enter the room to picture it clearly: blue wool carpeting, maple bed with a plaid flannel bedspread, a dusty poster of Farrah Fawcett in her famous red bathing suit. He'd dreamed a million dreams in that room, imagined his unfolding life in a thousand ways... and none had presaged a moment like this.

Tired suddenly, he rounded the corner; passed his old bedroom, and came to Eric's door.

There he paused and drew in a deep breath, as if more air in his lungs would somehow make things better.

Then he walked into his brother's room.

The first thing he noticed was the hospital bed. It had replaced the bunk bed that once had hugged the wall. The new bed--big and metal-railed and tilted up like a lounging chair dominated the small room. Lottie had positioned it to look out the window.

Eric was asleep.

Dean seemed to see everything at once--the way Eric's black hair had thinned to show patches of Skin... the yellowed pallor of his sunken cheeks... the smudged black circles beneath his eyes... the veiny thinness of the arm that lay atop the stark white sheets. His lips were pale and slack, a colorless imitation of the mouth that had once smiled almost continually. Only the palest shadow of his brother lay here...

Dean grabbed the bed rail for support; the metal rattled beneath his grasp.

Eric's eyes slowly opened.

And there he was. The boy he'd known and loved. "Eric," he said, wishing his voice weren't so thick. He struggled to find a smile.

"Don't bother; baby brother. Not for me."

"Don't bother what?"

"Pretending not to be shocked at the way I look." Eric reached for the small pink plastic cup on his bedside tray. His long, thin fingers trembled as he guided the straw to his mouth. He sipped slowly, swallowed. When he looked up at Dean, his rheumy eyes were filled with a terrible, harrowing honesty. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Of course I came. You should have told me... before."

"Like when I told you I was gay? Believe me, I learned a long time ago that my family didn't handle bad news well."

Dean fought to hold back tears, and then gave up,They were the kind of tears that hurt deep in your heart. He felt a stinging sense of shame.

Remorse, regret, boredom, anticipation, ambition... these were the emotions that had taken Dean through life. Those, he knew how to handle, how to manipulate and compensate for. But this new emotion... this feeling in the pit of his stomach that he'd been a bad person, that he'd hurt his brother deeply and known it and never bothered to make it right...

Eric smiled weakly. "You're here now. That's enough."

"No. You've been sick for a long time... by yourself."

"It doesn't matter."

Dean wanted to smooth the thin strands of hair from Eric's damp forehead, to offer a comforting touch, but when he reached out, his hands were trembling, and he drew back.

It had been years since he'd comforted another human being; he didn't remember how.

"It matters," he said, hearing the thickness in his voice. He would give anything right now to erase the past, to be able to go back to that Sunday afternoon, listen to that same confession of love from his brother; and simply be happy.

But how did you do that? How did two people move backward through time and untie a knot that had tangled through every moment of their lives?

"Just talk to me," Eric said sleepily, smiling again. "Just talk, little brother. Like we used to."