LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      March 18

      As Karen turned onto Gold Rush Street where she’d lived for most of her childhood, she couldn’t help smiling to herself. In one of Grand Springs’s oldest neighborhoods, the thoroughfare was wide enough for four cars and lined with huge, gnarled oaks and towering cottonwood trees that covered the generous front lawns with glorious red and gold leaves in the fall and wisps of white every summer.

      After parking the car in her mom’s driveway, Karen propped her arms on the steering wheel for a moment and gazed through the windshield at her childhood home. Built in the twenties for a bank president, the house itself had an oddly disjointed style and a seemingly random mix of red brick and shiplap siding, which always reminded her of a slightly eccentric but sweet-tempered dowager taking her ease in the sunshine.

      With a weary sigh, Karen closed her eyes for a second, wondering why on earth she’d come here. Although she’d told her mother she would be stopping by to drop off some steaks from a steer Cassidy had had butchered last week, that was only an excuse. The truth was that Karen had needed to come home, if only for a while, to lick her wounds and regroup.

      Back to the womb, so to speak, though, technically, her first home had been a bleak apartment above a pizza parlor. It was all that her parents, Sylvia and Fred Moore, had been able to afford on his resident’s salary.

      After pulling the keys from the ignition, Karen glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past two. If running true to form, Sylvia would be waiting with a full pot of freshly ground French roast and a tray of pastries she’d picked up from the bakery near the bank where she had worked her way up to the position of vice president. One of the perks of her job was being able to take off unannounced for a couple of hours to spend an afternoon with her daughter.

      Karen slipped from the car and trotted up the shrubbery-lined walkway to the wide front porch, where she pressed the buzzer twice to herald her arrival before using her key. The silence of the huge old house settled over her like a soothing cloak as she slipped off her jacket and slung it over an arm of the antique coat tree.

      “Yoo-hoo, Mom?”

      Sylvia pushed through the louvered double doors that led from the dining room into the large living area adjacent to the tiled entry. In her slender, well-tended hands, she balanced a silver tray, steam rising from the coffee urn to create smoky ribbons before her finely sculptured face.

      “Hello, sweetheart,” she called as she bent to set the tray on the coffee table. “A visit from you today is just what I needed.”

      Karen crossed the living room to give her mother the expected hug and peck on the cheek, her mind strangely detached from Sylvia’s cheerful chattering. Karen accepted a cup of coffee, which she cradled absently between her cold palms as she wandered aimlessly around the living room. Her mother, enthroned in her favorite damask-covered chair near the fireplace, watched her pace.

      Very little had changed over the years. A fire had been expertly laid in the stone fireplace, ready to be kindled the instant her mother felt the slightest chill. Snapshots in silver frames had pride of place on the ornate oak mantelpiece, chronicling her life from infant to bride. Pain shafted through her at the memory of those carefree days. With her life full to bursting these past few years, she’d pretty much lost touch with almost all of those friends smiling at her with the naïve happiness of the young and privileged. Even Eve Stuart, who used to be her “best friend in the whole wide world,” had all but drifted out of her life before leaving Grand Springs for good six years ago. Though Eve was back now and living with her new husband, Rio Redtree, and their daughter, Molly, Karen never seemed to have a moment to spare for socializing with her.

      She wanted to blame Cassidy for that, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She had been the one to refuse invitations for lunch or bridge and casual get-togethers, even though it had hurt her keenly.

      “Is something wrong, darling? You look a touch sad this afternoon.”

      At the sound of concern in her mother’s voice, Karen glanced over her shoulder and shook her head in what she hoped was a reassuring denial. “I’m just tired, that’s all. One of the other residents is off sick, and I’m working part of his hours as well as my own.”

      Sylvia Moore pleated her patrician brow in a troubled look Karen knew foreshadowed a bout of maternal probing. “Winter’s officially over in three days. Perhaps you’ve a touch of spring fever,” Sylvia suggested with just a hint of a smile, her cup clinking softly as she returned it to the saucer on the piecrust table at her elbow.

      “Could be. I admit I’ve just about had it with fighting my way from the house to my car in knee-high snow more mornings than not.”

      She gave a dramatic shiver before turning back to continue her study of the framed photos. Since she’d been old enough to climb on a chair in front of the fireplace, she’d been fascinated by the people in those pictures, many of whom had faces very much like hers. Her father’s, especially. Karen always felt a tingle of recognition when she studied his likeness, which reminded her so much of her own.

      She’d been only three when he’d kissed her goodbye that fateful morning and driven off to work. Ten minutes later, his life had ended in a car crash. A broken neck, according to the reports she’d read. Just like that, and her mother had been a widow with a child to raise by herself.

      Kari and I raised each other, Sylvia invariably declared when anyone remarked on the unusually close relationship between mother and daughter.

      Smiling to herself, Karen let her gaze move farther along the display of photographs. Her mother was there, too, as well as a steady progression of photos of Karen. As a bald baby in a flowery headband. As a Brownie and then a Girl Scout, her sash covered with merit badges. As an honor student and valedictorian of her class at Colorado State.

      There were other pictures, too. Silly ones. Special ones. Her first day of medical school with her arms full of bedding and her roommate mugging in the background. Posing in her brand-new uniform as an LPN at Vanderbilt Memorial, where she’d worked double shifts in order to earn the money for the next term. Sunbathing in the backyard with her first boyfriend, Squirrely Miller Greavy. Her entire life, captured on glossy paper and framed with her mother’s impeccable taste.

      Her breath hitched as she finally allowed herself to look at the large, formal photo in a priceless antique frame that sat all alone on one end of the crowded mantelpiece. Her wedding picture.

      Her very own fairy-tale fantasy done in the colors of the sun and swirls of pixie dust.

      It had been Indian summer, and the sun had bathed the small chapel in gold. Cassidy had worn the rented tux with an authority that had taken her breath away. Not even her mother’s friend and long-time beau, Frank Bidwell, in custom-tailored Armani had been as impressive.

      Smiling, she traced the majestic line of those wide, wide shoulders with her blunt, unpainted nail. Clark Gable shoulders, she used to tease, just to watch him scowl. He’d been scowling when they’d met, too, between colorful curses

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