SCARED TO DEATH
A sequel to LIVE TO TELL

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
– anonymous

PROLOGUE

Dallas, Texas
September

“Mind if I turn on the TV?”

Hell, yes, Jeremy minds.

Minds the disruption of television, and suddenly having a roommate.

Until an hour ago, when an orderly pushed a wheelchair through the doorway, Jeremy had the double hospital room all to himself. He should have known it was too good to be true.

Most good things are.

An image flashes into his head, and he winces.

Funny how even after all these years, that same face—a beautiful, female face--pops in and out of his consciousness. He doesn’t know whose face it is, or whether she even exists.

“Hey, are you in pain?” the stranger in the next bed asks, interrupting Jeremy’s speculation about the face: is she a figment of my imagination—or an actual memory?

He almost welcomes the question whose answer is readily at hand.

Am I in pain?

He feels as though every bone in his face has been broken. That’s pretty damned near the truth—and not for the first time.

“I can ring the nurse for you,” the man offers, waving his good hand. The other hand—like Jeremy’s face--is swathed in gauze. Some kind of finger surgery, he mentioned when he first rolled into the room, as if Jeremy might care.

Reaching for the bedrail buzzer, he adds, in his lazy twang, “That Demerol’s good stuff, ain’t it?”

“No, thanks.” Jeremy starts to shake his head.

Bad idea. The slightest movement above the neck rockets pain through his skull. He fights the instinct to scream; that would be even more torturous.

“You sure you’re okay, pal? You look like you’re hurting.”

Jeremy’s jaw tightens--more agony. Dammit. Why won’t this guy leave him alone?

Jeremy closes his eyes.

He’s in another hospital, long ago and far away. In pain, terrified, surrounded by strangers…

“You don’t have to be a hero, you know,” his roommate rambles on.

But there’s another voice, in his head, the one that belongs to a face he still sees in nightmares even after all these years: “All you have to do is triple up on his pain meds tonight. Maybe quadruple, just to be sure. Then tuck him into bed…”

“If you’re in pain, pal, all you need to do is call a nurse and she’ll give you something for it.”

Jeremy’s eyes snap open.

“I’m fine. Really. Just--go ahead, turn on the TV.”

“You sure? Because if it’ll bother you I don’t want to—“

“I’m positive. Watch TV.”

“Yeah? Thanks.” Working the remote with the healthy hand, his roommate begins to channel surf.

Face throbbing, Jeremy gazes absently at the barrage of images on the changing screen, half-hearing the snippets of sound from the speaker. Audience applause, country music, stock reports, a sitcom laugh track, meaningless words.

“…ladies and gentlemen, please welcome…”

“…be mostly sunny with a high of…”

“…and the Emmy-nominated drama will return on…”

His roommate pauses to ask, “Anything in particular you feel like watching?”

“Nope.”

“You a sports fan?”

“Sometimes.”

“Rangers?”

“Sure,” Jeremy lies.

“News should be on. Let’s see if we can get us some scores.”

More channel surfing.

More fleeting images.

More meaningless sound, and then…

“…in Manhattan today indicted the Congressman for…”

“Here’s the news.” The clicking stops. “I’ll leave it. Sports should be coming up soon.”

“Great.” As if Jeremy gives a damn about sports, or the news, or—unlike the rest of the world, it seems--television in general.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” someone said to him in a bar not long ago, when he professed ignorance about the reality show finale playing on the television overhead.

True. And when you grow up deprived of something, you can’t miss it.

Or can you?

“…kidnapping the seven-year-old son of Elsa and Brett Cavalon. In an incredible twist, the child…”

A close-up flashes on the screen: a photograph of a striking couple. The woman…

Jeremy gasps, his body involuntarily jerking to sit up.

“What?” Glancing over, his roommate immediately mutes the volume. “What’s wrong? Pain, right? I knew it!”

Jeremy can’t speak, can’t move, can only stare at the face on TV. It’s as if the pain exploding inside Jeremy’s head has catapulted a piece of his imagination onto the screen. Of course, that’s impossible.

But so is this, unless…

As suddenly as she appeared on the screen, she’s gone, and the camera shifts back to the anchorman.

Unless…

Unless she’s real.

She was there. On TV.

She does exist. She has a name—one he’s heard before, in another place, another time…

Now, the name—her name--echoes back at him from the cobweb corners of his mind.

Elsa.

CHAPTER ONE

Norwich, Connecticut
June

Another day, another dollar…

Which about sums up my salary, Roxanne Shields thinks as she cuts the incredibly loud engine of her aging car, desperately in need of a new muffler—or something.

“You need to get that fixed,” her boss at the agency told her just yesterday. “It’s just not appropriate to visit clients in a muscle car.”

“Muscle car?” She snorted. “It’s a seven year-old Hyundai.”

“Well, it sounds like a muscle car. Fix it.”

Yeah. Sure. She’ll get right on it—as soon as she’s taken care of two months’ back rent on this dumpy apartment, her overdue utility bills, and the student loan that’s about to default.

How ironic that she was the first in her family to go to college, yet she can’t even afford a nice wooden frame to display her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work from Southern Connecticut State. The BSW is still in its cardboard folder, tucked away in the back of her underwear drawer since graduation last May—over a year ago already.

“When I grow up, I just want to help people. I don’t care about money,” she always liked to say, mostly because it made her mother beam with pride as Roxanne’s less-noble siblings rolled their eyes.

These days, her brother—a welder in Waterbury--is driving a BMW and her sister—a cocktail waitress at some fancy Newport restaurant--just bought a waterfront condo.

Meanwhile, how is Roxanne supposed to help people—namely, kids—when the agency is so underfunded and understaffed that she can’t possibly keep up with a caseload that grows larger by the day?

She gets out of the car, opens the trunk, and picks up a box filled with client files.

“Looks like somebody’s got a pile of homework to do tonight,” a voice calls, and she looks up to see old Mr. LoTempio waving from his aluminum lawn chair under a tree across the street.

“Not really,” she calls back. “I just don’t want to leave anything in the car overnight. It’s been broken into a few times lately.”

“Who’d want to steal a big box of papers?”

“You never know—next time, they might want to steal the car itself.”

“That bomb? Anyway, the whole neighborhood would hear it driving off down the street.”

She can’t help but grin at that. Mr. LoTempio isn’t one to mince words.

“You know,” he continues, “this isn’t the kind of weather for you to be wearing all that black.”

Here we go again.

“Would it kill you to try on a little color sometime?”

“It might,” she replies tartly.

“You must have been sweating all day in that.”

She was, but she’ll never admit it.

After a cool spring, summer weather literally arrived overnight. Today has been freakishly hot—particularly when one is wearing leather boots. But her style isn’t about fashion or comfort—it’s a way of life. She doesn’t expect an eighty-year-old man to understand that, though. So few people do.

“Have a good night, Mr. LoTempio.”

“You, too, Morticia.”

Morticia. He’s been calling her that since the day they met last fall, not long after she moved in. She doesn’t mind, considering that she never much cared for her real name, inspired by the old Sting ballad. “I just liked the song. Who knew it was about a hooker?” Ma would say with a helpless shrug.

Roxanne lugs her box of files across the patch of dandelion-sprinkled grass to the two-family house sorely in need of a paint job—as well as a handyman to fix the wobbly wrought-iron rail and the broken lock on her bedroom window.

If she ever manages to catch up on her rent, maybe she’ll dare to mention it to the landlord. For now, she’ll deal with what she’s got.

The stairwell smells of Pine-Sol and roast pork, courtesy of the downstairs tenants, who cook three hot meals on even on the most sweltering day of the year.

In her apartment, Roxanne she plunks the file box on the floor just inside the door and bolts it behind her. As she starts for the kitchen, trying to recall whether there’s anything edible in the fridge, a floorboard creaks behind her.

Seized by a paralytic rush of fear, she realizes she’s not alone.

Then the knife slashes deeply beneath her right jaw, and her left, and it’s over.

* * *

Groton, Connecticut

“Mommy…”

Elsa Cavalon stirs in her sleep.

Jeremy.

Jeremy is calling me.

“Mommy!”

No. Jeremy is gone, remember?

There was a time when that realization would have jarred her fully awake. But it’s been fifteen years now since her son disappeared, and almost a year since Elsa learned that he’d been taken overseas and been murdered shortly afterward.

The terrible truth came as no surprise. Throughout the dark era of worrying and wondering, she’d struggled to keep hope alive while harboring the secret belief that Jeremy was never coming home again.

All those years, she’d longed for closure. When it came last August, she braced herself, expecting her already fragile emotions to hit bottom.

Instead, somehow, she found peace.

“It’s because you’ve already done your grieving,” her therapist, Joan, told her. “You’re in the final stage now. Acceptance.”

Yes. She accepts that Jeremy is no longer alive, accepts that she is, and--

“Mommy!”

Jeremy isn’t calling you. It’s just a dream. Go back to sleep…

“What’s wrong?” Brett’s voice, not imagined, plucks Elsa from the drowsy descent toward slumber. Her eyelids pop open.

The light is dim; her husband is stirring beside her in bed, calling out to a child who isn’t Jeremy, “What is it? Are you okay?”

“I need Mommy.”

“She’s sleeping. What’s wrong?”

“No, Brett, I’m awake,” she murmurs, sitting up, and calls, “Renny, I’m awake.”

“Mommy, I need you!”

Elsa gets up and feels her way across the room as Brett mumbles something and settles back into the pillows. With a prickle of envy-tinged resentment, she hears him snoring again by the time she reaches the hallway.

It was always this way, back when Jeremy was here to disrupt their wee-hour rest—and when his palpable, tragic absence disrupted it even more. All those sleepless nights…

Brett would make some halfhearted attempt to respond to whatever was going on, then fall immediately back to sleep, leaving Elsa wide awake to cope alone with the matter at hand: a needy child, parental doubt, haunting memories, her own demons.

“Mommy!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Shivering, she makes her way down the hall toward Renny’s bedroom.

The house is chilly. Before bed, Elsa had gone from room to room closing windows that had been open all day, with ninety-degree sunshine falling through the screens. The weather was so glorious that It was so nice out that she and Renny had spent the whole day outside, even eating their lunch on a blanket beneath a tree.

Now, however, it feels more like March. Late spring in coastal New England can be so unpredictable.

And yet, Elsa wouldn’t trade it for the more temperate climates where Brett’s work as a nautical engineer transported them in recent years: Virginia Beach, San Diego, Tampa. It’s good to be settled back in the Northeast. This is home.

Especially now that we have Renny.

Technically, she isn’t their daughter yet, but optimistically thinking, it’s only a matter of time and paperwork. As far as Elsa and Brett are concerned, Renata Almeida became Renata Cavalon on the October day she came to live with them.

Or perhaps, just Renny Cavalon. Elsa isn’t crazy about the given name bestowed by the abusive birth mother who has since, thank God, signed away her rights.

Renata—it’s so lofty, pretentious, even—better suited to a European princess, or supermodel, than a cute little girl who looks far younger than her seven years. Elsa and Brett shortened it immediately, with Renny’s blessing. Maybe they’ll make it official on the adoption papers.

Any day now…

Elsa will feel a lot better when the adoption process is behind them and they’re on their way to Disney World for a long-planned celebratory trip with Renny. Until then, with all of them under the close scrutiny of yet another new caseworker—the overburdened, underpaid agency staff seems to turn over constantly --there’s always the nagging concern that something will go wrong.

No. Nothing can go wrong. I can’t bear to lose another child. I just can’t.

Renny’s bedroom door is ajar, as always. Plagued by claustrophobia, she’s unable to sleep unless it’s open. That’s understandable, considering what she’s been through.

Whenever Elsa allows herself to think of Renny’s past, she feels as though a tremendous fist has clenched her gut. It’s the same sickening dread that used to seize her whenever she imagined the abuse Jeremy had endured—both before he came into their lives, and after he was kidnapped.

But Renny isn’t Jeremy. Everything about her, other than the route she traveled through the foster system and into Elsa’s life, is different.

Well--almost everything. She’s a docile child with a sunny personality, unlike Jeremy—but with her black hair and eyes, Renny resembles Elsa as much as he did. No one would ever doubt a biological connection between mother and child based on looks alone.

Their bond goes much deeper than that, though. From the moment she saw the her photo on the agency Web site, Elsa felt a connection to the little girl whose haunted eyes stared out from beneath crooked bangs.

And yet…had she felt the same thing when she first saw Jeremy?

I just don’t know. I can’t remember.

There was a time, not so long ago, when her memory of her son was more vivid than the landscape beyond the window. Now, it’s as if the glass has warped, distorting the view.

Now.

Now…what?

Now that I know Jeremy is dead?

Now that there’s Renny?

Elsa pushes aside a twinge of guilt.

Her daughter’s arrival didn’t erase the memories of her son. Of course not. She’ll never forget Jeremy. But it’s time to move on. Everyone says so: her husband, her therapist, even Mike Fantoni, the private eye who had finally brought the truth to light by identifying Jeremy’s birth mother.

“Why would you want to meet her now?” he’d asked Elsa the last time they’d seen each other, over the winter.

“I didn’t say I want to…I said I feel like I should know more about her. About him.”

“Has she been in touch with you?”

“No.”

“Then let it go,” Mike advised, and for the most part, Elsa has. Just once in awhile… she wonders. That’s all. Wonders how the other woman is feeling, and coping. Wonders whether she has questions about Jeremy; wonders whether she can answer some of Elsa’s.

She finds Renny sitting up in bed, knees to chest. Her worried face is illuminated by the Tinkerbell nightlight plugged into the baseboard outlet and the canopy of phosphorescent plastic stars Brett glued to the ceiling.

“What’s wrong, honey? Are you feeling sick?” Elsa is well aware that her daughter had eaten an entire box of Sno-caps at the new Disney princess movie Brett had taken her to see after dinner.

“Why would you let her have all that candy?” Elsa asked in dismay when he recapped filled her in on the father-daughter evening.

“Because we wanted to celebrate the end of the school year, and it’s fun to spoil her.”

“I know, Brett…but don’t do it with sugar. She’s going to have an awful stomachache. She’ll never get to sleep now.”

Renny proved her wrong, drifting off within five minutes of hitting the pillow. And right now, she doesn’t look sick at all…

She looks terrified. Her black eyes are enormous and her wiry little body quivers beneath the pink quilt clutched to her chin.

“I’m not sick, Mommy.”

“Did you have a nightmare?” It wouldn’t be the first time.

“No, it was real.”

“Well, sometimes nightmares feel real.”

And sometimes, they are real. Renny knows that as well as she does. But things are different now. She’s safe here with Elsa and Brett, and nothing will ever hurt her again.

Elsa sits beside her daughter and folds her into an embrace. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” . It was real,” Renny insists, trembling. “A monster was here, in my room…I woke up and I saw him standing over my bed.”

“It was just a bad dream, honey. There’s no monster.”

“Yes, there is. And when I saw him, he went out the window.”

Elsa turns to follow her daughter’s gaze, saying, “No, Renny, see? The window isn’t even—“

Open.

But Elsa’s throat constricts around the word as she stares in numb horror.

The window she’d closed and locked earlier is now, indeed, wide open—and so is the screen, creating a gaping portal to the inky night beyond.

* * *

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

Which nursery rhyme was that?

Does it matter?

Really, right now, the only thing that matters is getting away from the house without being spotted.

Yet this is far less challenging than escaping Norwich earlier in broad daylight. That went smoothly; no reason why this shouldn’t as well. At this hour, the streets are deserted; there’s no one around to glimpse the dark figure stealing through the shadows.

Not a creature was stirring…

Damn, it’s frustrating when you can’t remember a detail that seems to be right there, teasing your brain…

Sort of the way Jeremy had forgotten Elsa Cavalon until, by chance, he caught a glimpse of her on television back in September.

Anyone who doesn’t understand what Jeremy’s been through might wonder how a person can forget his own mother.

How, indeed.

The human mind doesn’t just lose track of something like that, like the name of a nursery rhyme. More likely, out of self-preservation, the brain attempts to erase what’s too painful to remember.

What’s too painful to remember…

Hmm…Wasn’t that a long-ago lyric?

Maybe. But the song title, too, is elusive—and unimportant.

One thing at a time.

Not a creature was stirring…

THE BEST GIFT
Written as “Wendy Markham”
(Sequel to IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS)

PROLOGUE

New York City

October 2008

This isn’t the first time Clara Becker has ridden the rickety old elevator to the fourth floor in the prewar Bronx apartment building, and she doesn’t like to think that it might be the last.

But reality can’t be ignored, and so she does her best to memorize the exquisite grillwork on the elevator door, and the echoing creak as it slides open, and the scent of pot roast that greets her in the corridor.

Always pot roast. Maybe one of the fourth floor tenants actually cooks the same thing day in and day out. Or maybe it’s simply a homey cooking smell that evokes the nostalgia of pot roast, and family, and cozy rainy days indoors.

Today is a rainy day, all right—but she hasn’t spent much of it indoors. She ran errands all morning, then met her good friend and former makeup artists Jesus DeJesus in Tribeca for lunch.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, when she suggested an upscale bistro, her treat.

“No occasion, I just miss you,” she told him—not the entire truth. Yes, she does miss him; they don’t see each other nearly as often now that she’s married and no longer a regularly employed actress.

But that’s not the only reason she wanted to have lunch. She was pretty sure, though, that if she said she had something to tell him, he’d get the wrong idea. Aware that she’s been auditioning again lately, he might assume she’s landed a plum role in some film—or at least back in the soaps, where she spent her early career.

That couldn’t be farther from what she had to tell him—and when she broke the real news, his reaction was even more dramatic than she’d anticipated.

“Noooooo!” he wailed. “How could you do this to me?”

She didn’t bother to point out that it wasn’t really about him. Jesus has a notorious flair for making everything about him. She used to find it an endearing quirk, but it wore thin pretty quickly today.

“Can’t you just be happy for me?” she interrupted his ongoing lament.

“How can I be happy knowing this is going to be the final nail in the coffin of our friendship?”

Clara was emotionally spent by the time she left the restaurant and hopped on the subway to the Bronx. Hopefully, Doris won’t take the news as hard.

Reaching the door marked 4D, she knocks loudly with the heel of her palm, the way Doris taught her to do.

“Don’t be shy--for God’s sake, give it some good solid whacks,” the old woman told her on her first visit. “Otherwise I’ll never hear you and you’ll stand out here for days.”

“Hold your horses, I’m here, I’m here,” a familiar voice calls now, from the other side of the door. When it flies open, Clara momentarily expects, as always, to find herself looking at an adolescent tomboy with red pigtails, freckles, and impish blue eyes.

The eyes are impish, all right, and the same deep shade of blue. But they’re peering at her through a thick pair of bifocals. It’s been decades since the freckles faded from a face now trenched in wrinkles, and the red pigtails gave way to a snow white up-do.

Decades since this octogenarian was a precocious kid sister. Jed’s kid sister.

“What a nice surprise!” She hugs Clara. “You poor thing, you’re drenched. Don’t you have an umbrella?”

“I do, but it’s that sideways kind of rain that soaks you anyway.” Clara tries to shake the droplets from her long brown hair, but wringing it out would probably be more effective.

“Oh, and I brought a little treat for you.” She hands over a white paper shopping bag.

Doris peeks inside, then lets out a delighted squeal. “Licorice snaps! Aren’t you a sweetheart. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You really shouldn’t have. I know money is tight, and these aren’t cheap.” Like a little girl, Doris tears into the package and pops a couple of the bright-colored candies into her mouth. “Do you know that when I was a girl, these used to sell for two cents a box?”

Clara does know, because Doris told her. Several times. Like most elderly people, she likes to reminisce and tends to repeat herself. But of course, Clara hangs on every word because Doris’s memories are particularly meaningful to her.

“They came in a red box back in the old days. I used to go to the movies with my brother Jed, and he’d buy them for me.”

Clara smiles. She knew that, too. But not because Doris ever told her.

Jed did.

Doris pries a piece of licorice from a tooth with her fingertip and smacks her lips.

“Everything changes in this world, but licorice snaps still taste the same. Only problem is, when I was young I didn’t have to worry that they’d rip out my dentures.” She offers Clara the box. “Here, have some.”

“Oh, no thanks. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my dentures.”

Doris, who always appreciates even the weakest quip, chuckles at that. “Come in, come in, let’s go sit on the couch and visit.”

Watching her close the door and turn away, Clara says, “You really should slide the deadbolt and the chain, you know, Doris. This neighborhood isn’t as safe as it used to be.”

“Oh, ish kabibble. If anyone wants to come on in, they can just help themselves to anything they want--except my licorice snaps,” she adds slyly, leading the way to the knick-knack cluttered living room.

The two large windows are spattered with raindrops, and there are several hummingbird feeders hanging outside. Doris collects everything related to hummingbirds—figurines, jewelry, even feeders, though she admits it would be unusual to see the tiny birds buzzing around her urban fire escape.

“Still, I never say never,” she likes to say—about hummingbirds, and various other topics.

“You know, my kids finally gave up on trying to get me to move in with them.”

“I don’t think that would have been such a bad idea, though.”

“It’s a terrible idea. They’re scattered all over the damned globe.”

Well, not exactly. But Doris’s family is pretty spread out—a daughter in Reno, a son in Boston, another who just retired to Florida.

“Then they wanted to talk me into one of those horrid places filled with old coots, but—“

“Assisted living,” Clara cuts in, sitting beside her on the couch, “and they’re actually kind of nice. My mother and stepfather are—“

“I’m sure other people do just fine, but me, I’m staying put. This is my home. I like it here.”

“But—“

“Honey, if it works, don’t fix it. That’s what I say.”

That is what she says—often. Along with ‘never say never,’ and countless other phrases Clara has come to consider “Dorisisms.”

“Like I told my kids, when I leave this place for the last time, it’ll be in a body bag.”

Clara cringes. “Doris, don’t—“

“And my kids, when they’re not harping on me to move, they’re telling me it’s about time I started unloading some of this stuff.” She waves a wrinkled hand around the room.

“Why?”

“I’m sure they think I’m going to kick the bucket any second now, and they’ll be stuck having to come back here and clean it all out.”

“Oh, Doris, I’m sure they don’t—“

“Of course they do, and it doesn’t bother me at all. I’d be thinking the same thing if I were them. That’s how it was when my mother was getting up there in years.” With a conspiratorial twinkle in her eye, she adds, “I made good and sure my brother Gilbert got stuck with cleaning out the old house—which I’m afraid didn’t work out so well for you, my dear.”

Doris is referring to the fact that Gilbert accidentally gave away to an antique store a gift-wrapped package that had been stored in the attic since the early 1940’s, intended as a Christmas gift from their brother Jed to his wartime sweetheart.

“Oh, it worked out in the end,” she reminds Doris.

“So it did.” With weathered fingertips, Doris pats Clara’s left hand—the one that has worn a gold wedding band since her wedding last year. “And now, you believe in magic. As you should.”

Clara smiles too. But it fades when she remembers why she came here today.

“Doris—this isn’t just a social visit. I have to tell you something.”

“Is it good news, or bad?”

“That depends on how you look at it.”

“Do I need something stronger than licorice snaps to hear it?”

Clara grins again—but it’s bittersweet. She’s going to miss Doris terribly.

“Do you remember how I told you that my husband lost his job at the investment firm?”

“Your husband, and everyone else on Wall Street. Hard times.”

It’s impossible to tell by looking at Doris or her modest home that she once made a killing in the stock market. She prefers to live a low-key lifestyle, money or not, in the same rent controlled apartment where she shared a long, happy marriage with her late husband.

“Are you okay?” Clara asks her now, caught off guard by the grim look on her face. “Financially, I mean.”

“I had a lot of investments. You win some, you lose some.” Doris shrugs. “Let’s put it this way: I’ve got enough money to last a lifetime—as long as it’s just whatever’s left of this one. Tell me about your husband.”

“He’s been looking for something else, but it hasn’t been easy. And I’ve been auditioning again, but once you’ve dropped out of sight for awhile—well, that’s not easy, either. Anyway, he finally found something decent, and they made him an offer last week, more money, even, than he was making, and he accepted, and it’s a great opportunity…”

Doris claps her hands together. “Wonderful!”

“…in California.”

Doris raises a white eyebrow.

“He starts next week.”

“You’re moving away.”

Clara nods. “The job is in the Bay area, and that’s where he’s from, so we’ll have family there…”

“That’s important.” Doris pats her hand. “And remember, you’ll always have family here, too.”

Clara swallows a lump in her throat. “It’s going to be really hard to leave. I’ve lived here all my life.”

“Goodbyes are always hard. But you can’t let that stop you. This is a wonderful opportunity for you and your husband to build a new life together. Smile when you look back, but don’t be afraid to move on. You have to go live. Live for today, live for each other, live for yourself.”

“You’re the smartest woman I ever knew, Doris. I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too, my dear. But we’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” Clara echoes, but she isn’t at all.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

She looks up in surprise to see Doris watching her closely, blue eyes sharper than ever.

“You’re thinking exactly what my kids are thinking.“

“Doris! Of course I’m not—“

“No, not about cleaning out all this crap I’ve accumulated over the years, but about my kicking the bucket. Come on, who are we kidding? I’m getting up there in years. I might not be around the next time you get back to New York for a visit.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You listen to me, Clara. I’ll be around. If not here—if not in this lifetime—I’ll catch up with you sooner or later, right? Because I believe in magic, and so do you. Don’t ever forget it.”

Clara smiles through her tears. “I won’t. I won’t ever forget.”

CHAPTER ONE

Christmas Day, 2009

San Florentina, California

Sitting cross-legged on the rug beside the lit Christmas tree on her favorite day of the year, Clara clutches the mug of untouched coffee her husband insisted on preparing for her when she rolled out of bed forty-five minutes ago.

Drew shakes the gift-wrapped box. “Hey, it rattles.”

She smiles. “No kidding.”

He shakes it some more, watching her face for a clue. Clara glances away, feigning profound interest in a floating dust particle, afraid that if Drew looks into her eyes, he’ll know.

She admires the living room, its mission woodwork, tall windows, leather furniture, warm-hued carpets and draperies all bathed in the soft glow of twinkling white lights. They moved into the house just in time for Clara to deck the halls.

Having been named for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballerina, she’s always been crazy about the holiday season.

Her gaze sweeps the massive boxwood wreath on the exposed brick above the fireplace, the pair of embroidered Christmas stockings hanging from the wooden mantle, the precious antique snow globe nested on it, amid potted poinsettias and her childhood collection of dark-haired angel figurines.

Beyond the snow globe’s delicate curved glass is yet another brunette angel, one with a broken wing tip. If you wind the key on the globe’s base, it plays “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Drew found it in an antique shop and gave it to her the Christmas they met, back in New York. Of course, he had no idea just how meaningful—or magical—it really was. Maybe someday, she’ll work up the nerve to tell him.

In any case, it’s the best gift she ever received from her husband.

From anyone.

And now, Drew is about to open one that’s even better.

“You know, I really have no idea what this can be.”

“Well, let’s see...” Carefully masking her expression, Clara dares to look his way again. “It can be something that rattles.”

“No kidding. Like what?” He shakes it again, and she grins.

Right here, right now, on Christmas morning in the wonderland living room of their dream house, a bank of fog that almost looks like snow swirling beyond the wall of glass windows, Clara can’t help but feel as if she finally has everything she ever wanted.

No, she hasn’t become a Hollywood superstar. She blew that chance when she got sick and dropped out of what would have been her first major film.

The Glenhaven Park Dozen, which opened last year, was nominated for a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture—and Best Actress for the newcomer who was recast in Clara’s role.

That stung a little, because she did love acting, and she does miss it.

Just not enough to make all the necessary sacrifices that go with the territory.

Like spending months on location away from Drew.

Or giving up her privacy.

Or watching every morsel she puts into her mouth in an effort to stay starlet-thin. Having cancer taught her to love her body because it’s strong and healthy now, even if she did go up a jeans size or two.

Maybe someday, she’ll want to give her career another shot. But for now, things are perfect just as they are.

Almost...too perfect.

So perfect that if she allows herself to think about it, she might just worry that it could all go away tomorrow.

That’s how it happens. One minute, you’re living your too-good-to-be-true life, and the next minute, you’re...

Well, not.

Please don’t let it happen to me. To us.

“It sounds like box of pebbles,” Drew tells her.

“Why would I give you a box of pebbles?”

“To remind me of that weekend we spent at Pebble Beach last fall?”

“Um, no.”

“That would have been a romantic gift.”

“Trust me,” she says, “this is much more romantic.”

As romantic as being married to the love of her life, a kind-hearted man with the warmest, most reassuring brown eyes she’s ever seen. A man whose vow to stay with her in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse, has already been tested and held fast.

Her breast cancer, his losing his investment banking job in Manhattan and finding a new one that meant a cross-country move, building their dream house only to have Drew lose his new job, too, thanks to a tanking economy…

They’ve survived all of that, and then some. Life is good. After some financial struggles, Drew found another promising job. He started just last week. Clara has passed the three-year anniversary of her diagnosis, and remains cancer free.

“Everything looks great,” her west coast oncologist, Doctor Federman, remarked after the last round of routine tests in November again showed the all-clear. He snapped his folder shut and smiled across his desk at her and Drew. “You two should go out and celebrate.”

They promptly drove over to Napa and splurged on a romantic inn on a vineyard. A candlelight dinner, a bottle of good champagne, a wonderful featherbed…

When she later looked back, counting days on the calendar, and realized that was when it happened, she wasn’t really surprised. It had been a perfect night.

There’s that word again. Perfect.

Stop being a worrywart. Life is good. Enjoy it.

Yes, here on a windswept cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Clara is ready to put down roots, raise a family, grow old together with Drew.

“Something rattle-y and romantic. A box of diamonds?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Captain Crunch?”

“How is that romantic?”

“It’s what we had for breakfast the first time you spent the night at my apartment. Don’t tell me you forgot?”

“No, I remember, but, enough already! Just open the present and find out what it is!”

“All right, all right, I’m opening, I’m opening.”

Uh huh. Most people would tear into the paper. Not her husband.

Nope. He takes his time, deliberately–and maddeningly--slipping one fingertip beneath the seam to loosen the tape.

“Nice wrapping paper.”

Clara nods and smiles through clenched teeth.

“Is this one of the rolls you bought from the little girl next door for that school fundraiser? What’s her name?”

“Amelia. Amelia Tucker,” she adds, wondering if he’s trying to drive her crazy on purpose.

Can he possibly know what’s inside and he’s somehow...reluctant to open it?

Nah.

If he knew, he wouldn’t be reluctant at all.

Anyway, after almost two years of marriage, she knows that’s just the way he is: always savoring the moment.

And it’s just the way she isn’t. A native New Yorker, she is, as Drew likes to say, in a perpetual state of hurry, scurry, and flurry.

It was all she could do not to coach him along as he painstakingly opened all the other presents she gave him, then meticulously folded every shirt, sweater, and tie back into their boxes and stacked them neatly under the tree, along with her big splurge for him: the Filson duffel bag he’s been coveting for years.

Clara, on the other hand, is surrounded by crumpled paper and a heap of new treasures: a decadent designer purse, the pair of ridiculously expensive shearling slippers she paused to admire every time they passed the window display at Triangle Shoes down the street, a couple of books, emerald earrings Drew sweetly said match her eyes, and a bikini for their annual February trip to the Caribbean.

“Isn’t it a little...skimpy?” she asked in dismay, holding it up.

“Hell, yeah.” He grinned. “And I can’t wait to see you in it on the beach”

Ha.

Little does he know.

“Are you going to open that,” she asks now, watching him put aside the wrapping paper and shake the gift again, “or just play with the box?”

“Play with the box.”

She sighs inwardly and pretends to take a sip from her mug as he re-examines the package, unaware that the mere smell of coffee makes her sick. So, lately, does the smell of Thai food, her favorite cuisine; it was all she could do not to vomit when Drew brought home a bagful of white cardboard carryout containers to surprise her the other night.

“I know you always like to save the best gift for last,” he notes, “but that duffel bag was pretty damned good. How can you possibly top it?”

“You’ll see.” She offers her best mysterious smile.

“I have one more present for you, too, you know.”

“You do?” Looking around, she doesn’t see any more unopened gifts. “But you already got me so much, and—“

“Well this time, I saved the best gift for last, just like you. I’ll open yours, and then I’ll give you mine.”

“So it’s not something I have to open?”

It’s Drew’s turn to offer a mysterious smile.

“Why do I feel like yours involves the bedroom?”

He laughs and reaches for her. “I didn’t say that, but if you’re in the mood for—“

“Drew! Just open the present!”

At last, he lifts the cover off the box and lifts out...

“A baby rattle?”

“Uh-huh.” Tears rapidly fill her eyes and the puzzled look on his face disappears into a watery blur.

By the time she’s blindly set aside her mug and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her bathrobe, his clueless expression has been replaced by one of wonderment–and some tears of his own.

“Clara...?”

She nods, her throat too clogged with emotion to say it aloud.

He grabs her, hugs her fiercely.

“We’re going to have a baby?”

Recovering her voice, she sob/sings the word that’s been joyfully pirouetting through her head since she got the news weeks ago: “Yes!”

Yes, yes, yes!

After months of trying, she, Clara McCallum Becker, is finally pregnant.

Dr. Svensen, her oncologist back in New York, had promised her that it would one day be possible. That the breast cancer treatment she’d endured three years ago wouldn’t harm her reproductive organs.

But she wasn’t so sure it was meant to be. Month after month, they tried. Month after month, she waited, prayed, hoped...to no avail.

And then, in November, in Napa, it happened.

She took a positive pregnancy test on the first Saturday in December, just before she and Drew went to see The Nutcracker in San Francisco. For her, the ballet is a lifelong holiday tradition--she was named after the little girl whose Christmas gifts come magically to life.

But this year, for the first time, she was too caught up in her own miraculous drama to focus on Tchaikovsky’s.

Keeping the pregnancy secret from Drew was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.

But it isn’t the only secret she’s ever kept from him.

At least this one is more believable, she thinks wryly as he releases her, grinning like the post-reformation Grinch.

Chances are he wouldn’t be smiling like that if she told him her other secret.

“Hey, Drew,” she’d say casually, “guess what? A few years ago, when I was filming The Glenhaven Park Dozen, I traveled back in time to December 1941 and fell in love with the real Jed Landry, one of the soldiers the movie was based on. Oh, yeah, and one other thing? The real Jed was killed in Normandy, but he was reincarnated. As you.”

Uh-huh. Not going to happen.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter how he came to her. All that matters is that he’s here.

PROLOGUE

New York City

Monday, October 8

1:46 p.m.

If you look hard enough, you can always find it.

The wise man who once said that to Laura wasn’t talking about the internet, but the phrase has become her mantra for all things.

He was right, of course.

There it is.

She’s been looking, and she’s found it.

Her hand trembling on the mouse, she leans closer to the monitor and clicks to enlarge the window.

LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED IN FLORIDA

Local woman.

Sharon Logan.

Whenever Laura has a chance to get to a computer, she enters the name in a search engine and prays nothing will come up.

Today, her prayers went unanswered.

According to the online news account from her hometown paper, Sharon Logan is being held without bail in Tampa for attacking a girl named Calla Delaney and trying to drown her in her family’s swimming pool. She’s also being questioned about the murder last summer of the girl’s mother, Stephanie Delaney, originally ruled an accidental fall down the stairs.

Those poor people.

Jaw set grimly, hand unsteady on the mouse button, Laura closes out the screen. That’s all she needs to know.

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

That’s why she had to get away. She just couldn’t take it anymore–the constant tension, the growing paranoia, the constant, smothering attention; being treated as if she were still a child, even now that she’s in her twenties.

Laura knew that if she stayed, eventually something would have to give. She didn’t want to be there to witness it.

But...murder.

She never really imagined it would be that extreme.

And...Florida?

What was she doing in Florida?

Who are the Delaneys?

Does it matter?

Maybe it should.

But after all those years of being the girl who lived in the purple house with the crazy lady, all Laura cares about is that she’s finally free.

Free, and not looking back.

“Excuse me, Miss...are you done with that computer? Because we have people waiting to use it.”

She looks up to see a librarian. Not one of the friendly ones she’s gotten to know since she started coming here a few months ago; rather, the one who shushes people and scowls a lot at people who hog the computers.

“Oh...sorry. I’m finished.”

She grabs her backpack, makes her way through the hushed library, and emerges on a crowded Manhattan street.

People rush past without giving her a second glance. No one knows who she is. Who Sharon Logan is. No one cares.

That’s why she’s here. That’s just the way she wants it.

Especially now that Laura knows it finally happened. The crazy lady finally snapped.

Murder.

Laura knew, when she woke up this morning, that today would be the day the search engine would yield something.

If you look hard enough, you can find it.

Years ago, when he said those words, he was talking about hope.

About finding hope, in the midst of despair.

“If you look hard enough, Laura,” he said, handing her tissue after tissue to dry her tears, “you can find it.”

She clung to those words, somehow managed to find a glimmer of light on the darkest days; just a shred of hope to keep her going.

Yet now that it’s all over–now that she’s here, and Sharon Logan is a thousand miles away, in jail for murder...

Now, ironically, Laura’s mantra has been altered.

Every morning, she wakes up thinking it, praying it:

If you really, really, really want to get lost–really need to get lost–then no one can ever find you.

CHAPTER ONE

Lily Dale, New York
Monday, October 8
1:46 p.m.

“All right. Tell me everything. And I mean everything!”

Calla Delaney and her father look at each other, then back at Odelia Lauder, standing in the front hall waiting impatiently for one of them to start talking.

“Gammy, it’s really complicated.” Calla sets down her heavy duffle bag and shifts the laptop computer bag to her other shoulder, wishing her grandmother hadn’t pounced on her and Dad the second they walked in the door from the airport.

It’s been a long day already, saying goodbye to the Wilsons down in Florida, driving to the airport in Tampa, flying from there to New York City, then from New York to Buffalo, waiting for the luggage, renting a car, then driving almost an hour south to reach Lily Dale.

Odelia’s little two-story cottage with its peeling pinkish-orange paint was a welcome sight. They arrived just as a cold rain began falling from an overcast sky, typical weather here in southwestern New York State.

Calla, in jeans and a fleece sweatshirt, was prepared for it.

Dad, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a tee-shirt, was not.

“I’ll get some warmer clothes when we get there,” he told Calla earlier when she warned him that his outfit, which is fine for Florida--or southern California, where he’s been on a teaching sabbatical since August--just won’t cut it up here.

Poor Dad. It’s not like he even had a chance to pack a bag for what’s turning out to be an extended, unexpected trip east. He hopped on a plane from L.A. on Saturday when the Tampa police informed him that his daughter had just been attacked by a lunatic killer.

Again.

Only Dad doesn’t know about the first time, well over a month ago.

That, of course, was a different lunatic killer.

Right.

Incredible, really, the things that have happened to Calla since she came to live with her grandmother in this tiny, gated lakeside village filled with century-old gingerbread cottages...and psychic mediums.

“Odelia,” Dad says, “there’s a lot to discuss.”

“I’m listening.” Gammy looks from him to Calla to him to Calla. “Hello?”

Not knowing where to begin, Calla avoids her grandmother’s expectant gaze. She stoops to pick up Gert, who’s rubbing against her ankles, purring, welcoming her back.

“Why don’t we let Calla go up to her room and relax,” Dad suggests, “and I’ll fill you in.”

“That’s a great idea. Calla, why don’t you–”

”No!” She protests so loudly that poor Gert leaps from her arms and flees up the steps past Miriam, who’s materialized about halfway up, keeping a ghostly eye on things.

Both Dad and Odelia gape at Calla., who scowls back at them. “Please don’t shuttle me off to my room like a little girl. I’m not. I’m almost eighteen.” Well, she will be, in another six months. “I can deal with what happened. I mean, it happened to me, remember? Maybe I want to talk about it. Maybe I need to.”

She does?

You do?

Hmm. The protest sort of popped out of her.

Who knows? Her head has been spinning since the plane touched down. Maybe she does need to get everything out into the open.

Then again, just a few moments ago, the last thing she wanted to do was rehash the events of the past few days.

Face it. You really don’t know what you want.

“Oh, sweetie, you’ve been through so much. It just breaks my heart.” Her grandmother throws a pair of strong maternal arms around her.

Suddenly, for all her longing to be seen as an adult, Calla feels as though she’s about to crumple and cry like a baby.

“I’m okay,” she manages to squeak out unconvincingly.

No, she isn’t. She used to be okay. Before everything–before she lost her mother. Before her life fell apart.

She used to be sweet, and accommodating, and happy, and normal...

“You can’t possibly be okay. And you don’t have to be. Not yet. But you will be,” Odelia promises, reaching out to brush strands of Calla’s long brown hair back from her face.

Then, for the first time, she seems to notice the laptop bag. “What is that?”

“Mom’s computer. Now I’ll be able to check my email and do research for homework right from here, Gammy.”

Among other things.

“But this house isn’t wired for the internet, sweetie.”

“That’s okay. All I need is a phone jack. I can do a dial-up connection.”

“Well, then, you’re in luck. We have a few of those. In fact, there’s one right in your bedroom.”

“Really?” She never noticed it before.

Odelia nods. “Your mother begged me for her own phone when she hit twelve or thirteen. Back then, we didn’t have cordless, and she wanted privacy to talk to her friends. She used to be on it forever.”

Calla finds it hard to imagine her hyper-efficient mother lounging around chatting on the phone for hours. Mom wasn’t big on leisurely conversation–telephone, or otherwise. She liked to get right to the point, and then move on. In both business situations and in personal ones.

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Odelia suggests. “I made lunch. You haven’t eaten yet, have you, Jeff?”

“We grabbed a couple of bran muffins at the airport earlier this morning, but Calla barely touched hers.”

“Well, they probably didn’t put the Raisinettes in, like I do when I make them.”

“What?” Dad’s eyes are wide.

“Didn’t you ever hear of raisins in bran muffins?”

“Raisins, yes. Raisinettes, no.”

“Well, chocolate is good in anything,” Odelia tells Dad with a shrug, eyes gleaming behind the pink plastic cat-eye frames of her glasses–which of course clash violently with her frizzy dyed red hair and her purple sweater.

If Calla were in a chatty mood, she might bring up the “snicker-noodles” her grandmother served for dinner one night--with cut-up Snickers bars as a featured ingredient.

Was that only a few weeks ago? It seems like a year, at least, has passed since that night.

And it seems even longer since Calla’s had any kind of appetite.

“Who am I to question your recipes, Odelia? You’ve always been a great cook.” Dad sniffs the air. “Something smells good. Tuna melts?”

Calla doubts that. Tuna melts would be far too ordinary for a creative chef like Odelia.

“No, but you’re close,” she tells Dad. “Come see.”

Calla smells tuna, too. Tuna...and a faint hint of Lily of the Valley.

That can only mean one thing.

Aiyana is here.

She darts a quick look around the room for her Native American spirit guide, whose presence is always accompanied by the scent of Mom’s favorite flower.

No sign of Aiyana, but...

Calla sniffs again. Yes, the floral smell is real, and of course there’s not a blossom in sight. Fragrant Lily of the Valley only blooms in springtime.

Aiyana...where are you?

Calla wonders if she’s just too worn out today to connect with spirit. She’s still new to this–she needs more practice when it comes to tuning into the energy.

Tuning out, as well. Sometimes, she finds herself bombarded with images and voices. It can be frightening.

Her grandmother promised she’d get the hang of it, though. That’s why she enrolled Calla in a Beginning Mediumship course with classes every Saturday morning.

Aiyana, are you trying to tell me something?

“Calla? Are you okay?”

She turns to see Odelia watching her with concern.

“I’m...fine. Just a little spacey, I guess. Maybe I need to go upstairs and lie down.” And see if Aiyana comes to me there.