he frozen pond looked like a pane of mirrored glass tucked into a mound of cotton batting. At the silvery edge, a tractor was parked; its engine was running. Two bright headlights shone toward the ice. A boom box played Elvis's "Blue Christmas."

For as long as Elizabeth could recall, ice-skating on this pond had been a Christmas day tradition. In the attic, there were dozens of pairs of skates, some dating back a hundred years.

They always did it the same way: first, a lazy morning of gift opening, then a late afternoon holiday dinner of turkey with all the trimmings, then a pot of hot, mulled wine made in the huge fireplace in the living room. Once they'd transferred the wine to thermoses, they climbed onto the slat-sided, tractor-drawn wagon and rolled through the snow-blanketed pasture toward the wood whose Native American name had been long forgotten. Daddy always attached a string of bells to the back of the wagon.

This pond was magical. Here, when Elizabeth was four years old, her mother had taught her to skate. It was one of her favorite memories. One single day, barely more than an afternoon, but never forgotten. Her Mama had been underdressed and freezing; when she reached down for Elizabeth's hand, her touch had been icy cold. You just hang on to Mama, darlin'. I won't let you fall.

Elizabeth had often remembered that promise in the empty years that followed, especially when Anita moved into Sweetwater.

Now she sat on top of the picnic table, wrapped tightly in a multicolored woolen blanket. On the ground beside her, a bonfire crackled and snapped and sent gray ash into the slowly darkening sky.

Out on the ice, Jamie was teaching Jack to skate backward. His ungainly movements and uncharacteristic lack of coordination kept his daughters laughing. When he fell hard, Jamie rushed toward him, made sure he was okay, then immediately broke into a fit of the giggles.

Anita skated toward Jack and helped him up. They skated off together, Adonis and Dolly Parton on ice.

A minute later, Daddy skidded to a stop in front of Elizabeth. "You quit awful early," he said, huffing and puffing. White clouds of breath accompanied his every word.

"I was watching."

"You do too danged much o' that, sugar beet. Now, come on out here and skate with your old man."

She unwrapped the blanket and eased herself off the picnic table. Steady on the blades, she walked to the ice and put her gloved hand in his.

As they'd done a thousand times before, they glided across the ice. Moonlight glittered on the frosted surface. In the background, "Frosty the Snow Man" was playing. For a single, perfect moment, she was a little girl in pigtails again, skating in a puffy pink ski suit that was two sizes too big, while her mama and daddy stood watching from the shore....

"You always were a good skater," Daddy said, sweeping left at the end of the pond. "You were good at a lot of things."

It depressed her, that observation, made her feel old. She thought of the conversation she'd had with Meg: Let's be martini-honest, here, Birdie. You used to be a lot of things--talented, independent, artistic, intellectual.... We all thought you'd be the next Georgia O'Keeffe.

"Life is short, Elizabeth Anne. When was the last time you traveled someplace exotic? Or scared yourself silly? Or took up some crazy thing, like hang gliding or skydiving?"

They'd had this discussion a dozen times in the past few years. It stung more each time. "I prefer to scare myself in ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartner on a school bus? Now, that's real terror." She laughed, as if it were a joke.

Daddy twisted Elizabeth around until she was skating backward in front of him. "I'm only gonna say this once, Birdie; then we can pretend I kept quiet if you want." He lowered his voice. "You're missin' out on your own life. It's passin' you by."

The words were a sucker punch that left her breathless. "How do you know that?"

"Just 'cause my glasses are thick as Coke bottles doesn't mean I can't still see my little girl's heart. I hear the way you talk to Jack... and the way you don't talk to him. I know an unhappy marriage when I see one."

"Come on, Daddy, you've been married two times, and wildly in love with both of your wives. You can't know about..." She shrugged, uncertain of how to proceed. "Whatever it is I'm going through."

"You think I never had my heart broken? Think again, missy. Your mama about killed me."

"Her death broke all our hearts, Daddy. That's not the same thing."

He started to say something, then stopped.

She sensed that he'd been about to reveal something. "Daddy?"

He smiled, and she knew it had flown past them, whatever opportunity had almost existed. As usual, he wouldn't say anything about Mama. "Show me one of those pretty turns Anita taught you." He spun her around and gave her a gentle push.

She pirouetted until she was dizzy. Then, breathing hard, she slowed down. In a lazy, swirling arc, she glided across the ice.

Jack came up beside her, half skating, half walking clumsily. His breath shot out in broken, cloudy white gusts. He grabbed her hand, squeezing hard. "Is this archaic southern ritual almost over? Any more quality traditional time and I'll probably fracture my hip."

Elizabeth couldn't help smiling. There were so few things Jack couldn't do well. Frankly, it was nice to be the accomplished one. "You could stand by the fire."

He glanced in that direction. Edward and Anita were there, cozying up to one another. "And talk to your father? No thanks. Last night he practically called me an alcoholic--while he was sucking down his fourth bourbon-and-soda."

"He doesn't understand what you do for a living, that's all."

"That's not true. He thinks I do nothing. He thought playing football was useless; talking about football is even worse."

Jack almost fell; Elizabeth steadied him. "It's what we think that matters."

"I can't wait for you to see the interview I did. What happened was... no, wait. Let me start at the beginning. About a week ago..."

You're missin' out on your own life.

She wanted to listen to her husband, but her mind kept drifting back to her father's words. It was just another of Jack's look-at-me stories, anyway. She'd heard enough of them to last a lifetime.

Life is short, her dad had said.

She knew it was true. Every motherless child knew that.

But just now, with her husband's voice droning on and on, she couldn't quite grasp hold of that.

Because there was something else, equally true. When you were forty-five years old and missing out, it felt as if life were very long indeed.

In an ordinary year, the week after Christmas was quiet, even dull. A time for boxing up ornaments and taking down decorations, for eating leftover turkey sandwiches and watching old movies on television.

Elizabeth hadn't been back in Echo Beach more than twenty-four hours when she realized that this was not going to be an ordinary year. They'd been in the Nashville airport on December 27 when Jack received the first phone call. She hadn't thought much about it at the time, hadn't understood yet that their life had altered in the past week. While she'd been relaxing with her family in Tennessee, things in Oregon had undergone a subtle shift.

Jack was a hero again.

The Drew Grayland story had broken on the day after Christmas. The next day he'd been arrested, charged with rape. The story immediately went national. The National Enquirer ran it as a cover piece.

All across the country, people sat in bars, arguing over the case. What was date rape? When does no mean no? Can a woman "ask for it"? Do ordinary rules apply to extraordinary athletes? These questions and others were suddenly on the menus in diners all across America. Radio hosts asked their listeners for opinions; op-ed pieces popped up in newspapers from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.

From the second Jack and Elizabeth got home, the phone never stopped ringing. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to interview Jack. He'd become a story himself. After all these years in partial obscurity, he was famous again. Not like he'd been in the past, certainly, not a household name, but somebody.

It wasn't as if just anybody had broken the Drew Grayland story.

Oh, no. The story had been brought to America by a man who'd once been a god, then stumbled and lost his way. His reemergence into the heat of fame was a story all by itself. Aging, overweight, unhappy men from California to New York saw Jackson Shore's return and thought: Maybe it could happen to me... maybe life could turn around in an instant.

That was the baton Jack now held: Never give up. He'd become the poster boy for redemption.

This new life of his was evident in everything he did. He walked taller, smiled brighter, slept better.

Unfortunately, as he grew, Elizabeth seemed to diminish. She couldn't quite make herself be happy for him, and that shamed her.

She was his wife. Every woman knew the secret handshake that went along with the church ceremony. You had signed on to be a cheerleader whether you'd known it or not, whether you felt like it or not. Supposedly what was good for one of you was good for both.

How could she admit to being jealous of her husband's happiness and success? And if she dared to voice those poisonous thoughts to Jack, he'd be hurt and confused. He'd give her that frowning look--the one he always wore when she tried to talk about their relationship--and say, very matter-of-factly, Well, Birdie, what is it you want to do?

She had come to despise that question.

So, instead of telling Jack that she felt lost and more than a little abandoned by his sudden happiness, she ripped the hell out of the dining room.

It had been a perfectly functional, if boring, room before, tucked as it was between the kitchen and living room. Like many of the original cottages built along this part of the coast, the house had begun life as a summer getaway for a rich Portland family. Built for limited, high summer use, it had a big main floor with a large kitchen and even larger living room, and two small bedrooms upstairs. Over the years, under a variety of owners, the house had been expanded and remodeled and reshaped. By the time Jack and Elizabeth had stumbled across it in 1999, the poor place had become a jumbled mess.

All Jack had been able to see was the cost: a run-down house with peeling paint and outdated plumbing fixtures... bedrooms that were too small, windows that were too thin, a yard gone bad. Not to mention the commute. Echo Beach was quite a drive from Portland.

But Elizabeth had seen past all that, to a beautiful little cottage with a wraparound porch and view to die for. She fell in love with the pouting lip of land that overlooked a secluded curl of beach.

For the only time in their marriage, she put her foot down, and Jack yielded.

She'd started work immediately. In the last two years, she'd made a remarkable number of changes. By herself, she'd stripped things down to the good, old-fashioned bones. She'd ripped up yards of avocado-green shag carpeting and found a beautiful honey-gold oak floor beneath, which she'd refinished. Then she'd painstakingly removed the white paint from the river-rock fireplace and pulled up the plastic molding that ran along the baseboards. She'd scraped fifty years' worth of paint off the kitchen cabinets and replaced the countertops with exquisite granite tiles.

Because she worked alone, her progress was slow. Although she'd finished (mostly) the kitchen and living room, she was still a long way from done. Only last week, the dining room had seemed to be a low priority, much less important than fixing up the master suite. After all, the kids were rarely here anymore, and when they did come home, they were off with friends for dinner. She and Jack didn't entertain much; it was just too far away for most of his colleagues to drive.

But last night had changed her outlook. She wasn't even sure why.

She and Jack had been sitting in the living room, watching television. The phone had rung every fifteen minutes, and he answered every time, talking endlessly about himself and the story.

Elizabeth had heard the resurrection in his voice and it sparked a lot of memories. Few of them were good.

In the early years of their relationship, she'd loved football. Watching him play in college had been thrilling. For an overly protected southern girl who'd been raised to speak softly and only when spoken to, the high-octane world of football had amazed her. Every time Jack won, he brought a dusting of victory and fame home with him. They'd loved each other then, wildly, madly, deeply.

But time had changed that, had changed them. Somewhere along the way--she thought it was when they moved to New York--he'd become a Star, and stars acted differently than ordinary men. They stayed out all night, drinking with their teammates and slept all day, ignoring their wives and children. They slept with other women.

She and Jack had barely made it through those dark and terrible days. What had saved them, ironically, was the end of his fame. When he'd blown his knee out and gotten hooked on drugs, he'd needed Elizabeth again.

Last night, as she'd listened to him talk ad nauseam about himself, she'd glimpsed their future; it was a mirror image of the past.

And suddenly, she'd looked into the dining room and thought, That wall needs a set of French doors.

The next morning, after he left for work, she went to the hardware store, bought herself a paper dust mask and a sledgehammer, and got to work. Every time the phone rang, she smashed the sledgehammer into the crumbling wall.

Now, almost eight hours later, she stood back from her work. She was breathing hard, and her arms ached.

A huge, gaping hole showcased the wet, winter-dead garden beyond. It was, by her precise calculations, exactly the right size for a standard set of French doors.

She scooped up lengths of thick blue plastic sheeting and stapled it across the opening. She'd have to order the doors tomorrow. Hopefully, it wouldn't take too long to get them in stock.

Whistling happily, she went into the kitchen and made dinner. It wasn't much tonight, just a chicken and rice casserole. Truthfully, her hands and arms hurt so badly she could barely open the oven door.

At almost seven o'clock, she heard Jack's car drive up. She couldn't wait to show him what she'd done. He always teased her about how long it took her to make a decision. Well, not today.

She hurried toward the living room.

He was smiling when he walked through the front door.

"Hi," she said, taking his briefcase and coat. "I want to show you--"

"You won't believe what happened to me today," he said. "I tried calling you, but you must have been out."

"I made a couple of trips to the hardware store."

"This was too cool to leave on the message machine. Come here." He looped an arm around her and led her to the sofa. They sat down. He stretched his legs out, planted his feet on the coffee table.

From this angle, she could see through the house to the dining room. A long strip of blue plastic showed. She tapped her foot nervously, waiting for him to notice.

"Guess who called me today?"

She was no good at this game, but it never stopped him from playing it. She glanced at the dining room again. "Just tell me, honey."

"Come on, three guesses."

"Julia Roberts. Muhammad Ali. President Bush."

He laughed. "Close. Larry King's executive producer."

"No kidding?"

"No kidding. He booked me for Tuesday. He bumped some political bigwig to get me scheduled. And it's not one of those via satellite gigs. I'll be in the studio."

She sat back. "Wow." This was big. She felt a flash of the old pride in him. "You're on your way now."

Your way. She'd chosen her words badly; they excluded her somehow, left her behind.

"He's sending two first-class tickets. We'll have a great time. There's a restaurant I've heard about--Birdie?"

She looked at the dining room, at the gaping hole in the wall. There was no way she could get it finished in time to go with him, and she sure as hell couldn't go out of town with the house like that. There wasn't much crime on the coast, but you still couldn't be crazy. She tried to think of someone she could call, but all of her friends had kids and husbands. They couldn't just pick up and move into this house for a weekend. She supposed she could close the gap with sheets of plywood--if she could find them locally on such short notice--but in truth, the thought of spending a few days all alone was pure heaven.

"What is it, honey?"

She pointed toward the dining room. "I knocked out the wall today."

Frowning, he stood up. As he crossed the room, she knew he was seeing more and more of the plastic. In the archway that separated the two rooms, he stopped and looked back at her. "What in the hell?"

"You know I wanted a bigger window there. It overlooks the garden. Today, I decided on French doors instead."

"Today? You decided today? It takes you seven months to choose a paint color for the kitchen and twenty-four minutes to decide to smash out a wall?"

She lifted her hands helplessly, feeling more than a little stupid. "How was I supposed to know Larry King was going to call you?"

Jack sighed heavily and stepped over the rubble on the floor. Without turning to look at her, he said, "You can't leave the house like this."

She picked her way through the two-by-fours and crumbled bits of Sheetrock on the floor, and came up behind him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she pressed her cheek to his back. "I'm sorry, Jack."

He turned, took her in his arms. She could see how hard he was trying to be fair. "It's not your fault. I didn't mean to sound like an asshole. You did a lot of hard work here. I'm sure it'll be great."

Why was this always the way of things these days? Nothing came easily anymore, not even a romantic getaway. She ought to want to go on this trip with him. In the old days, she would have moved a mountain to make it possible. "It shouldn't be this hard," she said softly, realizing that he'd said the same thing to her only a few weeks before.

"Not tonight, Birdie," he said, drawing back. She knew what he meant. She didn't have the energy for another what's-wrong-with-us discussion, either.

She forced herself to smile. "Well. Let's go figure out what you're going to wear. I might need to get Mrs. Delaney out of bed for a rush dry-cleaning job."

He smiled back, and though it was tired, that smile, it was the effort that mattered. "I was thinking about that navy suit you bought me at the Nordstrom's anniversary sale this summer."

"With the yellow tie and shirt?"

"What do you think?"

What do you think? That was a well too deep to explore; better to keep on the surface of the water. "I think you'll look incredibly handsome."

"I love you, Birdie."

"I know," she said, wishing the emotion came as easily as the words. "I love you, too."