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The light seemed dimmer. The air colder. Perhaps it was night. She didn’t know. She felt her body growing weaker. She closed them again.
    After what seemed an eternity, she heard the scraping of a small boat being pulled up onto the beach. Heavy boots crunching the stones, coming closer.
    “I think she’s dead,” said young Jack.
    “Sure as hell lying still as death.”
    Aimée wanted desperately to tell them she was not dead. But no sound would come from her mouth.
    “Not just dead, Jack,” said the one called Harry. “This woman was murdered.”
    “Murdered?”
    “Damned right. Look at these cuts. This straight one here to the left of her middle. That wasn’t made by her falling off any rocks. It’s a gut wound made by a knife. And look here. See that? The letter A carved into her chest.”
    Hearing Harry’s words, the horror of what had happened today on the island, first at the studio and then at the cliff, came flooding back into Aimée’s memory.
    “ A ?” asked Jack. “What do you suppose A stands for?”
    “Beats me. Maybe her name starts with an A .”
    Aimée concentrated as hard as she could on moving something. A finger. A lip. Anything that would convince them she was still alive. At last, with the greatest of effort, an eyelid fluttered.
    “She’s not dead,” said Jack.
    “She’s dead.”
    “She’s not. I saw her eye move.” The boy went down on his knees and put his ear to her chest. “I don’t know. Maybe she is dead. No, wait. I can feel her heart beating.”
    He put his ear to her lips. “She’s still breathing. We have to take her back.”
    Four strong hands lifted and carried Aimée to the dingy. They gently lowered her into a puddle of freezing water. And then pushed off.
    “Christ, if she survives this it’ll be a damn miracle.”
    Yes, it would, she thought. A damn miracle indeed.
    She could feel the waves pushing them back toward the cliff, but somehow the boys managed to get themselves up and over the breakers without damage.
    She felt the dinghy banging against the side of the larger craft. Perhaps she would live after all.
    “Here, slip her into the net.” The older man was speaking again. “And you, Jack, you climb up here and help me haul her in. Hell, she don’t look no heavier than a big cod anyway.”
    Aimée felt herself swinging for a moment in the air. Then she was lifted up and over the gunwale and lowered onto the deck of the rocking craft.
    “Here. Wrap her in this.”
    She felt rough wool encase her body.
    “All right, let’s get her the hell back to port. With any luck, we’ll run into the police boat and pass her on to them.”
    The rolling of the waves slowed. The boat moved.
    She felt the boy’s ear press gently against her lips. His cheeks were smooth, like a child’s. Like Teddy’s.
    She mouthed a single word. But it was barely a whisper.
    Still, the boy must have heard it. He looked up.
    “What did she say?” asked his brother.
    “Dunno. Couldn’t quite make it out. Sounded like . . .”
    A I M É E N E V E R L E A R N E D if the boy called Jack had correctly heard the name she’d whispered, because before he could tell his brother what it sounded like, darkness fell all around her. And Aimée Marie Garnier Whitby, of Paris, Provence and Portland, Maine, in her twenty-­eighth year, slipped into death as quietly and smoothly as she might have slipped into the depths of the ocean.

 
    Chapter 5
    P E N F I E L D A C A D E M Y ’ S N E W L Y minted valedictorian walked to the lectern. She waited, scanning the audience, smiling warmly, until the applause died down. With the exception of a few toddlers squirming in their parents’ arms, every eye was focused on her. Aimée experienced a shiver of excitement.
    Her eyes went to the faculty seating area. Sought and found Byron Knowles. Her AP English teacher was a married poet with languid looks and a perpetual two-­day growth of beard. Byron, or as she so often teased him, Lord Byron,