LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      June 8

      It was only a nightmare. An awful, impossible dream. Any minute, Eve Stuart was sure she would wake up in her own bed and the horror would be over. Since it was Sunday, she’d settle Molly, her five-year-old, in front of the television with a bowl of cereal to watch cartoons. Then she’d call her mom, as she did every Sunday morning, and they would chat for an hour about what was going on in their respective worlds.

      She knew exactly how the conversation would go. Her mom would ask if she had any new clients at the interior design studio, while sounds of coffee being poured filtered from each end of the line. After that, she’d want to know what Molly had done in preschool that week. Since Olivia Stuart was mayor of Grand Springs, Colorado, and on the board of nearly every charity in town, Eve would then get an update on the latest fund-raiser, along with an earful about how the city council was trying to railroad this issue or that cause. Grand Springs was more than a thousand miles from Santa Barbara, but she and her mom had never let the distance interfere. They had always been close.

      Eve leaned her forehead against the window, too numb to notice the sunlight dancing off the puddles left by the storm. She’d been nervous about coming back, and her reasons had nothing to do with her family. But assuming she wouldn’t be here long, she’d come to attend her brother’s wedding and to spend the weekend with her mom. Instead, the wedding had been called off because the bride disappeared, massive mud slides and a blackout had thrown the town into utter chaos, and she had spent yesterday in the chapel and this morning on a park bench across from Vanderbilt Memorial hospital trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

      Her mother had collapsed on Friday night. A heart attack, Dr. Jennings had told her. But that was impossible. Her mother had never had anything more serious than a cold. Now she was dead.

      “The lady says I’m suppose’ to watch TV and let you take a nap. Can’t I be in here with you, Mommy?”

      At the sound of the soft little voice, Eve wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. Her pixie-faced little girl stood in the doorway of the bedroom. The pink bow of one long black pigtail drooped listlessly, and Ted, her battered blue teddy bear, dangled from her small fist as if he were hanging on for dear life. The lady Molly referred to was Millicent, the next-door neighbor who’d sat with her all night and most of yesterday.

      Molly cocked her head, her little brow furrowing.

      “Are you sad?”

      Eve sank into the maple rocking chair behind her and opened her arms. Leave it to a child to reduce a myriad of emotions to their simplest term.

      “Yes,” she whispered when Molly climbed into her lap. “Yes, I am.” The little girl smelled of bubble bath and orange juice, scents that seemed so impossibly normal. “I need to tell you something, honey. About Grandma.”

      Searching for the words she didn’t want to voice, Eve smoothed back Molly’s dark bangs. Her little girl was so small, so innocent, and every instinct Eve possessed screamed to protect her baby from such a harsh reality. But Molly would start asking questions soon. Lately, it seemed all she did was ask questions.

      “Do you remember when they took Grandma to the hospital in the ambulance, and I told you she was very sick?”

      With her chin on Ted’s head, Molly gave a sober nod.

      “Well, the doctors did everything they could to make her better…but they couldn’t.” Eve swallowed past the knot in her throat. “She died.”

      A frown swept Molly’s delicate features.

      “Do you know what that means?”

      “I think so.”

      “You do?”

      “Angela Abramson had a fish that died.”

      Angela was her little friend from preschool. Eve had forgotten about the fish. “Then,

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