Twenty-Five Years Ago Today Read Online Free PDF Page A

but she recalled
every horrible detail.
    She and her cousin had both been little girls
together, but the wrong one grew up.
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    25 Years Ago Today
    Mr. and Mrs. George R. Mann of Fremont are
honored with a surprise party for their 35th wedding
anniversary.
     
    K ris drank a glass of
red wine, the alcohol warming her insides and relaxing her groggy
brain. She shouldn't mix Tylenol and alcohol, but hell, maybe the
combination would doubly knock her out.
    She drifted into a restless slumber at 10
a.m., thinking about Nicole, and awoke unrefreshed at 12:30 p.m.
from a dream of Diana Ferguson. The yearbook photograph stood out
as real in her mind as the picture of her cousin on the bureau. She
shuddered under the flannel blankets.
    An age gap had separated Nicole and Diana,
the years that brought first dates, prom corsages and graduation
parties. Kris couldn't imagine Nicole as a college student;
couldn't picture her without the braids that hung straight down
like exclamation points; couldn't envision her as one of Holly's
bridesmaids, in a clinging teal sheath with off-the-shoulder straps
and a slit up the back that made R.J.'s grandmother arch her
eyebrows.
    Kris munched an apple, half-heartedly swept
cat food off the floor and opened a true crime novel she'd been
meaning to read. Yet Diana continued to haunt her.
    She grabbed her car keys. She knew a place to
learn more about Diana Ferguson.
    Twenty minutes later, Kris scoured crowded
shelves in the Fremont Public Library’s local historical section.
She pulled out Diana's yearbook and a dusty film caked her
hand.
    Flipping through the pages of teachers in the
chemistry lab and teenage girls in formal gowns, Kris looked for
Diana's dark hair and sober expression. She didn't spot Diana in
the prom court, nor on the pages that commemorated a class trip to
an amusement park, the senior banquet or graduation day.
    Had Diana skipped those events? Dex said she
was quiet. Kris had attended private school, and had therefore
never walked the Fremont High halls, but she felt a kinship with
Diana. Neither of them had been part of the in-crowd. Kris hadn’t
belonged to any crowd, for that matter.
    Although she had expected to run across it,
shock rippled through Kris when she found the photograph from the
newspaper. Underneath the caption, students could note their
nicknames. Diana had written "Di."
    Die.
    Kris pored through the remaining pages. An
unsmiling Diana appeared in a shot of the History Club. She stood
between the teacher and a classmate named Yvonne Harper. The
striking thing about the photo was the History Club adviser, a Brad
Pitt look-alike, hardly older than his students.
    "Alex Thaddeus," Kris murmured. "Wow."
    All that wavy blond hair and the profile of a
Greek god. That must be why the club attracted a dozen girls.
    At the end of the book, Kris skimmed the
personal information about the graduates. Diana had belonged to the
National Honor Society. Kris flipped to review the photos again.
This girl seemed the type to attend college, or work in a
professional job.
    Kris turned back to the information page,
where most seniors had included a paragraph acknowledging friends
or family. Diana wrote, "Thanks to Mom, Cheryl, Mr. T and most of
all, to my beloved father."
    Cheryl. That was probably her sister, Cheryl
Soares. Maybe Alex Thaddeus was Mr. T. Kris jotted his name on a
pad with the other facts she had gleaned about Diana Ferguson.
    Hoping to discover more, Kris examined the
yearbook from Diana's junior year. She identified Diana only once,
in the History Club photo. Even in black and white, Kris could tell
Diana's dark eyes had crinkled in the corners with a laugh. As a
junior, Diana looked like a different girl.
    Kris slid the books back onto the shelf and
returned to the main library. She hesitated by a stack of telephone
directories, then picked up the Fremont area one. She riffled
through the white pages for Ferguson. And froze.
    There it