Paige scanned the handful of parents who had made the trip to Mount Court for the race, but she recognized none.

"I'm only sorry that I didn't have anything with me," he went on more quietly. "The last thing either of us needs is for you to be pregnant right now."

Paige didn't want to think about that possibility. She didn't want to think about anything to do with what had happened in Mara's backyard.

She cleared her throat, then said, "Can we talk about this another time?"

"What's wrong with now?"

"I'm in the middle of a race."

"And you have nothing to do for the next fifteen minutes, when, if we're lucky, someone will come out of the woods." He straightened, lifting the tip of the umbrella so that he could see her. "Frankly, this course sucks.

Bystanders can't see a thing. How can we expect to attract alumni and parents if everything takes place in the woods? And that's not to mention the safety factor. What if something were to happen in there?"

"The girls rarely run alone. If one gets hurt, another can run out for help. It happens to be a beautiful course. And on a day like this, they're better off in the woods than out here."

She scanned the road for Peter, intent on excusing herself to speak with him. But he was nowhere in sight.

"So," Noah said. "How will OUI girls place?"

Safer ground. Official business. That was all right. "My guess? For our team, Merry third, Annie second, and Sara first."

"Sara's that good?"

That good.

"It's remarkable, really," he said, sounding almost buoyant. "This is only the second year she's run. She started last year in high school.

Reluctantly."

"Why reluctantly?" Paige asked, daring him a glance. He was wearing a slicker not unlike Peter's. Its hood had a visor that protected his glasses, though not very well. The lenses were spotted with rain.

"Reluctantly was the way she did most every thing," he said. "She was having trouble getting along with her mother, and it tinged every aspect of her life. Her grades fell. She withdrew, even from friends.

There were several instances of shoplifting."

"Sara?"

"Sara."

Paige couldn't imagine it, but Noah seemed to know what he was talking about.

"It was never much of anything," he went on, "a lipstick here, a hair ribbon there. She was clearly trying to punish her mother. But it was the old storyshe wasn't hurting her mother so much as she was hurting herself.

Rather than prosecuting the local police put her on probation. One of the stipulations was that she be involved in afternoon sports at school. So she started running. Took her anger at the world out on the pavement."

Paige knew well the stern look Sara often wore when she was running.

"That explains it, then. She's still doing it. But you'd think the anger would be dissipated some by now. Out of sight, out of mind kind of thing."

He grunted. "It's never that easy."

"Will she talk about it?"

"Not to me, that's for sure," he said in a way that gave Paige pause.

There were obvious reasons why Sara wouldn't talk to Noahhis position of authority his unpopularity with the students. Still, she caught a sudden glimpse of familiarityan expression, a gesture, a look.

"Why's that?" she asked, though suddenly, absurdly, she knew. At least, she thought she did. There was the different last namebut the same long legs, the same sand-streaked hair, and the interest Noah took in Sara, an interest that he passed off as the empathy of one newcomer to Mount Court for another but that was suspiciously intent. It seemed suddenly too convenient that they l were both new to the school, both alone, both runners.

Noah looked uncomfortable.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, feeling hurt. They had been as physically intimate as two people could be, yet he had withheld this very basic fact from her. But then, perhaps "withheld" was the wrong word. They didn't know much about each other, period. Physical intimacy had been totally premature.

Unpremeditated. Impulsive. Wrong.

He took off his glasses, shook them, put them back on. "We agreed that it would be easier for her to assimilate if she didn't have the onus of being the Head's daughter. It was a wise move, given my dubious popularity."

Paige knew that the "dubious popularity" was mutual. Noah wasn't wild about Mount Court either. "Did you take this job solely because of her?"

"Not solely. Being Head of School has been a longtime goal of mine.

But we had to do something with Sara. She needed to be away from her mother. I had been on the lookout for positions, and while Mount Court wouldn't have been my first choice, it was the only opening at the time."

So he was a father. It was a new thought, a strange thought that of necessity altered her image of him. "What about her name? Is Dickinson part of the ploy?"

"No. It's her legal name."

"Your wife's?"

"Ex-wife's, and no. It's the name of Liv's second husband. Sara's been using it for years."

He didn't like that. Paige could tell by the steel in his voice. "How old was she when you were divorced?"

"Three."

"Wow. So young."

"Too young to feel the sting of the breakup."

"Not too young to miss her father. Did your wife have custody right from the start?"

"It made the most sense," he argued defensively.

She wondered about the nature of the man, that he could leave a three-year-old child.

Granted, she didn't know the details of the breakup of his marriage and didn't care to, thank youstill, it smacked of the insensitivity that she had accused him of the very first time they'd met.