LITMIR.BIZ

      For Mom and Dad, and for Scott—who believed even when I didn’t

      Contents

Dedication

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Part Two

       Fifteen

       Sixteen

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-One

       Twenty-Two

       Twenty-Three

       Part Three

       Twenty-Four

       Twenty-Five

       Twenty-Six

       Twenty-Seven

       Twenty-Eight

       Twenty-Nine

       Thirty

       Thirty-One

       Thirty-Two

       Part Four

       Thirty-Three

       Thirty-Four

       Thirty-Five

       Thirty-Six

       Thirty-Seven

       Thirty-Eight

       Thirty-Nine

       Forty

       Acknowledgments

       Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Flames.

      I clenched handfuls of Bliss’s silky-thick mane and squeezed my eyes shut, searching my memories for the black haze of smoke. For the smell of burning wood and plastic, of smoldering Phillies shirts and baby photos. For sirens and screams. For anything at all that hinted at fire.

      For Dad.

      Beneath me, the horse snorted. I sighed, relaxed my grip, and smoothed her mane back into place. Nothing. Once again all I’d conjured up was a big fat bunch of nothing. Over four weeks since the accident that had ended my father’s life, and the memories still resisted my every attempt to unlock them.

      I opened my eyes, just as something flashed in my mind.

      White walls, white lights. A white lab coat. The searing aroma of bleach.

      My skin prickled. From the hospital I’d been taken to, maybe? After the fire? It was the closest I’d come to remembering anything so far.

      I grasped at the images, tried to drag them into view, but they vanished as fast as they’d appeared.

      Now that my eyes were open, what wouldn’t disappear was the picket fence blocking our path, its white posts stabbing upward and bisecting an unrelenting sprawl of green, green, green.

      The other thing that wouldn’t disappear,

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