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with her fiancé, Bo Evans.

      The hold Bo had on Maddie was still a concern. Laci feared that Maddie might weaken and go back to that destructive relationship.

      “So tell me about your classes,” Laci said, and Maddie launched into an enthusiastic rundown. She sounded so happy that Laci began to relax a little.

      Counseling and college seemed to have helped Maddie put Bo Evans and a need to punish herself behind her.

      Maddie asked about Laci’s catering business, and Laci quickly changed the subject. Her lack of business was the least of her worries right now, but she didn’t want to get into the Alyson and Spencer situation with her cousin.

      “I have a test first thing in the morning, so I’d better go,” Maddie said after they’d talked for a while. “I wanted to let you know that my roommate has invited me home for Christmas. She’s from Kalispell, so…”

      Laci tried to hide her disappointment. Maddie had planned to spend Christmas with her. Laney and Nick had already made plans to have Christmas with his family in California. “Oh, you’ll have a great time. What a nice invitation.”

      “You don’t mind?” Maddie asked, sounding relieved.

      “Of course I will miss you, but I’m so glad you’re enjoying college and making friends.” Laci knew that Laney would now insist she come to California—the last thing she wanted to do. Christmas required snow. Christmas was Montana. Also, she couldn’t leave her grandfather alone for the holidays.

      “I’m really proud of you,” Laci said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

      “You know us Cavanaugh women,” Maddie said with a laugh. “I’m excited about the future.” Her cousin sounded surprised by that. After everything she’d been through, it was no wonder.

      Laci hung up, relieved that Maddie hadn’t asked about Bo Evans. Maybe she was finally over him. Laci would rather believe that than believe Maddie hadn’t wanted to come home for Christmas because she was afraid to see Bo again. Either because she feared she might be tempted or because she was scared of the Evans family. Laci could understand being afraid of that family.

      ARLENE EVANS COULDN'T believe the mental hospital wouldn’t let her see her daughter Violet.

      “I told you they wouldn’t let us in,” Charlotte said as she inspected the ends of her long blond hair.

      Arlene glanced over at her younger daughter as she put the car into gear. More and more, Charlotte was starting to annoy her. The whiny voice. The obsession with her split ends. The way she’d put on weight since the “incidents.”

      Arlene insisted the family all refer to the attempts on her life as “those unfortunate incidents” if they had to refer to them at all. She would just as soon forget the whole thing. But that was a little difficult since the entire country had heard about her three children trying to kill her.

      It had almost cost Arlene the farm in lawyer fees to get her two youngest off. It had cost her her husband. Floyd divorced her and ran off with some grain seed saleswoman. Good riddance. She’d leased out the land and would be just fine now that her Rural Meet-A-Mate Internet dating service was doing so well. Being on national TV hadn’t hurt.

      Whatever the cost, it had been worth it to get Charlotte and Bo cleared. In her own mind, Arlene knew where the blame for the whole mess lay: her old-maid daughter Violet. Violet had always been the problem child. Charlotte, barely eighteen, and Bo, now twenty, would never have even contemplated the terrible things they’d done without Violet as the ringleader.

      Alice Miller, that old busybody who lived down the road, had suggested the children were fed too much sugar. The woman really needed to turn off the talk-show television and take care of her own business.

      Fortunately, Arlene had been able to hire a good lawyer for Charlotte and Bo and got them probation. The judge had insisted they come home and live with her so they could begin to heal. Arlene wasn’t sure that’s what had been going on at the house, though.

      Bo stayed in his room listening to that horrible music and barely had a civil word for her, except late at night when he went out doing who knew what. Charlotte, restricted from going into town on Saturday nights because of those other unfortunate incidents involving strange men, hung around the house and ate.

      Half the time, Arlene couldn’t stand the sight of her own children. Now there was an episode for the talk shows.

      The only way she’d been able to stay sane was to concentrate on her business. Her Internet rural dating business had taken off after she’d been interviewed on one of the national morning TV shows. But many locals were still wary of the Internet. She’d been forced to remove some people’s profiles who hadn’t asked to be put on her Web page. The ingratitude of people still amazed her.

      Like the Cavanaughs. The whole bunch of them blamed Bo for Maddie’s problems. All Arlene could say was good riddance to that one, too. She hated to think what Bo’s life would have been like if he’d married that girl.

      Arlene couldn’t believe the injustice in the world. That’s probably why, when she got to the point that she found herself finding fault with Charlotte and Bo, she would turn all her anger and frustration on the one person who really deserved it—her oldest daughter, Violet. On the fast track to thirty-five and insane, Violet had little chance of ever getting married now. And wasn’t it just like everyone to blame the mother for it.

      “I’d love to give Violet a piece of my mind,” Arlene said as she left the mental hospital, tires spitting gravel. She’d even hired a lawyer, but the hospital hadn’t budged, saying that it would not be in Violet’s best interest to see her mother. As if Arlene gave a fig about Violet’s best interest.

      Did Violet appreciate all the years Arlene had labored tirelessly to try to get her married off? No. How did Violet pay her back? She’d tried to kill her own mother and had drawn in her younger sister and brother as accomplices.

      “Sometimes I just don’t know why I try,” Arlene said and sighed as she drove toward Old Town Whitehorse. Beside her, Charlotte pulled a candy bar from her jacket pocket, at least her third this morning.

      “Watch where you’re going!” Charlotte yelled as the car almost went off the road. “What is your problem?”

      Arlene got the car back on the road and looked over at her daughter again. She’d never noticed before how much Charlotte was beginning to resemble her sister Violet.

      BACK AT THE HOSPITAL, Violet Evans felt the drool run down her chin but didn’t move a muscle to stop it.

      “Violet?”

      She stared into nothingness, her eyes glazed over, her mind miles away. Miles away in Old Town Whitehorse.

      “Violet, can you hear me?”

      The doctors called her condition a “semicatatonic state.” She’d been like this ever since she’d been brought to the mental hospital after admitting to trying to kill her mother. It was a textbook-classic case, she’d heard the doctors say and had to suppress the urge to laugh.

      It should be textbook-classic; that’s where she’d found the symptoms for the condition. Lately, though, the doctors had noticed that she was starting to come out of it.

      Violet loved fooling with them. One day soon she would come out of it, all right. She wouldn’t remember anything. When they told her about her crimes, she would be shocked, feel incredible remorse for the misery she’d caused and find it almost unbearable.

      There would be suspicion with her apparent confusion about where she’d been, what she’d done. There would be more psychiatric tests, but finally they would have to release her back into society. They would have to since she’d clearly been sick when she’d tried to kill her own mother. And soon she would be well.

      But for now, Violet Evans saw nothing, felt nothing, was nothing. At least on the surface.

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