remember those awful days as she had endured stares and whispers and hadn’t known what to do with all the anger and shame inside her—or with the grief for her lost innocence.
Claire and her brother had endured those first difficult months by keeping a few friends close and basically sticking their heads down and plowing through.
Ruth, on the other hand, had completely fallen apart. She had taken to her bed for several months after the scandal, addicted to alcohol and the Valium doctors had prescribed her for sleep.
Left with little choice, Claire had stepped up to take care of the three of them. She had been the one who did laundry, who fixed lunch for her younger brother, who walked him to school and helped with his homework and comforted him when he cried for a mother who had been too absorbed in her loss and humiliation to see her children needed her, too.
Claire knew now, taking charge of her flailing family had been her way of dealing with the chaos.
She sipped at her soup, wishing the rich, creamy taste could wipe away the bitter memories. Ruth had lived in that numb state for about six months, until Mary Ella and Katherine and other friends had forced her to break free of her addiction.
She had fought it with courage and strength and Claire would always admire that in her mother. But even after rehab, Ruth had continued to rely on Claire to make sure her life flowed smoothly.
Claire knew she bore plenty of responsibility for the patterns they had fallen into. Even when she had lived away from Hope’s Crossing while Jeff was in medical school, she had handled any crisis of Ruth’s long-distance, whether that was dealing with a parking ticket or a doctor bill or calling a plumber to repair a leaky faucet.
She could justify to herself that if she didn’t take care of things, her mother’s life would fall back into chaos, but she knew that was only an excuse. This was her way of feeling needed, important, to a mother who had basically forgotten her children amid her own pain.
With a sigh, she set down her soup. She wasn’t hungry after all. She would just watch the movie, she decided. She wheeled the chair to the sink and rinsed the bowl, reaching the switch on the disposal only with the help of a large soup ladle.
She headed back to the family room and turned on the movie, eager for any kind of distraction from her thoughts. The movie apparently worked too well. She barely remembered the first scene—when she awoke some time later, the credits were rolling and Chester was standing in the doorway, his hackles raised.
“What’s the matter, bud?” she asked.
He gave that low-throated hound howl of his and scrambled for the front door, his hackles raised and his claws clicking on the wood floor.
Claire frowned but curiosity compelled her to transfer to her rolling office chair and follow him. Chester wasn’t much of a watchdog but he would sometimes have these weird fits of protectiveness. Probably just the Stimsons’ cat or maybe a mule deer coming out of the mountains to forage among the spring greens. For all she knew, her silly dog could be barking at the wind that still howled.
“Come on, boy. It’s okay. Settle down.”
Still, the basset hound stood beside the door, that low growl sounding somehow ominous in the silent house.
Claire maneuvered down the hallway after him until she reached the window beside the front door, set just low enough that she could peek over the sill from her seated position.
She squinted into the darkness and caught a flash of movement that materialized into a dark shape there on the porch.
Her heart skittered.
Someone was out there.
CLAIRE COULD HEAR HER pulse pounding in her ears, but she quickly tried to talk herself down.
She was seeing things. A trick of the wind or a shadow or something.
And even if she wasn’t seeing some weird hallucination, if she really had seen someone standing on her porch, the explanation was probably perfectly benign. This was Hope’s Crossing after all. Not that the town was immune to crime—as the recent rash of burglaries would certainly attest—but a home invasion robbery was an entirely different situation.
Settle down, she told herself. She was only freaking out because she was battling a completely normal sense of vulnerability, alone and helpless in her big house on a stormy night. It was only natural to start imagining somebody out there with a chain saw and a hockey mask.
She was seeing things. She was down to one pain-killer at night, but maybe even that much of the stuff lingering in her system was messing with her head.
She gazed out into the sleeting rain again, straining her eyes to peer at the dark corners of her lawn. There. Again. This time, she couldn’t come up with another rational explanation. That was definitely a person out there dressed in dark clothing, lurking on the edge of the porch.
In a panic, not really thinking about what she was doing, Claire checked to make sure the door was latched and then flicked the porch light rapidly on and off a half-dozen times.
It was probably a stupid thing to do, only serving to let the guy know she had seen him. She would have been better off using that time to barricade herself in the bathroom and calling 9-1-1 or something.
Stupid or not, though, it worked. She had caught his attention anyway. The figure turned quickly toward the front door and she caught the pale blur of a face, but couldn’t make out features or any other identifying details—even whether it was a man or woman—before he (she?) turned quickly and rushed down the driveway.
What on earth was that? Her breath came in shallow gasps as Claire reached down to put a comforting hand on Chester’s warm fur.
“You’re such a good, brave doggie. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. The bad man is gone now. We’re okay.”
Her voice sounded squeaky, as if she’d been sucking helium and she forced herself to try some of Alex’s circle breathing: in through the nose for five counts, fill the diaphragm and hold it for five, then out through the mouth for five counts.
She was only on her second rotation when Chester suddenly gave his howling bark again, his grumpy face concerned, just a second before the doorbell rang. Claire let out a little shriek. Was her intruder back?
After a frantic search for some kind of weapon, she finally picked up a stout umbrella from the holder by the door, then peered through the window again.
This visitor was unquestionably male. Hard chest, broad shoulders, a slight dark shadow on his face. Relief surged through her, sweet and pure like spring runoff.
Riley!
She fumbled with the dead bolt and the lock and yanked open the door, then shoved herself back in the office chair a few feet to give him room to come inside.
Some of her fear must have been obvious on her face. Riley looked wary. If she hadn’t known him since they were both kids, she would have called him dangerous.
“What is it?
