Marcia Talley: In Death's Shadow

Before Paul's finger could find the doorbell, Brian swung the door wide. Damn. I had just bet Paul that it would play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture , complete with cannon.

"Hi, Hannah," Brian said. "Come in, come in." He extended his hand. "You must be Paul."

While Paul shook Brian's hand I stepped over the threshold, dripping rainwater all over Valerie's spotless marble foyer. At first I thought that Brian had cut his hair short, but when he turned his head, I noticed he'd pulled it back into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. He'd grown a mustache, too. He looked like a spokesmodel for IKEA.

"Valerie will be down in a second," Brian told us. "Miranda was a little late getting out of bed this morning."

My eyes followed the gentle curve of the staircase as it wound its way up to a balcony-style landing. Over my head an ornate chandelier, dripping prisms, blazed in the early morning light. Why on earth did Valerie need to get a babysitter? I wondered. I could only assume that the Stones were between nannies.

"Gorgeous house, Brian," I commented dryly. "How long have you lived here?"

"Just moved in," he said, pointing to the living room where several packing boxes sat open on the parquet near a casual grouping of overstuffed white leather furniture. The north wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling fieldstone fireplace, and on the opposite side of the room, a picture window overlooked the bay. Even in the wretched weather, the view was spectacular. I could see now why Valerie liked to drink her coffee on the patio.

"Big," said Paul.

Brian laughed. "Yeah. Why just the other day I went looking for my glasses and discovered a bedroom I didn't even know we had!"

"Oh, Bry, you are impossible!" Valerie called down from the landing. "Don't you believe a word of what he says! It's only thirty-five hundred square feet, and Brian designed every square inch of it."

"Impressive," I said. I wasn't particularly good at math, but counting the atrium, and with twelve-foot ceilings everywhere else, I figured the cubic footage of Brian's humble abode probably approached that of Buckingham Palace.

With a hint of a smile on his lips, Brian turned to watch his wife and daughter skip down the stairs. Miranda's white-blond hair was bound with fat, pink rubber bands into two ponytails that coiled like springs on either side of her head. She hopscotched across the tiles, then stood, feet primly together, on the plush Bokhara carpet.

Behind her, Valerie looked fresh-scrubbed and radiant in a hot pink Spandex jogging bra and matching shorts, an outfit that rendered my husband temporarily speechless. I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. "Paul, this is my friend Valerie."

Valerie bent at the waist to whisper in Miranda's ear. "Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Ives, Miranda."

Miranda looked up at me sideways through a fringe of colorless lashes. "Hello." She stuck out a foot. "I have new shoes."

"Indeed you do," I said. "What a pretty pink."

Miranda tapped her foot on the carpet and the heel of her tennis shoe lit up like an emergency vehicle. "They flash."

Brian laid a broad hand on the top of his daughter's head. "'All the better to see you with, my dear,'" he quoted.

Valerie produced a Little Red Riding Hood slicker from the hall closet and helped Miranda into it. All the child needed was a basket of goodies and she'd be ready to set off through the woods to grandmother's house.

Valerie slung a duffel bag over her shoulder. "Ready or not, here we come!"

"Prepare yourself," I said.

Laughing, Brian scooped Miranda up in his arms and we followed him out, into the fury of the storm.

It could have been wetter, I suppose, like at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

Our team, whittled down to a dozen waterlogged, but spirited individuals-I shared DNA with half of them-rendezvoused at the Washington Monument, where we slogged around in puddles up to our ankles and fortified ourselves with the water du jour -Dasani-and containers of Yoplait served up with plastic spoons by volunteers in official yellow Race for the Cure®T-shirts.

Somewhere down on Constitution near the Ellipse, we'd left the children, damp but happy, in the capable hands of Emily and her father, but we'd long ago lost track of Brian and Dennis, who had gone off in search of a battery for Brian's digital camera. One of those underwater models would have been far more practical.

The rest of my team was packed-elbow-to-elbow, along with 55,000 of our closest friends-into two blocks of Constitution Avenue that normally accommodated eight lanes of rush hour traffic. I sipped my water, intrigued, as the crowd began to sort itself into distinct clusters around me.

Behind Connie, a man and a woman waited with their arms wrapped protectively around their daughter, not yet thirty, but, sadly, already wearing the pink T-shirt that identified her as a breast cancer survivor.

Next to them, a husband snapped photograph after photograph of his wife as she mugged for the camera, switching the bill of her pink ball cap forward, backward, and sideways, laughing merrily into the lens.

A Neanderthal in short-shorts barged past to join a pack of eight or nine individuals, all running-their bibs proclaimed-in honor of Marjorie. As I watched, a woman who had been bent over retying a shoelace stood, and I could read the writing on her shirt: I'M MARJORIE.

I was thinking, Way to go, Marjorie! when Connie nudged my arm with the hand she was using to hold her water bottle. "Look behind you," she whispered. "That just breaks my heart."

I turned slowly, casually, to see what Connie was talking about.

A thirtyish guy with a profile right off a Roman coin knelt on the wet pavement, helping his daughter, around four, adjust her rain cape. Through the plastic, the little girl's bib read: IN MEMORY OF MOMMY.

I swallowed hard, thinking how close Emily might have come to running this race in memory of me. My throat tightened as I recalled that awful day when, still groggy from the anesthesia, I'd awakened in the hospital to hear Emily sobbing in the hallway just outside my room.

I stole a glance at Valerie and knew, instantly, even before she spoke, that she was thinking the same thing. "That little girl's mother must have fought very, very hard," Valerie whispered.

I found Valerie's hand and squeezed it, too choked up to speak. I stared into the distance instead, toward the huge balloon archway that marked the starting line, then back into the mob of runners-north, south, east-in any direction other than that of the sad-eyed little girl and her handsome father.

My eyes skimmed the crowd. On the fringes, near the curb, stood a woman, her pink shirt showing through a clear plastic raincoat. Even from ten feet away I could tell her eyes were rimmed with red.

I nudged Valerie. "Look. See that woman over there? Is she all by herself?"

"Don't think so. See those two guys? Just behind her?"

But as Valerie spoke, the men moved away, confirming my suspicion that the woman was alone. She hugged herself, arms laced tightly across her chest as if trying to contain some private grief.

"Here, hold my water for a minute, will you?"

I elbowed my way through the mob until I was even with the woman. "You okay?" I asked, stepping up on the curb.

Even the rain couldn't hide the tears that coursed down her cheeks. "My sister was supposed to run with me today." She drew a ragged breath, gulping air. "But she… she died last week."

It was probably my imagination, but the rain seemed to fall harder then, drumming a dull rat-a-tat-tat on the bill of my cap. I slipped my arm around the woman's shoulders. "It's been four years for me. How about you?"

“Six years in September."