When Alison Reynolds left the studio after the eleven o’clock news, she was amazed to find Cliff Baker, the news director, waiting out in the hall. He was usually gone for the day by then, or else he was out in the parking lot toking up.

 

“Talk to you a minute, Ali?” he said in that clipped almost rude tone of his, one that made his smallest requests come across as issued orders.

 

Ali was whipped. She had started that morning as the featured speaker for a YWCA fund-raising breakfast. At noon she had MC-ed an American Cancer Society–sponsored charity event. In the process she had driven from one end of LA to the other. She had also co-anchored two evening live news broadcasts—one at six and the other at eleven. She was ready to go home, kick off her high heels, and put her feet up. Looking at Cliff’s uncompromising face, she knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

 

She summoned a tired but necessary smile. “Sure, Cliff. What’s up?”

 

That’s when she noticed Eduardo Duarte, a uniformed security guard, standing off to one side and hovering awkwardly in the background. Ali knew Eddie and his wife Rosa. They had met in a hospital room on a juvenile cancer ward where she had gone to cheer them up while the Duarte’s three-year-old son, Alonso, had been undergoing treatment— successful treatment it turned out—for leukemia. Ali Reynolds was, after all, the station’s unofficial but very committed one-woman cancer research and treatment spokesperson.

 

This status had been a natural aftermath of her first husband’s death from an inoperable brain tumor at age twenty-four, twenty-two years earlier. His death had left Ali a widow at age twenty-three— widowed and seven months pregnant. Christopher had been born two full months after his father’s death. Since then, Ali had been a tireless crusader for cancer research. She walked in Relays for Life, participated in Races for the Cure, and did countless cancer-related public appearances whenever possible. And private appearances as well.

 

For most of the on-air folks at the station, Eduardo Duarte was just another nameless, faceless security guard who checked IDs as employees came and went through the front lobby. For Ali, Eddie was far more than that. She had been with the Duartes in the hospital waiting room and had held their hands during the dark time when no one had known for sure whether or not their child would survive.

 

“Hey, Eddie,” she said. “How’s my man, ’Lonso?”

 

“He’s okay, I guess, Ms. Reynolds,” Eddie answered, but he kept his eyes averted. That’s when Ali tumbled to the fact that Cliff Baker’s hallway ambush meant trouble.

 

“What’s going on, Cliff?” she asked.

 

Six months earlier Clifford Baker had been brought on board to “fix” things. At least that was the way the story was told to the news team at the staff meeting when Cliff was introduced. But what had been bad then was still bad now. It was hard to win the ratings game when there were too many people out in the parking lot smoking joints before and after their shifts; when there were too many people hiding out in their offices with too many lines of coke going up their noses. And Ali Reynolds long suspected that one of those problem noses belonged to Cliff Baker.

 

“The ratings still suck,” he said.

 

Ali didn’t say anything. She was over forty in a world in which thirty-five meant on-air womenfolk were nearing the end of their sell-by date. Standing there in the hallway, breathing the sweet perfume of marijuana smoke wafting off Cliff’s rumpled sports jacket, Ali knew exactly what was coming. There was a certain inevitability to the whole process, and Ali wasn’t about to say something that would make Cliff’s job any easier. If he was there to fire her, he would have to come right out and say so.

 

“We’ve decided to take the news team in a different direction,” he said at last.

 

Presumably without me, Ali thought, but she kept her mouth shut.

 

“I know this is going to be difficult for you,” Cliff continued.

 

Ali had known from the moment she met the man that he was a cold-blooded bastard. The supposed reluctance he was exhibiting now was all an act—a classic study in self-serving, cover-your-ass camouflage.

 

“And I’m sure this is going to seem hardhearted,” he went on, shaking his head reluctantly, “but we have to let you go. We’ll pay you until the end of your contract, of course, and then I’m sure there’ll be some severance pay, but after that . . .” He shrugged.

 

With the news broadcast ended, there were other people coming and going in the hallway. Ali noticed that they all gave the three people standing outside the newsroom door a wide berth. Ali wondered, How many of you knew this was coming?

 

She had noticed a few sidelong glances of late— quiet conversations that would die away as soon as she came into the room and resume once she left— but in the cutthroat world of television, she hadn’t thought them anything out of the ordinary. Now she knew better, but she couldn’t afford to think about her spineless co-workers just then. Instead, she remained focused on Cliff.

 

“Why?” Ali asked. “Why do you have to let me go?”

 

This was a good journalistic gambit. Go for the Ws—who, what, why, where, when, and sometimes how. She was never quite sure how the word how had been added to the mix of Ws, or why it was considered to be one, but when taking journalism classes from stodgy professors whose grading meant everything, it’s a good idea to avoid questioning the conventional wisdom.

 

“For the good of the team,” Cliff answered at once.

 

Ali Reynolds came from good Scandinavian stock. She was a natural blonde who could, on occasion, summon a suitably dumb-blonde persona. It was a gambit that had suckered more than one unsuspecting male interviewee into saying more than he intended. Cliff, dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist that he was, took the bait.

 

“You know the demographics,” he added. “We need to appeal to a younger audience, a more hip audience.”

 

“You’re saying I’m too old?” Ali asked.

 

“Well, not in so many words,” Cliff answered quickly.

 

But, of course, he had said so in so many words. Not only had he said the revealing “hip audience” words to Ali, he had made the astonishing blunder of doing so in front of a witness, Eddie Duarte. Ali suspected that the grass Cliff had smoked while waiting for the end of the broadcast had impaired his judgment. Ali glanced toward Eddie, who seemed to be fixated on examining the shine on his highly polished shoes.

 

“When’s my last broadcast?” she asked.

 

“You just did it,” Cliff said.

 

Ali willed herself to exhibit no emotion whatsoever. She summoned the same strength she had used to get through the noon newscast the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. Her performance that day had been done with enough professional aplomb that it had been instrumental in getting her a job as a “pre”-Laurie Dhue Fox News Channel babe a year later. (Of course, her natural-blond good looks and flawless complexion hadn’t hurt, either.) Years later, after Ali had come to LA to assume co-anchor duties there, she had managed to remain dry-eyed and professional during the unrelenting hours of live on-air coverage in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. She was dry-eyed now, too.

 

“You’re not going to give me a chance to tell my viewers good-bye?” she asked.

 

“There’s no point, really,” Cliff said with a shrug. “Come on, Ali. When it’s over, it’s over. Schmaltzy good-byes don’t do a thing for ratings. But that’s why Eddie’s here. He’ll go with you while you clean out your locker and your desk. You’re not to touch your computer. Whatever’s on your office computer belongs to the station. And be sure to give him your ID card, your elevator pass, and your keys on the way out. Good luck.” With that, Cliff Baker turned away and sauntered, down the hall.”

 

“Sorry, Ms. Reynolds,” Eddie murmured.

 

“Thank you,” she said.

 

“Will you be all right?”

 

“I’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

 

She went into the newsroom, where she saw that someone had taken the liberty of placing an empty banker’s box on the chair in front of her desk. As she approached it, she noticed that the other people in the room seemed totally involved in other things—studying their computers, talking on the phone. Only one of them, Kimberly Weston—the up-and-coming “weather girl”—came over to chat.

 

“I’m so sorry to hear about all this,” she said.

 

So the word had been out, Ali realized. And this little twit—the arrogant tiny-waisted twenty-something with her enhanced boobs, the bitch who had masterminded giving Ali a gift-wrapped gag package of Grecian Formula 44 on the occasion of her most recent birthday—had known all about it for God knows how long. Since long before Ali did.

 

With a swipe of her fist, Ali cleared her son’s high school graduation portrait off her desk and slammed it into the box with enough force that only a miracle kept the glass from shattering.

 

“That’s funny,” she said, “I only just found out.”

 

“I mean I guess I’d just heard rumors,” Kimberly fumbled, clearly uncomfortable.

 

“Since you seem to be in the know,” Ali said, “who’s taking my place? Are they promoting from within or importing new talent?”

 

“Importing,” Kimberly said in a small voice.

 

That figures, Ali thought. What goes around comes around.

 

It was the same thing the station had done to Katherine Amado, the station’s previous female anchor, when they brought in Alison. Katy Amado was let go in one day—she was forty-eight years old at the time. The very next day, Ali was down at the station filming promos for the “new” news team.

 

In far less time than Ali would have thought possible, all of her personal items were summarily dumped into the box. When it came time to leave the newsroom for the last time, no one came near her to tell her good-bye or wish her luck. Maybe they think I’m contagious, she thought.

 

With Eddie shadowing her and carrying the box, Ali ventured back into the darkened studio and retrieved her brush, hair spray, makeup, and mirror from their place in the cubbyhole beneath the shiny wood-grained surface of the news desk. In the women’s rest room, she emptied her locker of the two extra blazers she kept there. She also removed the hair dryer and curling iron that she had brought in and allowed other people to use. If someone was in need of a curling iron tomorrow morning, it was too bad. They could get their butts over to Wal-greens and buy a new one.

 

Eddie lugged the box all the way out to the parking lot. He waited while Ali unlocked her Porsche Cayenne, then he loaded the box into the back and closed the tail gate. By the time he finished, Ali had fished out her elevator key and building pass. She handed those to him and then plucked her ID off the strap she wore around her neck.

 

“Here you go,” she said, handing it over. “Thanks for all the help, Eddie. I really appreciate it.”

 

“I heard what Mr. Baker said,” Eddie muttered. “About you being too old. He can’t do that, can he? I mean, aren’t there laws about that kind of thing?”

 

“He’s not supposed to be able to do it,” Ali replied with a sharp laugh. “But Clifford Baker doesn’t seem to think any of those rules apply to him.”

 

“Will you fight him, then?” Eddie asked. “Will you take him to court?”

 

“I might,” Ali said.

 

“If you need me to testify,” Eddie said, “I’ll be glad to tell them what he said—that it was because you’re too old.”

 

“You’d do that?” Ali asked.

 

Eddie nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would.”

 

“But you’d probably lose your job.”

 

Eddie Duarte shrugged. “I’m just a security guard,” he said. “There are lots of jobs for people like me.”

 

“Thank you, Eddie,” she said. “I’ll think about it.” Then she got in the car and drove from Burbank to her house on Robert Lane in Beverly Hills. On the way, she didn’t try calling home to tell her husband what had happened. There wasn’t anything Paul Grayson could have done about it. Besides, he usually came home later than Ali did.

 

When she turned off the 405 onto Sunset, she opened the moon roof and let the wind ruffle her hair. Turning into the driveway, she was surprised to see lights on downstairs. Her son Chris, now a senior at UCLA, lived out back in the guest house, but he often prowled the kitchen in the “big house” late in the evenings in search of food. Ali was surprised to find Chris’s Prius missing from its assigned spot in the six-car garage. Instead, Paul’s arena red Porsche Carerra was parked at the far end. As Ali walked past it, the ticking of the cooling engine told her that he hadn’t been home long.

 

She found Paul at the bar off the family room mixing himself a drink. “I’m having a Manhattan. Want one?” he asked.

 

“Sure,” she said, kicking off her shoes and dropping into a nearby easy chair. “Make mine a double.”

 

“So how did it go?” he asked as he delivered her drink.

 

That’s when Alison realized that Paul already knew she’d been let go—that he had known what was coming down before she did! He was a network bigwig, and LA was a major market. Naturally they would have told Paul about her firing in advance of their actually doing it. After all, he had been responsible for bringing Alison to town in the first place. Nepotism be damned, he was the one who had finagled his new bride her cushy co-anchor position—a maneuver that had left her open to years’ worth of sniping co-workers who claimed she wasn’t really qualified. Now, though, Paul would have had to sign off on her being booted out as well.

 

Somehow she managed to hold the stemmed cocktail glass steady enough that when she took that first sip she didn’t spill any of it.

 

“Cliff Baker fired me,” she said quietly. “Tonight. After the news.”

 

“Oh, Ali Bunny,” he said. “I’m so sorry. What a hell of a thing!”

 

She hated it when he called her Ali Bunny.

 

“I may take them to court,” she said calmly.

 

That shocked Paul, all right—shocked him good.

 

“You’re going to what?” he demanded, slopping his own drink down the unknotted three-hundred-dollar tie dangling around his neck.

 

“It’s age and sex discrimination,” she said. “The three guys that are left are all older than I am. Randall’s got to be sixty if he’s a day. Nobody’s sacking any of them.”

 

“You can’t take the station to court,” Paul said. “I mean, how would it look? We’re married. I work for the network. What would people say?”

 

“People would say it’s about time somebody stood up for women,” Ali replied. “Over forty isn’t exactly over the hill.”

 

“If you take the station to court, you’ll be blackballed for sure. You’ll never work in the mainstream media again.”

 

“All the more reason to sue them, then,” she said.

 

“But think what it’ll do to my career!”

 

Ali took another sip of her drink. “Frankly, my dear,” she told him. “I don’t give a damn.”

 

Paul stood up abruptly and stalked off to his study, closing the door firmly behind him. Other people might have given the door a good hard slam, but not Paul Grayson. He disdained what he called “cheap theatrics.” He considered himself above all that.

 

But when the heavy door clicked shut, Alison Reynolds heard something else entirely. The sound that echoed down the marble-floored hallway had nothing to do with the locking mechanism on the door and everything to do with the end of their marriage.

 

Ali sat for a few moments longer. When she and Paul had moved into this house years earlier, she thought herself extremely lucky. After years of being a single parent, she had been glad to have a father figure for her hormone-charged fourteen-year-old son. But things hadn’t turned out the way she expected. Paul and Chris weren’t close. Not at all. And her happily-ever-after fairy tale romance wasn’t what it had been cracked up to be, either. An exciting, whirlwind romance had morphed into a marriage where divergent jobs and interests kept them busy and apart. At times it seemed to Ali that she and Paul were roommates and housemates more than they were man and wife.

 

Ali surveyed the room, eyeing the opulent leather furnishings that Paul preferred. She hadn’t liked them much to begin with, but they had grown on her over time, unlike the art. The splashy modern art that adorned the walls—large pieces with gilt frames, vivid colors, steep price tags, and not much heart—came with enough bragging rights to cut it with Paul’s art-snob pals, but they didn’t speak to Ali. Not at all.

 

“I’ll miss this chair,” she allowed at last, “but the art can go straight to hell.”

 

With that, she knocked back the remains of her drink in one long swallow. Then she stood up, collected her shoes, and headed for bed.

 

By the time Ali got up the next day Paul was already gone, on an out-of-town trip. It was early Saturday morning. She was pulled downstairs by an irresistible smell. She found Chris in the kitchen, expertly moving an omelet from a frying pan to a plate, folding it with a gentle flick of the wrist just the way Ali’s father had taught him.

 

“You’ve got to learn to cook, boy,” Bob Larson had said. “If you leave it up to your mother, you’ll starve to death.”

 

Her parents ran Sedona’s Sugarloaf Café, a down-home-style diner that had been started in the mid-fifties by her maternal grandmother, Myrtle Hansen. Myrtle had left the business to her twin daughters, Edie Larson and Evelyn Hansen. Now, with Ali’s Aunt Evie gone, Bob and Edie were still running the place, which was usually packed on weekends, especially at breakfast time.

 

“Hey, Mom,” Chris said. “You look like hell. Hungry?”

 

The double Manhattan had gone straight to Ali’s head, but she hadn’t slept. She’d lain awake, tossing and turning, and she felt hung-over as hell.

 

“Yes, please,” she said.

 

“Have this,” Chris said, passing her the filled plate. “I’ll make another one.”

 

Ali took a seat at the island counter and then watched Chris. “I got fired last night,” she said.

 

Chris whirled in her direction, almost dropping an egg in the process. “You got fired? No way!”

 

“Yes,” she said.

 

“Just like that?”

 

Ali nodded.

 

“When’s your final broadcast?” Chris asked.

 

“Already had it,” Ali said. “They pulled the plug on me last night as soon as the news was over.”

 

Turning off the fire under the frying pan, Chris hurried to his mother’s side and took her hand. “That’s terrible, Mom,” he said. “I can’t believe they did that to you. Did Paul know about it? Did he know in advance that they were going to let you go?”

 

“Probably,” Ali said.

 

“And he didn’t tell you or try to do anything to stop it?”

 

Ali shrugged.

 

“That bastard,” Chris muttered.

 

Ali said nothing. She had arrived at much the same conclusion. Paul Grayson was a bastard.

 

“Which means you don’t even get to say goodbye to the people who’ve watched you for the past seven years?” Chris continued, his voice shaking in outrage.

 

“Evidently not.”

 

“That sucks!”

 

“Well, yes,” Ali agreed. “Yes, it does.”

 

“Wouldn’t you like to let people know what happened—tell them your side of the story?”

 

Ali laughed. “I don’t think that’s an option.

 

“We’ll see about that,” Chris vowed.

 

With that, he got up from the counter, returned to the stove, and turned the fire back on under his omelet pan.

 

Ali spent the day quietly. Once it was two o’clock Arizona time and the Sugarloaf Café was closed for the day, Ali called her parents and told Bob and Edie Larson what was going on—the job part of it anyway, not the marriage part. Bob was as outraged as Chris had been. Edie was instantly sympathetic.

 

“If you have time off, you should come visit,” she said. “You have your Aunt Evie’s house to stay in. Come over, relax, and give yourself time to think about what you’re going to do next.”

 

Ali had already decided what she was going to do next—track down the names of several wrongful termination attorneys. “Thanks, Mom,” Ali said. “I’ll think about it.”

 

On Sunday morning, Ali came downstairs and was surprised to find a sheaf of e-mail printouts sitting next to the coffeepot. There were dozens of them, all addressed to her home e-mail account. One by one she read through them.

 

Dear Ali,

 

I’m so sorry you’re leaving. You seem like a good friend. I’ll never forget what a wonderful job you did when our next door neighbor’s son was killed in Iraq. Please let me know where you end up. I’m hoping I’ll still be able to watch you.

 

Mrs. Edith Wilson, Glendale, CA

 

Dear Ms. Reynolds,

 

How can they fire you? You’re the only bright spot on that dying news team. I hope you get a good job somewhere else and beat them up in the ratings. They deserve it.

 

Mac, Sherman Oaks

 

To whom it may concern:

 

Since you fired Ali Reynolds, you can kiss my advertising dollars goodbye. You guys don’t know a good thing when you see it.

 

Walter Duffy

 

Dear Ali Reynolds,

 

You don’t remember me, but we walked together at the Relay for Life in Sherman Oaks. My husband had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer and you told me about losing your first husband when he was only twenty-four and when you were expecting a baby. I just want you to know how much I appreciated your being there for me and for all the other people who are fighting cancer. I wish you all the best.

 

Millie Sanders

 

Chris came into the kitchen just then, coffee cup in hand and grinning from ear to ear. “What do you think?” he asked.

 

“Where did all these come from?” Ali asked.

 

“From your blog—your weblog,” Chris answered. “I called it cutlooseblog.com. Me and some of my marketing friends came up with the idea yesterday. I posted a note saying that you’d been fired—that you weren’t sick or going into politics or wanting to spend more time with your family. We posted the blog and then we went to the various search engines to make sure it was added. This is what came back.”

 

“But there must be a hundred of them,” Ali marveled.

 

“More than that,” Chris said. “These are only the ones I’ve printed. There are more coming in all the time.”

 

“But how do I answer them all?” Ali asked. “Do I do it one at a time?”

 

Chris shrugged. That’s up to you. You can answer in a group posting or you can do it one at a time. From the volume, I’d suggest a single posting. Otherwise you’ll go nuts.”

 

“But, Chris,” Ali objected, “I don’t do blogs. I never have.”

 

Chris grinned back at her. “You do now.”

 

Chapter 2

 

cutlooseblog.com Sunday, March 13, 2005

 

My son, Christopher, first laid hands on a computer when he was six. I was given an old Epson from work. I brought it home and gave it to him. Once his fingers hit the keyboard, it was love at first touch—and, yes, he’s actually a better typist than I am. It’s because of him that I’m writing this today. And not only is this the first time I’ve visited a blog, this is also the first time I’ve posted on one.

 

When Chris created this site, he named it cutlooseblog.com because that’s exactly what’s happened to me. I’ve been cut loose and set adrift from a job I loved. There was no advance warning. I didn’t see it coming. Chris has already told you that as of 11:30 Friday evening, I was told that my services would no longer be required on the evening and nighttime news. You’ll notice that I’m not naming names or going into any kind of specifics here. That’s because, come Monday morning, I expect to have an appointment seeking legal advice. With that in mind, the less said the better.

 

One thing is certain. I wasn’t allowed to tell my viewers good-bye, and that made me sad. Now, though, thanks to efforts by Chris and some of his computer-savvy marketing friends at UCLA (Thanks, guys and gals!) I have a chance to tell you goodbye after all.

 

Through my years on the air I have diligently tried to answer all my own fan mail. But never have I seen the outpouring of kind wishes and words that have turned up in my life today. I can see that there’s no way I’ll be able to answer them all individually. So let me say a big group thank you to all of you.

 

Chris tells me that if I really am going to be a Blogger??!!! when I grow up, I’ll need to post articles like this one on a fairly regular basis. Since I’m a trained journalist, that shouldn’t be all that difficult. I’ll try to let you know how things are going for me. I’ll also let you know where I next find myself behind an anchor desk because I’d like to think that my career in television news isn’t over. I believe I still have a lot to offer.

 

Again, thank you for writing. I was at a very low ebb this morning when I came downstairs. I was upset. I hadn’t slept for the better part of two nights. You have no idea how much your wonderful notes mean to me. If anyone wants to write to me, my e-mail address is listed at the top of this form.

 

Be well.

 

Posted: 11:23 A.M. by AliR

 

Chris left in the early afternoon to go hang out with his friends. Ali more than half expected that her phone would ring with people calling to say how sorry they were, but the people who were friends enough to have her unlisted home phone and her cell stayed away in droves. Either they didn’t know or they didn’t want to get too close for all the same reasons her co-workers from the newsroom had stayed away on Friday night. Guilt by association.

 

And so, feeling at loose ends, Ali did what her mother and her Aunt Evie would have done—she cleaned out her closet. Closets, actually. She was surprised by the sheer number of outfits she had. That came with being on television. You had to vary the wardrobe. You couldn’t show up night after night wearing the same thing. And Paul never stinted when it came to spending money on clothing for either one of them. He was a great believer in the old adage “Clothes make the man,” or woman, as the case might be. He wanted to look good and he wanted his wife to look good too—guilt by association again.

 

Ali was ruthless. The YWCA had a clothing bank, run in conjunction with a homeless shelter, where women who needed nice clothing for interviews or for new jobs could go and find appropriate attire. She loaded up three black leaf bags full of clothing and another one of shoes, then she dragged the entire bunch out to the Cayenne and loaded them in the back so she could deliver them the next day.

 

Her cell phone rang as she came back into the house. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “How’s business?”

 

“Not so hot,” her mother returned. “We even ended up with leftover sweet rolls.”

 

The very thought of her mother’s sweet rolls made Ali’s mouth water. Baked fresh every day according to Myrtle Hansen’s own recipe, the delectable treats were usually sold out by ten a.m.

 

“How did that happen?” Ali asked.

 

“With all the rain and snow we’ve had this winter—with RVs getting washed down Oak Creek and all—business is way off. In fact, the big storm that came through Friday night dropped five inches of snow right here in Sedona, and a lot more up on the rim. Naturally, with fresh powder, your dad took off from work early so he and Hal Sims could get in some skiing up at the Snow Bowl. On the way, they’re going to drop off our leftovers at that homeless encampment just off the freeway up by Flagstaff. You know what a soft touch your father is. He’s a regular Loaves and Fishes kind of guy.”

 

That was one of the things Ali loved about her father, and despite the annoyance in her voice, it was probably one of the things Edie Larson loved about her husband as well. Bob may have had a gruff exterior, but inside he was a pushover. He was forever offering a helping hand to anyone who needed it. Through the years Ali had lost track of the countless vagrants—drunks, mental cases, whatever—Bob had dragged home. He found them clothing and gave them odd jobs to do long enough for them to “earn some moolah and get some traction,” as Bob liked to say.

 

While still a child, Ali had often accompanied Bob Larson on his self-appointed rounds to distribute what would otherwise have been Sugarloaf discards. Sometimes they went to homes where there were children with no food and zero heat. The next day Bob would be on the phone with the utility company trying to negotiate a way to turn the power or gas back on, or else he’d be tracking down some local contractor who, in the process of clearing land, might have access to a cord of firewood or two. Sometimes Bob went looking for homeless people living in parks or camped out in picnic areas. For those unfortunates living rough in cold weather, he often brought along discarded coats and blankets as well as food.

 

That was what had happened this past year over Christmas when Ali had accompanied her father on one of his mercy missions. With the freeway newly plowed and snow lying ten inches deep, Bob had turned off the I-17 a few miles south of Munds Park and then wandered off the beaten track onto a Forest Service road that was just barely passable with Bob’s ’72 Bronco 4×4. Twenty minutes later, as soon as Bob stopped the SUV, fifteen or so people had materialized out of the snowbound, thickly forested wilderness and had quickly divested the 4×4 of its mini-truckload of bounty.

 

“These people live here year-round?” an astonished Ali had asked as they drove back to Sedona.

 

“Pretty much,” her father returned.

 

“You’d think they’d freeze.”

 

“They’ve got tents and campers hidden in here in the woods. Believe me, some of these guys have plenty of reason for staying out of sight.”

 

“Is it safe to come here, then?”

 

Bob grinned. “It is for me,” he said. “They’re all hungry, and I’m the guy with the food.”

 

“I keep wondering when in the world that man is going to grow up,” Edie was saying. “Put him on a pair of skis and he thinks he’s twenty again. But I didn’t call you up to bend your ear complaining about your father. I’m really calling about Reenie.”

 

Reenie Bernard was Ali’s best friend from high school. “What about her?” Ali asked at once. “Is she all right?”

 

“I don’t know, she’s missing,” Edie Larson answered. She sounded worried.

 

“Missing?” Ali repeated, as though she hadn’t heard properly.

 

“That’s right,” Edie said. “Hasn’t been seen or heard from since she went to Phoenix on Thursday. I had heard rumors about it yesterday, but you were so upset about your job situation at the time that I didn’t want to bring it up until it was actually confirmed. Besides, I was hoping they’d have found her by now, but they haven’t. She’s officially listed as a missing person.”

 

Ali’s head swam. There were times when she and Misty Irene Bernard had gone for a year or two without any more communication than a hastily scrawled note on a Christmas card. The last time she had seen Ali had been at the Sugarloaf Christmas party back in December. Still, despite the years and distance, Ali considered Reenie to be her best friend.

 

“What happened?” Ali demanded.

 

“Nobody knows. One of the detectives from the Yavapai County sheriff’s department came in for lunch. According to him, Reenie was supposed to go to Scottsdale on Thursday morning for a doctor’s appointment. She left the doctor’s office in mid afternoon and hasn’t been seen since.”

 

In a matter of seconds the fact that Ali had lost her newsroom job seemed ridiculously unimportant— and selfish.

 

“That’s awful,” she said. “How are Howie and the kids doing?”

 

Reenie’s husband, Dr. Howard Bernard, was a history professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. His and Reenie’s marriage was a late-blooming, second-time-around affair for both of them. Their children—Matthew and Julie—were nine and six respectively. Julie had just barely made it in under her mother’s self-imposed child-bearing deadline of age 40.

 

“I don’t know,” Edie replied. “I haven’t called them. I didn’t want to be a bother, but I thought you might want to.”

 

“Yes,” Ali agreed. “I will. As soon as we get off the phone.”

 

And she did. The moment the call to her mother ended, Ali scrolled through the saved numbers in her cell phone and dialed Reenie’s home number. Someone whose voice Ali didn’t recognize answered before the end of the first ring.

 

“It’s Bree,” Reenie’s sister said, once Ali identified herself.

 

Bree and Reenie’s parents, Ed and Diane Holzer, were now staunch, Sunday-go-to-meeting-style Missouri Synod Lutherans—a direct contradiction to their wild and misspent youth. Ed had straightened up enough to join and eventually manage his family banking and real estate interests in Cottonwood. Prior to that, however, he and Diane together had sowed plenty of wild oats. They had named their now middle-aged daughters in the spirit of those psychedelic, free-wheeling days. Reenie, formally dubbed Misty Irene, had spent her school years dodging what she considered a name straight out of the sixties by opting for a variation on her middle name. Reenie’s younger sister, Bree—short for Breezy Marie—hadn’t fared much better.

 

Ali’s friendship with Reenie hadn’t extended as far as Bree, who, as the apple of her father’s eye, had been regarded as spoiled rotten and an obnoxious pest besides. All that was years in the past now, though, and Ali was glad Bree was there to help Howie and the kids with whatever was going on.

 

“My mother just called,” Ali said. “Until then I had no idea any of this had happened. How are things?”

 

Someone in the background on the other end of the call asked Bree a question. “It’s Ali Reynolds,” Bree answered. “She’s calling from California.” Then she came back to Ali. “Sorry. Howie can’t come to the phone right now. The house is full of people, cops mostly.”

 

“What’s going on?”

 

Bree sighed. “How long since you talked to Reenie?” she asked.

 

“I saw her briefly over Christmas,” Ali replied. “But there were all kinds of other people there. We didn’t have much of a visit. Why?”

 

“Reenie had been having trouble with her back before Christmas,” Bree said, “but she didn’t get around to going to the doctor until January. She just got a firm diagnosis last week—ALS. She had an appointment to see the doctor—a neurologist out at the Mayo Clinic—in Scottsdale on Thursday. She went there, but that’s the last anyone’s seen of her. She never came home.”

 

“ALS?” Ali asked. “As in Lou Gehrig’s disease?”

 

“That’s right,” Bree said. “It’s a death sentence— a crippling degenerative neurological disease with no cure. Once you’re diagnosed, it’s pretty much all downhill after that, three to ten years max. Reenie was devastated when she got the news. How could she be anything else?”

 

Ali felt sick to her stomach. It was incomprehensible that Reenie, her beloved Reenie, could be dying of some horrible disease, one that would leave her children motherless within a matter of a few years. Why hadn’t Reenie called? Why hadn’t she let Ali know?

 

“How awful!” Ali breathed.

 

“Awful isn’t the half of it,” Bree returned. “I’ve been reading up on it. ALS takes away muscle control. People are left bedridden and helpless, hardly able to swallow or even breathe on their own, but their mental faculties are totally unaffected. I think Reenie looked down the tunnel at what was coming and decided to do something about it.”

 

“You mean you think she committed suicide?” Ali asked.

 

“Don’t mention it to Howie,” Bree returned. “But that’s what I’m thinking. She would have hated being helpless and dependent. That isn’t Reenie. Never has been.”

 

You’re right about that, Ali thought.

 

Reenie Holzer had always been a doer, a mover and shaker.

 

“How are the kids doing?” Ali asked.

 

“Okay, I guess,” Bree replied. “The folks are here right now. They came up from Cottonwood as soon as church was over, so that’s a big help. They took Matt and Julie out for pizza. They just got back a few minutes ago.”

 

“Should I talk to them, to the kids, I mean?” Ali asked.

 

Bree hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Howie’s trying to play this low-key, and if everybody makes a big fuss about it . . .”

 

“What’s he told them?”

 

“That their mom has a disease, that she’s gone off by herself to think things over, and that she’ll be home very soon.”

 

“I don’t blame him,” Ali said. “It’s bad news either way. And now that you’ve told me what’s up, I think I’ll wait a while to talk to Matt and Julie,” she added. “That way I won’t end up blurting out something Howie would rather I not say.”

 

“Sounds good,” Bree returned.

 

“How are you holding up?” Ali asked.

 

“All right, I guess,” Bree said. “Things are pretty tough, but I’m glad I can be here to help. Howie’s taking it real hard.”

 

Howie had always struck Ali as a bit of a prig, but he was a lot easier to tolerate than Reenie’s first husband, Sam Turpin, had been. Besides, where was it written that friends had to like their friends’ husbands? Truth be known, Ali’s own husband didn’t care for Reenie or Howie much, either, referring to them as “nobodies from Podunk, Arizona.” Ali supposed that made things even.

 

“I’m glad you’re there, too,” Ali said. “It sounds like Howie needs all the help he can get.”

 

During the phone call, Ali had made her way through the house and settled into her favorite chair—the oversized one. The soft brown leather was smooth and buttery against her bare skin. It was also solid and substantial.

 

Looking for comfort—for someone to tell about Reenie, for someone who would sympathize and tell her how awful it was to lose a friend—Ali dialed Paul’s cell phone, but he didn’t answer. She tried to remember exactly where he was scheduled to go on this trip, but with him doing most of his travel by corporate jet these days, it was hard to keep track. Since it was late Sunday afternoon, however, she could be relatively sure that wherever he was, he was out playing golf. Wherever Paul went, so did his Pings, and once on a golf course, Paul made it a practice—a religion almost—not to take calls, from anyone.

 

Ali hung up without bothering to leave a message. Feeling hungry—or was it just a matter of nerves?— she went out to the kitchen and scrounged through the refrigerator. Before the cook, Elvira Jimenez, left for the weekend, she usually made sure the place was stocked with lots of suitable salad makings. Fighting to keep her figure newsroom thin, Ali survived on salads. Right now what she really wanted was one of her father’s Sugarloaf special chicken fried steaks. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option.

 

Using the kitchen clicker—Paul had one in every room—she turned on Paul’s new Sonos sound system to play a full program of Mozart piano concertos. Then she busied herself at the granite countertop, whacking up lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers and onions, as well as a perfectly ripe avocado. She added a few hunks of rotisserie grilled chicken and a thimbleful of dressing. Lots of calories in dressing. Then, she took her salad and a glass of chilly Chardonnay (Paul’s current favorite, Far Niente, the 2002 vintage, of course) to the glass-topped umbrella table situated beside the sparkling heated pool with its unobstructed view of the city.

 

The sweet scent of orange blossoms wafted through the air. The bougainvillea climbing the side of the stuccoed pool house was just starting to blossom. The colorful pots arranged around the patio overflowed with the fat petunias and lush snapdragons that Jesus Sanchez, the gardener, somehow always maintained in wild abundance. Now that the rains had finally stopped, spring had arrived in southern California with a vengeance. Meanwhile it had snowed five inches in Sedona two days ago—the same day Reenie had been reported missing.

 

ALS, Ali thought. What would I do if it were me?

 

She thought about Reenie’s kids, Matt—red-haired, freckle-faced, and serious beyond his years— and about Julie—a bright, blond, blue-eyed, perpetual-motion machine who seemed to dance rather than walk wherever she went. Wouldn’t Reenie have wanted to spend every possible moment with those adorable children of hers, or had she made some other choice, one she hoped would spare them the worst of the dread disease that was bearing down on all of them?

 

That line of questioning took Ali back to a very dark place of her own. In October of 1982 her first husband, Dean Reynolds, had come home from work one night, complaining of a headache. Ali hadn’t thought that much about it. He was twenty-four years old, for God’s sake. How serious could it be? He had gone to bed. In the middle of the night, she had heard him retching in the bathroom. A few minutes later he passed out. She had heard him fall— a dull thump on the wooden floor of their two-bedroom apartment. Leaping out of bed to help him, she’d had to shove his body out of the way with the bathroom door before she could get inside to reach him. In the confined space of the tiny bathroom, she hadn’t been able to gain enough leverage to help him to his feet. Instead, she left him lying on the floor and called an ambulance.

 

Two days later, in Dean’s hospital room, the doctor had given them the bad news—glioblastoma—a word Ali had never heard before and wouldn’t have known how to pronounce. She and Dean, holding hands, had listened in stunned silence as the doctor—a resident oncologist—delivered the bad news. The tumor was large, inoperable, and probably fatal within one to two years. They could try chemo they were told, but glioblastomas were aggressive and generally resistant to treatment. A few months later, Dean was dead and Ali was not only a twenty-three-year-old widow, she was also seven months pregnant.

 

The baby was born on a bright June day two months after Dean’s funeral. Ali named her newborn son Christopher Dean Reynolds. Ali’s mother had left Bob and Aunt Evie in charge of the Sugarloaf. Even though Edie Larson had never been on a plane before in her life, she had flown out to Chicago to be with her daughter and her new grandson and to help Ali get organized.

 

Surprisingly enough, Dean’s company benefits had provided a fair amount of group life insurance. Their apartment was anything but extravagant. Using the life insurance proceeds and by carefully managing the social security survivor’s benefits, Ali had managed to keep the apartment, hire a live-in babysitter, and go back to school to finish her Masters. (She’d had to drop out that one semester because Dean was so sick.)

 

Dean had died in 1983. More than twenty years later glioblastoma was still a grim diagnosis, but there were now some new promising treatments— particle-beam radiation and chemo protocols—that had only been a gleam in some cancer researcher’s eye back in the eighties. Ali wondered if there was a chance things were a little more hopeful now with ALS as well.

 

With half of her salad left uneaten, but with her wineglass empty, Ali stood up. The sun was still shining in the west, but she felt a sudden chill. Dean had fought so hard to live long enough to see his son—to have a chance to be with him. Faced with ALS, surely Reenie would do the same for her kids, for Matt and Julie, wouldn’t she?

 

But as Ali made her way back into the house, she realized she didn’t know the answer. The only person who did was Reenie Bernard herself, and she wasn’t talking.

 

After rinsing her dishes, Ali went upstairs to the little study off the master bedroom that was her own private domain. She logged on to her computer and Googled ALS. After spending an hour or so poring over what she found there, Ali finally realized that as far as Reenie and her family were concerned, it could just as well have been 1983.

 

As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again!”

 

cutlooseblog.com Monday, March 14, 2005

 

First of all, let me thank you once again for the kind wishes that continue to pour in. I’m astonished by your response. I’ll try to answer as many as I can—after all, I no longer have to go to work—but please forgive me if I don’t get back to all of you in a timely fashion.

 

When bad things happen, it’s easy to fall in a hole of self-pity and wallow around in it. Losing your job counts as a bad thing, and I would have been wallowing if I hadn’t had all those e-mails lifting my spirits.

 

Tonight, though, when I was channel surfing, I happened to catch a promo for the new news team at my former station—a team that now includes my very youthful and very blond replacement. Seeing her sitting and smiling out at the camera from the anchor chair that used to be mine and flanked by all the guys who used to do the news with me, it would have been easy to turn on the waterworks and go screaming down the street yelling that life isn’t fair. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Because there are things in life that are lots worse than losing a job—losing a friend, for instance.

 

Because one of my friends is lost. Reenie, my best friend from high school, went missing on Thursday after going to a scheduled doctor’s appointment. On the day before I lost my job. No one knows where she is. Her family is baffled. Her husband and children are lost without her.

 

In the past two weeks, Reenie has received some devastating news about her health. In her forties and with a husband and two young children at home, she’s been diagnosed with ALS. Authorities investigating her disappearance have hinted that perhaps she committed suicide rather than endure the bleak future that particularly dread disease holds for all who are stricken with it. I’d like to think she’s gone off some place to gather her courage to face whatever may lie ahead. The Reenie I know and love isn’t a person who shies away from doing what needs to be done—however hard that may be.

 

So tonight, unable to sleep, I decided to tell you what’s going on in my life because I can tell from the e-mails that have come in that you care. But on the whole, I think you can see that compared to what’s happening to Reenie and her family, my problems are pretty small potatoes.

 

Posted: 1:52 A.M. by AliR

 

My Sister’s Keeper was run by the Sisters of Charity and operated out of a tiny donated storefront in downtown Pasadena. The neighborhood was trendy enough that well-heeled ladies in their late-model Lexus or Cadillac SUVs, or their personal assistants, could drop off clothing discards—things that weren’t good enough for consignment stores— without having to venture into some of LA’s grittier neighborhoods where the donated clothing might actually be put to use.

 

The person in charge, Sister Anne, was a tall spare woman with a cascade of braided and beaded hair. In the late eighties, the towering six-foot-seven nun had been known as Jamalla Kareem Williams, a standout player for the UCLA Bruins. Ali had met Sister Anne several years earlier when they had been seated together at the head table for a YWCA fund raising luncheon. Having spent her whole life watching her father’s one-man charitable efforts, Ali knew more than she might otherwise have known about the needs of the homeless. Ali and Sister Anne had struck up a conversation during lunch. Realizing at once that they had a good deal in common, they had stayed in touch.

 

Dragging the first heavily laden bag into the store that Monday morning, Ali found Sister Anne sorting through a mound of donations. Dressed in shiny blue-and-white sweats emblazoned with UCLA insignias, Sister Anne looked as though she would have been far more at home on the sidelines of a basketball game than in a convent.

 

Sister Anne greeted Ali with a gap-toothed grin. “Time to lighten the load?” she asked.

 

Ali nodded. “There’s more where this came from,” she added. “It’s out in the car.”

 

Sister Anne trailed Ali out to the Cayenne and helped bring in the rest of the bags. “These yours?” she asked. Ali nodded again. “It’s always good to get clothes from tall ladies,” Sister Anne added with a laugh. “There aren’t enough of us to go around.”

 

Once back inside, Sister Anne started pulling items from the first bag. The clothes were mostly still in their separate dry-cleaning bags. After examining several of them, the nun whistled. “These are what I call designer duds,” she said enthusiastically.

 

“And they’re in really good shape. Are you sure you want to get rid of them?”

 

Ali had told Chris and her mother about what had happened on Friday night after the newscast, but until that moment, she hadn’t confided in anyone else about the fact that she’d been fired. Not Jesus or Elvira—her Spanish wasn’t good enough. And for some reason, Charmaine, Ali’s personal assistant, hadn’t shown up for work this morning. Ali still hadn’t heard back from Paul, either, damn him, not since she’d called him the night before. And with Reenie still missing . . .

 

As Ali screwed up her courage to let go of the words and make her humiliation public, tears were very close to the surface. But Sister Anne beat her to the punch.

 

“I know about your job,” she said. “I saw it in the Times yesterday. What’s the matter with those guys? Are they nuts?”

 

Ali looked around the store and was grateful that they seemed to be alone. The news was out, and out in a big way, so at least there was no need for her to go around telling people about it.

 

She sighed. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you this morning,” she said, “besides dropping off the clothing, that is.”

 

“What do you need?” Sister Anne demanded.

 

“An attorney actually,” Ali said. “Know any good sex- or age-discrimination attorneys?”

 

“You’re going to sue the station?”

 

“I’m thinking about it.”

 

“What about using one of your husband’s high-powered friends?” Sister Anne asked. “Seems to me they’d be chomping at the bit to take the case.”

 

“That’s part of the problem,” Ali admitted. “If I go after the station, Paul isn’t going to like it, and neither will most of his friends—whether they’re attorneys or not. He has a lot of clout in this town, and he isn’t afraid to use it.”

 

“Well then,” Sister Anne said, “it so happens I do know of one. Her name’s Marcella Johnson. We were teammates back in college. Marce is short, only five ten or so, but she was a scrapper, and believe me, she plays to win.”

 

“Winning’s good,” Ali said.

 

“She works for Weldon, Davis, and Reed on Wilshire. I’ve got her cell number. Want me to give her a call?”

 

Without a word, Ali handed over her phone, which was how, two hours later, she found herself waiting to meet Marcella Johnson in a secluded corner of the Gardens Café at the Four Seasons Hotel. Even though she thought she was fairly well out of the way, several people glanced in her direction and nodded in recognition as they were shown to their own tables.

 

Feeling self-conscious and wanting to while away the time, she ordered coffee and then called the Sugarloaf on her cell even though she knew her parents would be up to their eyeteeth in the lunchtime rush by then.

 

“Any news about Reenie?” she asked.

 

“Not that I’ve heard,” Edie Larson said. “Have you talked to her husband?”

 

“He was busy when I called,” Ali said. “I don’t want to bother him.”

 

“Call anyway,” Edie said. “Howie won’t be bothered. That’s what friends are for. How are you doing?”

 

“Hanging in,” Ali returned.

 

“You don’t sound like you’re hanging in,” Edie pointed out. “You sound upset.”

 

Ali was upset. Strangers from all over southern California somehow managed to know that she’d lost her job, some of them even before the station had made whatever official announcement had ended up in the papers. But none of her friends— make that none of her supposed friends—had bothered to send even so much as an e-mail, and none of them had called to check on her, either. And then there was Paul. Where was he? Why wasn’t he calling her back? He sure as hell wasn’t playing golf twenty-four hours a day.

 

Ali sighed. “I am,” she admitted to her mother. “I’m upset about Reenie, and I’m upset about my job situation, too. I’m in a restaurant right now, waiting to audition an attorney.”

 

“To go after the station?” Edie wanted to know. “To sue them?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Great!” Edie said. “Your father will be thrilled. For the last three days that’s all he’s talked about, that you should sue their something or other off, if you know what I mean.”

 

Edie Larson didn’t say “asses” unless she was referring to the four-legged kind. Bob Larson’s language tended to be somewhat more colorful.

 

“I’m just talking to an attorney,” Ali cautioned. “It’s all very preliminary and definitely not a sure thing. I don’t even know if I have a case.”

 

When Marcella Johnson showed up a few minutes later, she was indeed five ten, just as Sister Anne had said. She and Ali were almost the same height. Marcella Johnson, dressed in a black silk suit that showed off every well-toned muscle, strode across the room to the table where Ali waited. An impressive-looking woman, Marce sported Gucci from top to bottom. She had a firm handshake and an easy smile.

 

“So they fired you, did they?” she asked, settling into her chair.

 

“They sure did,” Ali answered.

 

“Who’s your replacement?”

 

“I didn’t catch her name, but I saw her on yesterday’s promos. She’s young, very young, and pretty, too.”

 

“Figures,” Marce said. “They let you go, but they kept all the old guys, even the pretty one with the terrible rug?”

 

Randall James was very proud of his hairpiece and thought it looked “natural.” Obviously it hadn’t fooled Marcella Johnson.

 

“Even him,” Ali said with a smile.

 

“And what reason did they give?”

 

“Taking the news team in a new direction is what the news director said. Going after a younger audience.”

 

“With three old guys and a new babe?” Marcella scoffed. “Give me a break.”

 

“That’s what I thought,” Ali told her.

 

Marcella removed a slim tablet PC from her briefcase and began scribbling notes with a stylus.

 

“Cliff Baker is the new news director. He’s the guy they brought in to fix the ratings, which, as it happens, are still broken.”

 

“I suppose you were alone when he said this.”

 

“Actually, I wasn’t,” Ali answered. “There was a security guard there, Eddie Duarte. Edward actually. Baker brought Eddie along to look over my shoulder while I cleared out my desk and to escort me out of the building when I finished.”

 

“Having a witness is fine, but a security guard?” Marcella asked. “Those heavy-hitters from the station will mow him down so fast he’ll never know what hit him.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Ali said. “Eddie told me he’d testify if I needed him to, and he will. He and his wife, Rosa, are friends of mine. So’s their little boy, Alonso.”

 

Marcella looked intrigued. “You really do know them?”

 

Ali nodded. “Yes, I really do.”

 

“Their names again?”

 

Ali pulled her Palm Pilot out of her purse and reeled off Eddie’s address and phone number.

 

“These kinds of cases take years, regardless of whether you settle or go to court,” Marcella warned.

 

“I know,” Ali said.

 

“And since I’m very good,” Marcella added, “that means I’m also very expensive.”

 

“Then it’s a good thing I brought along my checkbook,” Ali said.

 

“In that case,” Marcella told her, “lunch is on me.”

 

And it was a good one. Ali had the heirloom tomato and mozzarella salad. Marcella had the Ahi tuna nicoise. They both had a glass of wine—a Pinot Grigio, which would have been far too lowbrow to measure up to Paul’s sophisticated taste buds. Still, wine and all, it was definitely a working lunch. Marcella asked questions and took detailed notes the whole time they were eating, and while they were drinking coffee afterward as well.

 

On the way home, Ali called Paul’s number. He still didn’t answer. Why did he carry the thing around with him if he wasn’t going to pick up? This time, though, she left him a message, letting him know what she had done. She knew he wasn’t going to be thrilled about it, but she wasn’t going to sneak around about it, either. After all, her career was on the line. She wasn’t about to let it go without a fight.

 

“Didn’t want you to be the last to know,” she said. “I’ve retained an attorney. I’m going to file a wrongful-dismissal suit based on age and sex.”

 

Back at the house she found that Charmaine still hadn’t shown up, but someone—Jesus most likely— had brought in the mail and left it on the entryway table. She went through the envelopes, sorting out the junk from the real stuff. At the bottom was a greeting-card-shaped envelope with no return address, but it took only a single glance for Ali to recognize Reenie Bernard’s flamboyant script that was only a smidgeon beneath calligraphy. That had always been Reenie’s style. When other people had resorted to e-mail, Reenie had relied on snail-mail to stay in touch. She always seemed to have a supply of just the right note cards readily at hand.

 

Maybe I’m right, Ali though hopefully. Maybe Reenie’s just gone off somewhere to think things over.

 

The postmark on the envelope said, “Phoenix, AZ Mar 10,” but that didn’t mean much. Yes, it was the day Reenie had gone to the Phoenix area. The envelope could have been mailed from there, but it could also have been sent from Sedona or any other small town in central Arizona. Ali knew that mail from smaller towns often wasn’t postmarked until it reached a more centralized processing center in one of the larger cities. Still . . .

 

Eager to read Reenie’s message, Ali tore open the envelope, leaving behind a jagged edge of paper and a tiny paper cut on her index finger. Inside was one of those black-and-white greeting cards, the ones that feature little kids in old-fashioned clothes. This one showed two cute little girls, a blond and a brunette. Four or maybe five years old, the two girls sat side by side, with their arms slung over one another’s shoulders and with their smiling faces aimed at the camera. Inside the card said, “Some friends are forever.” Written on the opposite side of the card, again in Reenie’s distinctive penmanship, were the following words:

 

“I think I’m in for a very bumpy ride, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I’ll call you next week. R.”

 

A bumpy ride, Ali thought. Only Reenie, wonderful Reenie, could look at something as appalling as ALS and call it a “bumpy ride.” But then, studying the note more closely, she noticed subtle differences between this and Reenie’s usual handwriting. Here the letters were rushed, and a little sloppy, but then maybe she had been in a hurry. Putting aside the note, Ali checked her land line answering machine.

 

There was no message from Reenie, but there was one from Chris.

 

“Hi, Mom,” he said. “I read your post, and I can’t believe it. Is it true Reenie’s sick and missing? Call me on my cell and let me know what you’ve heard. Oh, and by the way. I looked at the number of hits you’re getting on your site. For a brand-new blog, there’s a lot of traffic.”

 

Traffic on the blog didn’t seem very important right then. Instead, Ali picked the card back up and studied it again. When her mother had first told her about Reenie’s diagnosis, Ali had been hurt that Reenie hadn’t told her directly. Knowing that she simply hadn’t been ready to talk about it made Ali feel better, but it hurt her to think of Reenie going off on her own to wrestle with her situation. Rather than dealing with it alone, wouldn’t she have wanted to be with her family, with Howie and the kids?

 

Ali’s cell phone rang just then. The number in the display told her that the call was coming from the Sugarloaf Café. Ali knew that by now the customers would be long gone and Bob and Edie and their waitress in chief, Jan Howard, would be cleaning up the restaurant in preparation for the next day.

 

“Ali?” her father began as soon as she answered.

 

That was unusual. Generally speaking it took an act of God to get her father to talk on the phone at all. He preferred conducting his calls by relaying information through his wife, a habit that drove Edie to distraction.

 

“What’s up, Dad?” Ali asked warily. “Is something wrong?”

 

“Yes, baby, it is,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your mother wanted me to make the call because she doesn’t want to make a fool of herself on the telephone.”

 

Ali’s heart skipped a beat. “It’s about Reenie, then?” she asked.

 

“They found her car late this morning,” Bob Larson said. “She went off Schnebly Hill Road probably during that snowstorm we had the other night.”

 

Ali walked as far as the leather chair in the family room and sank into it.

 

“She’s dead, then?” Ali managed.

 

“Yes,” Bob returned sadly. “Yes, she is. She was thrown from the vehicle as it fell. They don’t know for sure yet, but they’re assuming she died instantly. That’s what we’re hoping, anyway. They found the car this morning long before they found her. I talked to Detective Holman at lunchtime. You remember Dave Holman, don’t you? Wasn’t he in your class?”

 

A vision of a tall scrawny kid passed through Ali’s head. Dave had been a year older than she was, and a big man on campus due to his being smart and an all-around athlete as well, lettering in football, basketball, and baseball. She’d been such a nobody by comparison that she doubted they’d ever exchanged so much as a word.

 

“A year older,” she said impatiently. “But go on. Tell me about Reenie.”

 

“Her SUV was white, so until some of the snow up there melted this morning, it was impossible to spot. It had also rolled so far and so hard that it’s mostly nothing but a ball of smashed sheet metal. Besides, no one thought to look for her up there. I mean, what the hell was she doing on Schnebly Hill Road in the middle of a snowstorm? What was that girl thinking? The gates on Schnebly Hill were closed at both ends, so she must have opened and closed the upper gate behind her.”

 

Schnebly Hill Road was a treacherous eleven-mile dirt track, barely one car wide in spots. Narrow and sometimes studded with rocks, the road clung gamely to the cliff face as it threaded its way down from the top of the Mogollon Rim and into Sedona far below. Back in Ali’s day, driving up and down Schnebly Hill had been a required rite of passage for every newly licensed teenaged driver—Ali included—who had managed to survive Mr. Logan Farnsworth’s Driver’s Ed class at Mingus Mountain High.

 

Ali understood that Schnebly Hill Road was dangerous under the best of circumstances. The idea of Reenie being on it alone in the dark and snow made her shiver. But with an ALS death sentence hanging over her head, it seemed likely that Reenie might not have been particularly concerned about either road conditions or bad weather.

 

What a terrible, lonely way to die, Ali thought.

 

“Anyway,” Bob continued, “according to Dave, both the Coconino and Yavapai County sheriff’s departments are investigating. The car was spotted early this morning by a jet flying into the airport. The wreckage was in steep, rough terrain, though. It took hours for a rescue crew to reach it. Then when they realized she’d been thrown free, they had to bring in a couple of search-and-rescue teams with dogs. It was one of the dogs that finally found the body a little before noon.”

 

Unable to respond, Ali digested the terrible news for the better part of a minute.

 

“Ali,” her father said finally. “Are you still there? Can you hear me?”

 

“I’m right here,” she answered. “Any word on when the services will be?”

 

“Not yet. Dave says it’s way too early to even think about things like that. There’ll have to be an autopsy first—toxicology reports and so forth. The body can’t be released for burial until after that.”

 

How many times as a reporter and anchorwoman had Ali Reynolds discussed countless accident and homicide victims in those cold and oh-so-scientific terms—autopsies, medical examiners, toxicology reports? But this was Reenie, Ali’s own beloved Reenie. It broke her heart to hear her father now applying those very same harsh but journalist-approved words to what had happened to Reenie. For some reason Ali couldn’t understand, she didn’t cry—not a single tear. That surprised her.

 

“I’ll come home.” Ali made the split-second decision as she spoke the words. “I’ll throw a few things in the car and head out. It won’t take that long. It’s only five hundred miles. I can be there in under eight hours.”

 

“But I just told you,” Bob objected, “no one has any idea when the services will be. It might be the end of this week or even the first of next.”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Ali told him. “I’m not working, remember? I’m free as a bird, and since I have my own place there, I can stay as long as I like. Paul’s out of town anyway. He won’t mind.”

 

“All right, then,” her father said. “If that’s what you want to do, I’ll go up to your place and check things out—make sure the heat’s on and none of the pipes are frozen. I did that the other morning— checked the pipes—so they should be fine. Do you want me to put a few groceries in the fridge?”

 

“Thanks, Pop,” she said. “For the pipes and the heat, but don’t worry about food. I’ll probably be spending a lot of time up in Flag. When I’m not there, I’m sure I’ll be able to scrounge enough Sugarloaf grub from you and Mom to keep from starving.”

 

“Okay,” Bob said dubiously, “but you drive carefully. And call once you get here.”

 

“It’ll be too late,” Ali objected. “It’ll wake Mom.”

 

Edie Larson rose every day at four a.m. and walked from their little apartment at the back of the lot to her kitchen in the restaurant that fronted on the highway. That’s what it took to have the sweet rolls up and ready to go when the first early-bird Sugarloaf breakfast customers came through the door at six.

 

“Call on my cell phone,” he said. “I’ll keep it with me out in the living room. Once Edie turns off her hearing aid, she can’t hear a thing. She’s deaf as a post.”

 

“All right,” Ali agreed. “I’ll let you know when I get there.”

 

Just then the back door slammed open and shut. “Mom?” Chris called from the kitchen. “Are you here?”

 

“Gotta go, Dad,” Ali told her father. “See you tomorrow.” Then to Chris she added, “In here. In the family room.”

 

He came as far as the doorway, munching on a fistful of Elvira Jimenez’s freshly baked cookies that he’d pilfered off the counter. Chris stopped cold as soon as he caught a glimpse of his mother’s stricken face.

 

“Reenie’s dead, isn’t she,” Chris said.

 

Ali nodded wordlessly.

 

“What happened?”

 

“She went off Schnebly Hill Road sometime over the weekend. They didn’t find her until a few hours ago. I just got off the phone with Grandpa. I told him I’ll come home to Sedona as soon as I can load things into the car.”

 

“I’ll go with you,” Chris offered at once. “It’s a long trip. I can help drive.”

 

“But you have school,” Ali objected.

 

“Not really,” Chris said. “It’s the end of the quarter. I have one class tomorrow and two on Wednesday. Then I don’t have anything more until finals. The first one isn’t until next Monday. If I talk to my professors and tell them what’s happened, it won’t be a big deal.”

 

“You’re sure?” Ali asked.

 

“I’m sure,” Chris said.

 

She stood up, went over to her son, and allowed herself to sink into the comforting grip of one of his weight-lifting-powered bear hugs.

 

“Thanks, Chris,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

 

The tears came then, and she let them. Having someone hold her as she cried made all the difference.

 

Chapter 4

 

As Ali and Chris finished loading the Cayenne, Chris paused next to the ski rack. “Should I bring ’em?” he asked.

 

Ali shrugged. “Why not? After that big storm, I’m sure there’s plenty of new snow up at Flagstaff, and you know how much Gramps loves to ski, especially with you.”

 

“Are you sure? I mean, with Reenie and everything . . .”

 

Ali nodded. “Reenie’s my problem, not Dad’s. Besides, remember how he was when Aunt Evie died? Practically useless. We’ll be better off with him skiing than we will be with him under hand and foot twenty-four seven.”

 

Obligingly, Chris loaded the ski rack and the skis onto the Cayenne’s roof rack. And when they left the house, Chris drove while Ali rode shotgun, managing the MP3 player. Wanting to think about song lyrics instead of what had happened to Reenie, Ali scrolled through the index, selecting one musical after another, songs Chris had culled from Aunt Evie’s personal CD collection and added to the playlist.

 

Her mother and Aunt Evelyn had shared more than just their birthdays and a lifelong partnership in the Sugarloaf Café. Together they had adored musical scores, everything from Showboat to Cats; and from Carousel and Oklahoma to Evita and The Lion King. Aunt Evie had collected them all. To celebrate their sixtieth birthday Ali had convinced her mother and aunt to get passports. Then, as a surprise and using some of Paul’s and her own accumulated air miles and credit card points, the three of them—Ali, her mother, and Aunt Evie—had flown first-class to London for five days of wonderful first-class hotels and nonstop theater productions. It had been great fun, and they had done it just in time, too. Only a few months later and with no advance warning, Aunt Evie had succumbed to a massive stroke.

 

While listening and riding, Ali glanced over at Chris. He drove with both hands gripping the wheel and with his eyes constantly focused on traffic. As she watched him, Ali was at once both startled and gratified to realize how old he was and how competent. Christopher was twenty-two—a grown man now—only two years younger than his father had been when he died. And a close-but-not-quite carbon copy of his father—Chris was taller and heavier than Dean had been.

 

For the past seven years, living with his stepfather’s money and privilege and with his mother a staple on the nightly news, it would have been easy for Chris to lose track of who he was. An atmosphere of poisonous privilege and ready access to drugs had blighted many of his classmates. That he hadn’t fallen into those traps was due primarily to the way his mother had raised him prior to Paul Grayson’s appearance on the scene.

 

For years it had been just the two of them—Ali and Christopher. There had been a song in Aunt Evie’s collection that spoke to that as well—Helen Reddy’s poignant “You and Me Against the World.” And now, driving eastward on I-10 and in heavy traffic, it was true again. But with Chris grown—in another two months, he’d be graduating from college—this might well be the last road trip they’d take together, riding along and listening to Aunt Evie’s music. She wondered if, as Chris grew older, hearing some of these old familiar songs would bring him back to this long sad trip.

 

They drove onto the 10 at the beginning of rush-hour traffic, so it took them the better part of three hours to make it to Palm Springs. They had just passed Rancho Mirage, Ali mindlessly humming along with “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls, when her cell rang. She saw at a glance it was Paul.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded the moment she answered. “How come you’re talking to an attorney? I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t start any proceedings against the station.”

 

There was no mention of what had happened to Reenie. No explanation of why it had taken him so long to get back to her. No, just an instant all-out verbal attack.

 

“I don’t remember any such agreement,” Ali returned.

 

“Come on, Ali,” he said. “I told you very clearly the other night that, with me as a network exec, we couldn’t afford to get mixed up in any kind of legal dust-up. We just have to take our lumps and move on.”

 

“Our lumps?” she asked. “What do you mean our? I’m the one who got fired, not you.”

 

“And you sure as hell better hope it isn’t catching. What if you piss them off and they end up firing me, too? Then we’d be in a hell of a mess. We can get by without what you make, but we can’t get by without what I bring home. Now tomorrow, I want you to go see that attorney and give him . . .”

 

“Her,” Ali corrected.

 

“Her then,” he conceded. “Give her whatever she needs to drop the case. If you just talked to her today, she can’t have done very much. If she wants to keep the retainer, fine. Let her. Just be sure the case gets dropped. I don’t want it to go any further than it already has, understand?”

 

Ali understood all right. Paul was handing down orders, and he expected unquestioning obedience. That’s what he required of all his underlings, and the salary comment made his wife’s standing pretty clear—it was in the lower echelon of the chain of command. Why did he have to be such an overbearing jerk at times?

 

“I can’t,” she said quietly.

 

“Can’t?” Paul shouted into her ear. “What do you mean you can’t?”

 

Ali looked at her son. Chris seemed intent on the road and traffic, but she knew he was listening.

 

“Just what I said. I can’t,” she told him. “Chris and I are on our way to Sedona. Reenie died over the weekend—in a traffic accident. I want to be there to help Howie and the kids.”

 

If Ali expected a word of sympathy about what had happened to her friend, none was forthcoming.

 

“Call the damned attorney from Sedona, then. You can do it over the phone if you have to. I just want to be sure it’s stopped before there’s any more damage.”

 

“As in damage to your career?” Ali put in.

 

“Yes,” Paul said. “Of course. What did you think I meant?”

 

“What?” Ali said. “What did you say? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up. Hello? Hello?” She closed the phone and slipped it back in her pocket.

 

Chris gave her a sidelong glance. “That call wasn’t really breaking up,” he observed. “I checked the last time I drove through here. There was good service with plenty of signal from here all the way to and from. What’s going on?”

 

Chris and Paul had never gotten along. Paul had disapproved of almost everything his stepson did, from the clothing he wore to his choice of school. He had been particularly offended by Chris’s stated intention of squandering his fine arts training by hoping to become a teacher. Paul Grayson wasn’t the least bit altruistic and had no patience with people who were. Ali, on the other hand, had been inordinately proud.

 

“Your stepfather doesn’t like it that I consulted with an attorney about filing a wrongful dismissal suit against the station,” Ali admitted quietly. “He thinks I should just shut up and take my lumps.”

 

“Are you going to?” Chris asked.

 

“No,” she said. “I’m not. No matter what Paul wants, I’m going to take them on, and it won’t just be for me, either. It’ll be for every woman in the television news business who’s in danger of being put out to pasture because she’s past forty and isn’t interested in joining the Botox nation. Meanwhile the guys can stay on the air until they’re doddering old men and need guide dogs to drag ’em around. No one says a word to them. They’re still viewable.”

 

“Good,” Chris said. “And what about Paul?”

 

“What about him?”

 

“He’s a jerk. And with everything else that’s going on . . .”

 

At first Ali thought Chris meant everything that was going on with Reenie, but then she looked at the grim set to her son’s jaw and realized there had to be something more.

 

“What everything else?” she asked.

 

Chris shook his head. “Come on, Mom. You know what I mean. There’s no point in talking about it.”

 

“No, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t have any idea. Tell me.”

 

Not wanting to answer, Chris compressed his lips and shook his head. “Why do you let him treat you like that?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like crap.”

 

Ali wasn’t thrilled to be discussing her troubled marriage with her son—or with anyone else, for that matter. After seven years of playing peace maker and running interference between Paul and Chris, Ali’s first ingrained response was to attempt to minimize whatever had been said, in both directions.

 

“He’s opinionated,” she commented. “And he’s upset that I’m going ahead with the wrongful dismissal suit. You know Paul. He’s used to having people jump to do whatever he says.”

 

Chris drove in silence for several miles before saying anything more. “You do know he’s screwing around on you, don’t you?” he said at last.

 

“He’s what?” Ali demanded. She felt as though a bucket of icy water had been flung in her face.

 

“He’s got a girlfriend. More than one actually.”

 

Ali could hardly believe her ears. Chris was her son. Surely she couldn’t be having this conversation with him.

 

“I don’t know,” Ali managed stiffly. “And if you do, maybe you should let me in on it.”

 

Chris gave his mother a questioning look. With his attention momentarily diverted, a gust of wind, blowing through the mountains behind them, sent the Cayenne wandering across the lane-edge warning bumps along the shoulder of the freeway.

 

“You really don’t know?” Chris returned.

 

Years of sitting in front of a camera reporting on all kinds of catastrophes had taught Ali Reynolds how to master her own emotions and maintain control. She did that now.

 

“Tell me,” she said.

 

“April Gaddis, Paul’s new administrative assistant, is the older sister of a friend of a friend,” Chris explained. “That’s how I heard about it, sitting around having a beer with the guys after a basketball game. The brother asked me if it was true you and Paul were getting a divorce. According to him, April is telling all her friends that they’ll be married by the end of the year.”

 

There was a long pause. At last Ali found her voice. “Well,” she said, “if that’s the case, he’ll have to get a move on, won’t he. From what I hear, there’s no such thing as an instant divorce in California.”

 

“Don’t joke about this, Mom,” Chris said, his voice tight with concern. “It isn’t funny. And then there’s Charmaine.”

 

“Charmaine?” Ali repeated stupidly. “You mean my Charmaine?”

 

Charmaine Holbrook, an intently cheerful young woman, had been Ali’s personal assistant for the past three years. She had come through a temporary staffing agency and had turned into a permanent employee. Ali would have trusted Charmaine with her life.

 

Chris nodded miserably.

 

“What about her?”

 

“One Friday night, I had a few too many beers and one of my buddies gave me a lift home. I went inside to take a nap. You were at work. When Paul came home, my car wasn’t in the garage and my lights weren’t on. He must have assumed I wasn’t home, either. A while later, I heard them carrying on out in the pool. That’s what woke me up. He and Charmaine were both in the pool naked, but swimming isn’t all they were doing.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time?” Ali demanded. She felt betrayed, as much by her son’s silence as by her husband’s infidelity.

 

“I thought you knew, Mom,” Chris declared. “I swear to God. I figured you must have decided to make the best of a bad bargain. Lots of women around here do that, you know. They find out what their husbands are up to, but, for one reason or another, they decide to just put up with it instead of throwing the bum out.”

 

“I had no idea,” Ali murmured.

 

“I know that now,” Chris said. “And I’m sorry, but hearing him ordering you around like you were some kind of servant . . .”

 

“How many people know about this?” Ali asked suddenly.

 

Chris shrugged. “Lots, I suppose,” he answered. “I mean, if I know, then other people must know, too. They probably haven’t taken out an ad in the Times, or anything like that, but . . .”

 

Ali’s phone rang. Paul’s number showed in the display. “It’s him,” she said. “I’m not going to answer.”

 

And she didn’t. The cell rang five times before it went to message. A few seconds later, the lights started flashing, indicating she had a voice mail waiting.

 

For ten miles or so, Ali did nothing; said nothing. Finally, she reached for her phone.

 

“Don’t call him back,” Chris pleaded. “Please don’t.”

 

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not.”

 

Instead, she picked up the phone and scrolled through the called numbers until she located the one for Marcella Johnson’s cell phone. Marcella answered on the second ring.

 

“Hi,” Ali said. “It’s Alison Reynolds, your newest client.”

 

“Did you change your mind?” Marcella asked.

 

“Why would you ask that?” Ali returned.

 

“I just came from Leonard’s office—Leonard Weldon, the senior partner. He called me in right after your husband called here.”

 

“Paul Grayson called you?” Ali asked.

 

“Oh, no. He didn’t call me. He called Leonard and hinted very strongly that we should think about returning your retainer. That if we did, he’d make sure some of the network’s very lucrative business got thrown in our direction.”

 

“That underhanded son of a bitch!” Ali muttered under her breath.

 

“Yes,” Marcella said. “That more or less covers it.”

 

“So I suppose I need to go looking for a new attorney.”

 

“No,”  Marcella  said.  “Not  at  all.  I  believe Leonard pretty much told him to stop throwing his weight around and put a sock in it.”

 

“He did?”

 

“Leonard told me he was in the same foursome with Paul Grayson at a charity golf tournament a number of years ago, and Paul kept shaving strokes. If there’s one thing Leonard Weldon can’t tolerate, it’s someone who cheats at golf!”

 

Among other things, Ali thought.

 

“So if you’re in, we’re in,” Marcella continued. “Weldon wants us to pursue this case to the bitter end.”

 

“Oh, I’m in all right,” Ali declared.

 

“So what did you need, then?” Marcella asked.

 

“Does anyone at your firm handle divorces?” Ali asked.

 

“I don’t,” Marcella said. “Not personally. But we just brought in a lady named Helga Myerhoff.”

 

“Wait a minute,” Ali said. “I’ve heard of her. I seem to remember she specializes in high-profile divorce cases. Don’t people call her Rottweiler Myerhoff?”

 

“That’s right,” Marcella laughed. “Or Helga the Horrible, depending. Most of the time, though, the only people dishing out those names are Helga’s opposing counsel after she takes their clients to the cleaners. Her clients praise her to the high heavens.”

 

“She works with you, then?” Ali asked.

 

“That’s right,” Marcella said. “Three months ago, Helga’s long-term partner retired. She and Leonard Weldon went to law school together a hundred years ago. When Helga decided she didn’t want to be a sole practitioner, she came knocking on Leonard’s door. But who’s looking for a divorce attorney?”

 

“I am,” Ali said in a small voice. “At least I think I am.”

 

“Do you want me to have Helga call you?”

 

“Not right now. My son and I are driving to Sedona. At the moment, we’re in the middle of the desert between Palm Springs and nowhere. Have her call me tomorrow.”

 

“Will do.” Marcella hesitated. “I don’t know you very well, but you sound down. Are you going to be all right with whatever’s going on? If you want me to call her right now . . .”

 

“No,” Ali said. “Tomorrow will be fine. As I said, my son’s with me, and he’s been a brick.”

 

“All right then.”

 

“So I’ll need to send another retainer?”

 

“Talk to Helga first,” Marcella advised. “Then you can decide, but if you’re talking to an attorney about this, you should probably also get in touch with your banker. You could find yourself up a creek without a credit card and without a checking account, either.”

 

“I think I’m okay there,” she said. “I’ve got my own checking account and my own credit card as well.”

 

“Good,” Marcella said. “Lots of women don’t.”

 

Ali closed the phone and put it in her pocket. When she looked over at Chris, he was grinning. “You’re going to hire Helga Myerhoff?” he asked.

 

“Why?” Ali returned. “Do you know her?”

 

“I’ve heard of her. Remember Sally Majors, the girl I took to the senior prom?”

 

Ali remembered the photo her son had given her that year. He had stood in front of someone’s massive fireplace decked out in a white tux, pale pink shirt, and cranberry-colored cummerbund and tie. Standing beside him, dwarfed by his size, had been a tiny girl in a full-length cranberry gown that screamed designer label. Ali had always been struck not by the beauty of the gown, but by the unremitting sadness in the girl’s eyes.

 

“I remember her,” Ali said.

 

“Her father’s a worm,” Chris said. “He was getting ready to ditch his wife. Same thing. Younger woman. He was hiding assets, doing all kinds of underhanded crap. Sally’s mother hired Helga, and she nailed him. I ran into Sally at Starbucks a few months ago. She told me all about it.”

 

“Go Helga,” Ali said. But her heart wasn’t in it.

 

After that, she turned up the music and subsided into silence. As the miles rolled by, she was surprised that she didn’t feel more. Maybe, with all that had happened in the past few days, she was simply beyond feeling anything at all. That turned out to be wrong, however. Because when she finally did start feeling, what hit her first was anger—with a capital A.

 

“How old is this girl?” she asked finally.

 

“April?” Chris returned. Ali nodded. “A little older than I am,” he said. “Maybe mid twenties.”

 

“Oh,” Ali said.

 

So this was all part and parcel of what had happened to her on Friday night. If you were forty-five and female, you were expendable—professionally and personally. Over the hill. Useless. And nobody, not the people at the station and certainly not Paul, expected her to stand up on her own two feet and fight back. Well, they were wrong—all of them.

 

Chris pulled off I-10 in Blythe for gas and for something to drink, then they forged on. They stopped for a Burger King on the far west side of Phoenix before they turned north on Arizona 101. Chris downed all of his Whopper and more than half of Ali’s.

 

It was well after midnight when they turned off I-17 and headed toward Sedona. By then they were close enough that Ali figured it was okay to call her dad. When he answered the phone, it was clear he had been sound asleep.

 

“Okay,” she said. “We’re here.”

 

“We?” he mumbled.

 

“Chris drove me over.”

 

“Good then,” Bob Larson said. “If I had known he was coming along, I wouldn’t have worried.”

 

Another put-down from the male of the species, Ali thought. “Thanks, Pop,” she said. “See you in the morning.”

 

As they drove up Andante to Skyview Way, the waning moon was just starting to disappear behind the looming presence of the red rock formation known as Sugarloaf. When Chris stopped the car and they stepped outside into the graveled driveway, the air was sharp and cold, and their breath came out in cloudy puffs. With one accord they both glanced up at the star-spangled sky.

 

“I always forget how beautiful it is here,” Chris said. “I always forget about the sky.”

 

“Me too,” Ali said.

 

“You go unlock the door, Mom,” he said. “I’ll bring the luggage.”

 

Inside the heat was on. Lamps were lit in the living room and in one bedroom. There was a note on the fridge in her father’s handwriting. “Tuna casserole is ready for the microwave.”

 

Tuna casserole was Edie Larson’s cure for whatever ailed people. If there was a death in the family or if someone wound up in the hospital, that’s what Edie would whip up in her kitchen and dispatch her husband to deliver. Ali opened the refrigerator door and glanced at her mother’s familiar Pyrex-covered dish. Seeing the scarred turquoise blue veteran from some long ago era left Ali feeling oddly comforted.

 

Chris turned up behind her. “Your luggage is in your room,” he said. He reached past Ali and grabbed one of the sodas that had also miraculously appeared on the shelf. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing toward the covered dish.”

 

“Tuna casserole,” Ali answered.

 

“Great!” Chris exclaimed. “I love that stuff.” He grabbed it out of the fridge. “Want me to heat some for you?”

 

“No thanks,” Ali said. “I’m not very hungry. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed.”

 

Chapter 5

 

cutlooseblog.com Tuesday, March 15, 2005

 

It’s five o’clock in the morning. When I typed the date and saw it was the Ides of March, I realized that it really is a time for bad news.

 

I know you’ve been writing to me. There are 106 e-mails in my in-box. From the subject lines, I know they’re not spam, either. No one is offering to sell me low-cost prescription drugs. No one is advertising Viagra. They’re all e-mails to me, and I’ll get around to reading them in a little while. I may even finally have a chance to answer them, but first I need to tell you what’s happened because, since you’ve been reading the posts, you deserve to know what’s going on.

 

My friend Reenie is no longer lost—she’s dead. Her vehicle went over the edge of a cliff during a snow storm. Her body was thrown from the wreckage. Neither she nor her SUV were located until late yesterday morning. I wanted to come here, to Arizona, to be with her family—her husband, her two young children, her parents, and her sister— and to help them as they face this grueling ordeal. I’m under no illusions that my presence here will change anything, but that’s what friends do—they come and they sit or they talk or they do nothing or everything. Sometimes friends just are.

 

Yesterday afternoon my son, my wonderful twenty-two-year-old son, took time away from his classes at UCLA to drive over to Sedona with me. We arrived after midnight at the home my Aunt Evelyn left me two years ago. When we arrived, the heat was on and so were the lights. There was tuna casserole, milk, and sodas in the fridge and coffee in the canister on the counter next to the coffeepot. (Have I mentioned that I also have wonderful parents? They run a diner just down the road, and when Chris wakes up, we’ll go there for breakfast.)

 

Over Christmas Chris installed a high-speed Internet connection here, and he also hooked up a wireless network. That means I can take my laptop and work anywhere in the house, so I’m working at the dining room table with my coffee cup near at hand.

 

The sun is up, and the view across the valley is beautiful. Because of the recent rains, everything is green and that makes Sedona’s red rocks that much more visible in contrast. It’s a lovely scene, but I’m not looking forward to being out in it. I’m sure this is going to be a long day and a tough one. I don’t know what I’ll say to Reenie’s husband or to the rest of her family. I’ve already heard hints that the authorities are exploring the possibility that Reenie committed suicide rather than face up to the awful reality of dying of ALS. I can’t accept that. I won’t accept that. Reenie was a fighter. Her daughter is only six; her son is nine. No matter what, I can’t believe that she would choose to turn away from spending every possible moment with her precious family. Ill or not, I can’t imagine she would abandon them even one single instant before she had to.

 

Bottom line, I suppose, is that I can’t accept that she would willingly abandon me, either. How’s that for being selfish?

 

But it’s not just selfishness on my part either. The last communication I had from her was a handwritten note she mailed last week, postmarked on the day she disappeared. In it she said she was in for a bumpy ride. To me that sounds like someone saying she knows it’s going to be tough but that she’s signed on for the duration. It doesn’t sound like someone who was looking for an easy way out. Reenie is one of those people who always did things the hard way—from staying too long in an untenable first marriage to finishing college long after all her contemporaries had graduated. Yes, everything I’ve read about ALS says it’s a daunting adversary with no cure and very little going for it in the way of treatment options, but my friend Reenie Bernard has always been a scrapper and a fighter. She’s never been a quitter. Why would she turn into one now?

 

Posted: 6:03 A.M. by AliR

 

As Ali read through her comment before posting it, she was struck by how similar the process was to writing in a diary—particularly the pink and blue one with the locking clasp that she had received for her twelfth birthday and had kept religiously for the better part of that week. The sentence, about Reenie’s abandonment of Ali, would have been as appropriate in a junior high schooler’s diary as it was here. The big difference was, the diary had been written for Ali’s eyes only. This was bound to be read by any number of strangers.

 

She was tempted to cut the whole thing. It seemed too personal; too private. Instead, she clicked on Send and shipped it off into the ethers. And even as she did it Ali was smart enough to realize that, by concentrating on what was going on with Reenie’s family, she was able to avoid thinking about what was going on in her own. The cell phone, left in the bedroom, was still blinking the “message waiting” signal, but Ali still hadn’t listened to Paul’s message from the night before, and she hadn’t bothered to call him back, either. Turnabout was fair play.

 

Ready for breakfast, Ali rousted her reluctant son out of bed. While he showered and dressed, Ali scrolled through and answered some of the accumulated e-mails. Lots of them still dealt with her sudden disappearance from the small screen. Others concerned her emotional post about Reenie’s going missing. Two e-mails in particular touched her:

 

Dear Ms. Reynolds,

 

I always liked seeing you on TV. And then you were gone. My grandson is letting me use his computer so I can see what you’ve written. I just wish I could see your face again. You have a nice smile. My grandson has one of those new-fangled telephone cameras, the ones they show in the commercials.

 

Maybe your son could use one of those video phones to put your picture here as well.

 

Velma Trimble, Laguna Beach

 

To: Alison Reynolds From: Carrie Fitzgerald

 

I know how your friend Reenie feels. My older brother is in the final stages of ALS. I am fifty-five. I don’t have any symptoms yet, but I do have the gene, so it’s only a matter of time.

 

I’m praying for Reenie and for her whole family. You didn’t say your friend’s last name or where she lives, but that doesn’t matter. God knows exactly who she is.

 

Yours in Christ, Carrie Fitzgerald

 

Please pray for me as well.

 

Chris, his hair still damp from the shower, sauntered into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of coffee. “What are you doing?” he asked.

 

“Reading the things people have sent to me,” she said. “Some of them are very nice.” She pushed the computer in his direction long enough for him to see the screen. Then he scanned through the list of the messages Ali had yet to answer.

 

“Couldn’t we just post their comments automatically?” she asked.

 

Chris shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Somebody has to go through and edit them. If you leave a portal open like that, pretty soon the blog will be flooded with offers for Viagra and on-line gambling.”

 

His fingers worked the keyboard with lightning speed. “But if you’d like to have a spot to post comments, I can put one in. What do you want to call it?”

 

“A comment section?” Ali asked. “From other people?”

 

Chris nodded and Ali thought for some time before she replied.

 

“How about The Forum?” she asked.

 

“Sounds good,” Chris said. Several minutes later he handed the computer back, open to the blog page where there was now a section called The Forum. “I’ve added a caution that says, unless otherwise stated, comments may be posted. You shouldn’t post any comments that were sent before the caution went up. But here’s how you do it.”

 

After a few minutes’ worth of practice, Ali had the comment-posting issues under control.

 

“Great,” Chris said. “Now, what’s for breakfast?”

 

“I don’t know about you,” Ali told him, “but I’m having one of my mother’s world-famous Sugarloaf Café sweet rolls. I don’t care what the scale says tomorrow morning.”

 

“Let’s go then,” Chris said. “I’ll drive.”

 

Several other vehicles had beaten them to the punch by the time they pulled in at 6:30 a.m. to the sugarloaf parking lot.

 

Myrtle Hanson, Ali’s grandmother, had started the Sugarloaf in what had once been her husband’s gas station when she was a recent widow with twin four-year-old daughters to support. Though she lacked formal training and business experience, she’d had loads of grim determination and a killer sweet-roll recipe. In fact, it was a plate of those sweet rolls, delivered by her daughters to a local banker, that had launched the Sugarloaf in the mid nineteen-fifties. After tasting the sweet rolls, Carter Sweeney had ignored Myrtle’s inexperience and had given her the loan that allowed her to go into her business.

 

By the time Myrtle passed on, the Sugarloaf’s humble roots were no longer quite so apparent. Myrtle had left the thriving business along with the sweet-roll recipe to her grown daughters. Situated at the bottom of the distinctive rock formation that shared its name, the Sugarloaf had been a Sedona-area hangout and its sweet rolls a local staple for fifty years.

 

In high school, Ali had been more than slightly ashamed of the humble Sugarloaf with its gray Formica countertops and down-home atmosphere. Now that she was older, however, Ali had some grasp of the courage, grit, and fortitude it must have taken for her grandmother to start and keep the business running. She had also come to value the loyalty and determination of her parents and Aunt Evie in keeping the place going.

 

On this crisp March morning, the moment Ali stepped out of the Cayenne, the smell of freshly baked rolls beckoned across the parking lot and across the years. And stepping into the warm, steamy atmosphere was almost like stepping into a gray-Formica and red-vinyl time machine. For Ali, the Sugarloaf seemed forever unchanged and unchanging.

 

As soon as Chris appeared in the doorway, a smiling Edie Larson darted out from behind the counter and clasped her grandson in a fierce hug. “Look who’s here!” she announced to the restaurant at large. Then to Chris, she said, “I told your grandfather to make sure there was nothing at the house for breakfast. I was hoping that way we’d get to see you bright and early.”

 

Edie let loose of Chris and turned him over to Jan Howard, a waitress who had come on board after Aunt Evie died. Jan was a red-haired, bony, seventy-something widow, who called all her customers either “Honeybun” or “Darlin’.” Jan’s false teeth tended to click when she talked, and her apron pockets always bulged with one or more packets of unfiltered Camels. She was also hardworking and utterly dependable.

 

“Christopher, Christopher, Christopher!” she exclaimed. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”

 

Meanwhile, Edie turned to her daughter. As she did so, the look on her face changed from joy to sadness. “I’m so sorry about Reenie,” she said, hugging Ali close. “Come in, come in. Sit right here at the counter. That way I can talk to you between customers.”

 

Before Ali could slip away to the counter, she, too, had to endure a smoky-haired hug from Jan as well. Meanwhile, from the kitchen, Bob Larson saluted the new arrivals with a raised spatula as he placed a steaming plate up in the order window and pounded the bell to produce two sharp dings, letting either Edie or Jan know it was time to retrieve an order.

 

Unasked, Edie poured coffee for both Ali and Chris and pushed the cream pitcher in her grandson’s direction.

 

“Your father’s off his game this morning,” she continued. “Stayed up too late waiting for you to call. He’s already botched two orders. If I were actually paying the man, I suppose I’d have to dock him. How come it took you so long to get here—I thought you were leaving at two? And what’ll you have, besides sweet rolls, I mean?”

 

Chris ordered ham and eggs. Ali ordered a roll along with one egg and two strips of bacon, then she turned around and surveyed the room. In the old days, Edie and Aunt Evie and the other waitresses had worn black-and-white uniforms. Those had now given way to blue-and-white Sugarloaf Café sweatshirts (available for purchase at the cash register), tennis shoes, and jeans.

 

Ali’s sweet roll arrived huge and soft and oozing icing. She had just picked up the first sticky piece to put in her mouth when her cell phone rang. She glanced at it, saw it was Paul, and didn’t answer.

 

“Still playing hard to get, I see,” said a male voice close to her shoulder.

 

Ali turned to look. The man seated on the next stool, unlike every other man in the place, was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and a colorful and properly knotted red-and-blue tie. He was broad-shouldered and bull-necked, and his salt-and-pepper hair was definitely receding.

 

“Excuse me?” she said.

 

“I’m sure you’ve forgotten me long ago,” the man continued. “But nobody around here is allowed to forget you. Your mother won’t stand for it.”

 

Pointing, he indicated the wall behind the cash register. Plastered there, right along with the business license and the fire-department plaque for maximum occupancy, were a dozen or more professionally produced publicity shots. Some of them dated from Ali’s early work in Milwaukee. Others came from her time at Fox News. Most of them, taken for whatever reason, came from Ali’s long stint as anchor on the station in LA. All of them testified to Edie Larson’s unstinting motherly pride in her daughter’s accomplishments. Seeing them there together made Ali blush with embarrassment.

 

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, then,” she said. “You know who I am, but I’m sorry to say, I don’t know you.”

 

“Dave Holman, Class of ’77, at your service,” he said. Grinning, he held out his hand. Ali brushed as much of the icing off her fingers as possible before placing her still slightly sticky hand in his. “Detective Dave Holman,” he added. “Good to see you in person again after all these years.”

 

Ali returned to her sweet roll. “Obviously my parents keep you up to date on what’s going on with me. What have you been doing in the meantime?”

 

Holman shrugged. “Spent some time in the military—the Marines—and I’m still in the reserves,” he answered. “Graduated from college. Got married; had kids; got divorced. All the usual stuff. Now I’m a homicide detective with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s department. But back at Mingus Mountain High, Billy Garrett was a good buddy of mine. Remember him?”

 

Ali tried to reconcile this powerful-looking, middle-aged man—this Dave Holman—with the tall scrawny boy she remembered from high school. As for Billy Garrett? She recalled him as an even skinnier but much shorter kid—a regular smart-ass—who, his senior year, had mustered up enough courage to invite Ali to the prom. And she had turned him down. Not because she was playing hard to get, as Dave Holman seemed to assume, and not because Billy Garrett wasn’t tall enough, either.

 

Finances had been tight in the Larson household the last two years Ali was in high school. Remodeling the restaurant had taken more time and cash than anyone had anticipated. That was the reason Ali had graduated from high school with no class ring to show for it and with no yearbook for those two years, either. She had helped out at the restaurant during the summer and on weekends, but she had done so without pay, and her tips had gone into the family coffers to help keep things afloat. An academic scholarship to Northern Arizona University was the only reason she’d been able to go on to college.

 

But right now, with her mother standing there behind the counter, smiling and waiting for Dave Holman to place his order, Ali couldn’t very well tell Dave the real reason she had spurned Billy Garrett’s prom invitation—she simply hadn’t been able to afford a dress.

 

“The usual?” Edie asked Dave. He nodded. Edie hurried away, jotting down his order as she went.

 

“I never have been big on dancing,” Ali said. “Not then, and not now, either.”

 

“Too bad,” Dave said, shaking his head. “Broke poor Billy’s heart. He went straight out and married the very next tall blond he ran into. Her name was Doreen, I think. She was a handful. You could have spared the poor guy all kinds of grief and at least one really bad marriage if you had just said yes our senior year instead of no.”

 

At that point, though, the corners of his mouth went slightly upward, and Ali realized Holman was teasing her—most likely for the benefit of several other Sugarloaf regulars who were listening in on the conversation with avid attention.

 

“Billy didn’t really marry that woman because I turned him down for the prom, did he?” she asked.

 

Dave grinned. “Makes a great story, though. And Billy’s fine, by the way. He’s a professor of philosophy somewhere in Colorado, and his second wife is great.”

 

For the next few seconds, Ali tried to imagine Billy Garrett either studying or teaching philosophy. It just didn’t compute.

 

Meanwhile Dave Holman turned serious. “You’re here because of Reenie Holzer?” he asked.

 

It was always easier to remember girls from high school by their maiden names rather than by their married ones. Ali nodded.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I remember the way the two of you were in high school—always together. One tall, one short. One blond, one brunette. One thin and the other”—he paused—“well, rounder,” he concluded diplomatically. “Reenie always had way more curves than you did.”

 

By mentioning Reenie’s name, Detective Holman had given Ali an opening, and she took it. “Are you making any progress finding out what happened?”

 

“Some,” he said.

 

“I’m planning on going up to Flag later this morning to see Howie and the kids and to find out if there’s anything I can do.”

 

“I’m guessing he’ll be pretty busy this morning,” Dave said.

 

“How come?” Ali asked.

 

Dave set down his coffee cup and lowered his voice, although by then most of the people who had been eavesdropping on Ali and Dave’s encounter had resumed their own breakfast conversations. “I talked to Lee Farris last night. He’s my counterpart in homicide in Coconino County. He’s planning on bringing Mr. Bernard in for questioning this morning.”

 

“Howie?” Ali asked. “They’re going to be questioning Howie about this?”

 

“We have to talk to everyone,” Dave said. “That’s how you get to the bottom of what really happened.”

 

“But you’re not saying he did it, are you?”

 

“I’m saying we have to talk to everyone,” Dave repeated firmly. “At this point it could be an accident, but no one’s ruling out suicide, either. If you start down Schnebly Hill Road in a snowstorm, you’re pretty much asking for trouble. And considering what she was looking at, with spending the next few years dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, who could blame her if she did choose a shortcut? I sure as hell would.”

 

“But what about her kids?” Ali objected. “From what I understand, she had just been diagnosed and was still in reasonably good health. I know her better than that. She wouldn’t just abandon her kids like that, not before she had to.”

 

Dave shrugged. “She might,” he said.

 

Bob Larson emerged from the kitchen carrying Chris and Ali’s orders. He set the plates down in front of them. “Morning, Dave,” he said. “See you’ve already met my grandson, Chris.”

 

Dave shook his head. “I haven’t, actually. I’ve just been jawing with your daughter.” He reached in front of Ali and offered his hand to Chris. “Glad to meet you,” he said. “Your mother and I go back a long way.” Noticing Chris’s UCLA sweatshirt he added, “Think the Bruins will make it all the way to the Final Four this year?”

 

Chris responded with an enthusiastic affirmative. Chris, Dave, and her father wandered into a spirited discussion of which teams were likely to make it to the championship and which ones wouldn’t. Meanwhile Ali was left to consider how easily men’s conversations—regardless of whether the participants were friends or strangers—immediately devolved into sports talk. It was one of those annoying male traits, an auto-cloaking device designed to keep each of them from knowing anything personal about the others.

 

Right now mindless chatter was keeping Ali from learning more about what really mattered— whatever it was that had befallen her friend Reenie.

 

“Hey, sport,” Bob said to Chris. “What say we hit the slopes for a while this afternoon, assuming your grandmother will give me time off for good behavior.”

 

Chris glanced questioningly at Ali. “It’s fine with me,” she said. “I’m on my way to Flagstaff. I have no idea when I’ll be back.”

 

“Your grandfather can have the afternoon off,” Edie agreed, “but only if he gets his tail back in the kitchen and finishes up the rest of breakfast.”

 

Waving his wife’s good-natured nagging aside, Bob retreated to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Ali’s phone rang once more. She could see from the display that Paul was calling again. Leaving her place at the counter, she went out to the parking lot to take the call.

 

“What?”

 

“What?” Paul repeated. “Not even hello? Not even good morning? Why didn’t you call me back?”

 

“April,” Ali said bluntly. “I believe her name is April.”

 

 “My administrative assistant,” he said. “What about her?” He was cool, wonderfully cool.

 

“I hear she has plans to get married soon—to you,” Ali told him. “And then there’s Charmaine as well—something about your skinny-dipping with Charmaine. Tell her she’s fired by the way. I don’t think I want to have anything more to do with her.”

 

Paul paused but only for a moment before going on the counterattack. “Who’ve you been talking to?” he wanted to know. “What kind of nonsense is this?”

 

“It doesn’t matter who my unnamed sources are,” she returned. “And it’s not nonsense.”

 

“I asked you to talk to that attorney of yours— Marvella or something like that. Did you do it?”

 

“Marcella,” Ali corrected. “And, yes, I talked to her all right. She told me that you’d made some pointed suggestions to one of her firm’s managing partners about what kind of good things they could expect if they convinced me to drop my wrongful dismissal case. But I’m not dropping it, Paul, and they’re not dropping me, either. If the old guys at the station get to stay on the news desk, then the old girls should get to stay on as well. What’s fair is fair. Now let’s talk about April and Charmaine.”

 

“Come on, Ali,” Paul returned. “Forget them. They’re not important. Those women mean less than nothing to me. You should know that by now.”

 

“Actually,” Ali returned, “I don’t know anything of the kind. “ ‘Those women’ as you call them may not mean anything to you, but they do to me. What they’re saying is that it’s over between us, Paul. Totally and completely over. I’ll be consulting a divorce attorney later on today—a lady who’s associated with Marcella’s firm. Her last name is Myerhoff; first name is Helga. You may have heard of her.”

 

There was a pause. Helga Myerhoff’s name packed some weight in certain circles. Ali knew beyond a doubt that Helga had handled divorce proceedings against more than one of Paul’s philandering pals.

 

“Ali Bunny . . .” he began.

 

“Don’t call me that!” she snapped.

 

“Ali, be reasonable. We can fix this. Or if we can’t we can do this amicably. There’s no need to . . .”

 

“I don’t want to fix it,” she interrupted. “And I’ve no intention of being amicable. The way you work, I’m quite certain that wouldn’t be in my best interests.”

 

Much to Ali’s surprise, she remained amazingly dispassionate. She should have been in tears. She should have been devastated. But there was part of her that felt nothing but relief.

 

“Look, Paul,” she said. “It’s clear that our marriage has been on its way out for some time now. Maybe I was too busy to pay attention and figure out what was really going on. But I’m not too busy now, because, as you may have noticed, I’ve recently lost my job. That means I have the luxury of paying attention and I’m not liking what I’m finding—April and Charmaine included.

 

“And don’t hassle me about not returning phone calls. You didn’t return mine over the weekend until you were damned good and ready. Was April off with you wherever you were? Or was it Charmaine, since she didn’t bother to come to work on Monday? Is that why you didn’t call me back?”

 

“Be reasonable,” Paul insisted. “I’m sure we can get to the bottom of all this.”

 

“Get to the bottom of what?” she demanded. “The fact that you’ve been going around with your pants unzipped and screwing everything in sight?”

 

Paul sighed. The sigh was supposed to mean that she was being unreasonable. And demanding. “Just tell me when you’ll be home,” he said.

 

“You’re not listening to me,” she returned coldly. “I won’t be coming home. My friend Reenie is dead. I came to Sedona to be with her family and with mine. I plan on staying as long as I want to.”

 

“But what about . . .”

 

“You have April and Charmaine,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”

 

Chapter 6

 

Ali had hung up the phone and was about to step back inside, when the blaring headline in a newspaper vending machine for the Flagstaff Daily Sentinel caught her eye: local woman dies in snowy crash. Searching through her coat pocket she came up with enough change to purchase a copy.

 

The Coconino County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the death of Misty Irene Bernard, age forty-five, Executive Director of the Flagstaff YWCA, who died over the weekend when her Yukon plunged off Schnebly Hill Road and rolled several hundred feet. Ms. Bernard, who was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident, was thrown from the vehicle.

 

Ms. Bernard was reported missing late Friday, twenty-four hours after she failed to return home  from a doctor’s appointment in  Scottsdale. Coconino County Sheriff’s Office investigators have been trying to trace her activities from the time she left Flagstaff on Thursday until her body was located near the wreckage of her vehicle on Monday.

 

Investigators tracing Ms. Bernard’s movements have so far been unable to determine why she would have attempted to drive the little traveled treacherous route between Flagstaff and Sedona during a snowstorm so severe that it forced brief nighttime closures on both I-40 and I-17.

 

People close to the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity suggested that, after receiving a dire medical diagnosis, she may have committed suicide. Evidence of both drug and alcohol use were found at the scene, but toxicology reports won’t be available for several weeks. An autopsy is scheduled for sometime later this week.

 

Married to NAU history professor, Howard M. Bernard, the dead woman is survived by her two young children and her parents, longtime Cotton-wood residents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Holzer. Bernard, an NAU graduate, had worked for the YWCA for the past ten years and had served as executive director for the past five.

 

Funeral services are pending.