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    Second Glance: A Novel
    Second Glance: A Novel
    Second Glance: A Novel
    Ebook585 pages10 hours

    Second Glance: A Novel

    By Jodi Picoult

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This breathtaking novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult asks: Do we love across time, or in spite of it?

    “Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?”

    An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it’s a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there’s nothing spiritual about the property.

    Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He’s driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He’s been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée’s death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult’s enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.

    Hailed by critics as a “master” storyteller (The Washington Post), Picoult once again “pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable” (Denver Post). Second Glance, her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history—Vermont’s eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s—to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us—literally and figuratively. Do we love across time, or in spite of it?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateApr 8, 2003
    ISBN9780743480758
    Author

    Jodi Picoult

    JODI PICOULT is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-six novels. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, the ALA’s Alex Award, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit, and the prestigious Sarah Josepha Hale Award in recognition of her distinguished body of written work. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband. They have three children. You can visit her website at wwww.jodipicoult.com  

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    Reviews for Second Glance

    4/5

    107 ratings53 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a superbly written book with rich and alive characters. The story is complex and gripping, combining Native American culture, Vermont eugenics history, and the supernatural in a remarkable way. It keeps readers on the edge of their seat and is a wonderful read.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      As always, JP raises questions about ethics and society through an engaging sorry. Never heard before about the eugenics movement in USA and the laws to limit the reproduction of people deemed inferior.
    • 4/5
      This was much better than the last Jodi Picoult book I read. I really enjoyed the storyline and the characters in this one (although it was hard to keep them all straight in my mind at some points!). I like how she wove in real historical fact within the fictional story -- I actually learned something I didn't know anything about through reading this book!
    • 4/5
      I was really excited about this one because it features a ghost hunter and she acknowledges Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes and The Atlantic Paranormal Society for teaching her about ghost hunting - score! But I do have to say that of the three of hers that I've read, this one was the least attention-catching. It was a fun mystery - there's all sorts of characters in the beginning and you can't exactly figure out how they all fit together right away. Slowly the reader can begin connecting dots and it's awful fun trying to figure out who goes where in this puzzle. Even though there are ghosts peeking around every corner, they're not there to scare - neither the other characters nor the reader - so don't let that put you off. This is perfect for a relaxing summer read, so definitely check it out!
    • 5/5
      Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Great book!
    • 5/5
      Wow. This book made me stay up past 3am trying to get to the end. I actually read it twice, separated by a year or two. When I realized I was reading it a second time, I was already so reinvested that I continued, and loved it just as much the second time around. Her writing is superb, the characters are rich and alive, and the story is complex and gripping. This author WINS with this book.
    • 2/5
      Not my favorite of Jodi Picoult's books.
    • 5/5
      wonderful read
    • 5/5
      Each story Picoult writes is uniquely its own, and this particular story melds Native American culture, Vermont eugenics history, and the supernatural in a truly remarkable way. (Who'd have thought three vary dissimilar topics could become a modern-day ghost story?) In your list of books to "read next," be sure to give this novel more than just a "Second Glance."

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I'm not a huge Picoult fan, but this book sounded interesting and it was. A really good ghost story with accurate historical background about the "Eugenics" project in Vermount. Written in 2002 it is one of her older books. I enjoyed it much more than some of the more recent ones.
    • 5/5
      Oh my goodness, what a book. This book takes place in Vermont, and when a piece of land is put up for sale, the local Abenaki Indian tribe protest, saying that the land is an Abenaki burial place. As development starts on the land, odd and unexplainable things start happening in the nearby town of Comtosook. The developer hires a ghost hunter to prove to the townsfolk that there are no ghosts haunting the land. Ross Wakeman, a suicidal man who blames himself for not being with his wife when she died, brings his ghost hunting equipment to be reunited with the woman he lost and still loves. This is a story of ghosts, love, fate, eugenics, and a crime of passion that has touched many lives for 70 years. How Jodi Picoult was able to weave such a complicated story into this page-turning and astonishing book, and still put all of the pieces together at the end, amazes me. I believe "Second Glance" as a fabulous book - one I plan to read again in the future.
    • 3/5
      I loved this book -- Corey Sifter is a likeable, believable character, and the story of the rise and fall of a local powerful family and a politician running for President was fascinating. Canin moves back and forth between the past and the present in a way that is never confusing, but rather gives credence to the central theme of the book: the we are often in the dark, even about those closest to us.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Jodi Picoult has written several books that I just loved. Because of that I tried really hard to like this one. But I just found it over worked and irritating.

      We have Ross who is pining for his dead fiancé.
      We have Leah, a woman who died at 18, just after her baby was born in 1932.
      We have Eli the cop helping with the investigation into Leah's death.
      We have Meredith, who has a son with an uncommon diagnoses that make disables them both.
      Then there's another woman that ends up with Eli that I can't remember the name of. She's Ross's sister.
      We have Lucy who is Meredith's daughter.
      Ross has a son that I also can't think of the name.

      All of these characters lives intertwine from Leah's death. It's an odd convergence that I guess makes since but I just wasn't interested despite my efforts to be interested. Unfortunately I have 2 more Picoult books that are 1/2 done that I've had a similar response to.

      I can't say I would recommend this book to anyone I know. I can't even think of general groups that I would recommend it to.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! One of the best I have read by Jodi Picoult. Great ghost story!
    • 2/5
      This book was mildly entertaining -- but not one of her better ones in my opinion. Maybe her description of the way the rock quarry operated (ridiculous!) turned me off.
    • 5/5
      My favorite JP book. Perhaps the setting resonated with the Vermonter in me; the Abnaki, in particular, to the Northern Vermonter in me. Or that it's a ghost story subtle and true and ethereal as smoke. Or that it is about families and communities that walk that fine line between love/hate, right/wrong, life/death. But I suspect it's the writing itself. This is an early work of Picoult's, and she was at her rawest - and finest.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      My mom gave me this book years ago and it’s been sitting on my TBR shelf ever since. As far as books go, we rarely see eye-to-eye, and so I cast it into a state of perpetual ignore until she reminded me of it the other day. So then I actually read the description and thought it could be interesting, but expected it to be mushy, histrionic and overly sentimental. I don’t know why I had this idea in my head, but I did and I was wrong. Is it a perfect book? No, but it’s far from the sap-fest I thought it would be.A few reviews I read say there’s too many characters to keep track of. Not being a simpleton, I wasn’t put off by this (and after reading Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, come on, bring it with your characters). Sure, there are several, but they’re distinct and Picoult gives a lot of back story and set up for each one. The set up, is long and she doesn’t set the hook until just after 100 pages, but what a hook it is. Before you know it you’re turning the pages faster and faster to connect the dots you suspect join up. When they do (in expected and unexpected ways), it’s a little jolt of joy for exposing the sinister underpinnings of this quaint little Vermont town.As a New England resident, I think it’s natural that Picoult set her story in a New England location and frankly, there are few of them that qualify as big, so the haunted little town cliche hits the bullseye. The characters who live in it chafe against it and even decry the prejudices of the “big city folk” who come through. While I did enjoy the story and the way it was told, not a lot of it was surprising. I figured out a lot of the relationships, circumstances and secrets along the way. Not because I’m overly insightful or brilliant, but because Picoult wanted me to. She divulged everything precisely and in a way that rewards the reader for putting the clues together. It’s a feel-good novel in that sense. Much of the goings on however are far from feel-good. Racism, misogyny, corruption, cover-ups, murder and eugenics create a miasma of unease, disgust and righteous indignation. As far as characters go, I felt Ross was a bit of a pathetic individual, but he tried to rise above. I didn’t understand Cecelia much, but her final scene was pretty heartbreaking. Everything comes together neatly and there is resolution which was expected given how the novel was constructed. Now I’ve gotten over my Jodi Picoult prejudice, I think I’ll be reading more.
    • 5/5
      My favorite Jodi Picoult book! I love the ghost story aspect and the switching back and forth from past to present.
    • 4/5
      I have yet to read a Picoult book that I did not like! And this one is great. I esp. like how Jodi herself uses some of her own ghostly encounters in the novel and frankly I'm surprised that this practice of uegenics went on in this country, in 33 states. Tha's shocking and appalling.
    • 2/5
      I was extremely disappointed with this book. It was just so... all over the place. I've read some Picoult books before, so I'm used to dealing with all the different characters, but this was just plain ridiculous. I couldn't keep track of who was who or what they were doing. There was way too much going on. It also took me until about 3/4 of the way into to the book to realize that the ghost was actually real. I thought there was going to be some logical explanation for it all, but no, it was an actual paranormal book- I just wasn't expecting that and it really threw me off... and put me off. Definitely wouldn't recommend this one.
    • 4/5
      This book is another long typical Jodi Picoult novel which seems to drag on, which is why I did not finish it. I got about half way in and decided that it was just not maintaining my interest.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I was skeptical when I began this book but turns out I loved it. It's a very interesting story about a young man whose fiance was killed in an auto accident and he is unable to get past it. It's about his sister who is raising a son who suffers from XP, a genetic disease that forces the victim to stay out of sunlight so their days are at night and their nights become their days. It's about an area of Vermont where the government decided to, and actually passed a law to sterilize, voluntarily of course (not), the indigent, the feeble minded, the destitute, the illiterate, and persons belonging to a particular Indian tribe. (This last part is true and the law, though it has been reworded, is still on the books in Vermont. All other states that passed similar laws in the 20s & 30s have wiped them from their books.) It is about the ghost of a lady who died in the 30s but continues to return as she has a story to tell. She finally finds someone who is sensitive enough to the unnatural who sees and hears her.There are a lot of characters in this book and in the beginning it was a bit difficult to keep up with them all but it came. My only negative about the storyline is that the ending was sewn up quickly and that all came together just a bit too nicely for my taste. But it was overall a very good read and I gave it 4 stars.
    • 4/5
      Bestselling author Jodi Picoult has published an astounding twenty novels, and has achieved global success as a writer. Probably best known for her novel My Sister's Keeper published in 2004 and later made into a movie in 2009, reading Second Glance was my first introduction to Jodi Picoult's work.The blurb describes Second Glance as: "One of Jodi Picoult's eeriest and most engrossing works, this is a story about the things that come back to haunt us - literally and metaphorically." Reading this, I figured it sounded like the perfect place to start.A house and large plot of land is being sold in Vermont, but little does the buyer know, the house has a history. Strange things begin to happen as the developer begins to demolish the house, and Ross - a paranormal investigator, in town to visit his sister - offers to look into the situation.What he doesn't expect is to fall in love and re-open a 70 year old murder case. Picoult takes us back in time to when owners of the house were leaders in eugenics and a terrible tragedy took place.This is a story of love, family and identity, and Picoult deftly weaves the story and the characters together in a meaningful and touching way. I enjoyed learning how the characters were linked together and how destiny or fate played a role in each of their lives. It was quite beautiful although at times heartbreaking."I think Second Glance is my biggest accomplishment to date." - Jodi Picoult (Source: author website, August 2012)This was a fabulous introduction to popular author Jodi Picoult and I'll be sure to read more of her work in the future.
    • 3/5
      I was sceptical about reading this book because it has ghosts in it. But Jodi Picoult is a good writer, and she pulled off a story that dealt with real people and real issues in spite of the odd ghost. This is the story of Ross Wakeman, who lost his fiancee in a car accident and hopes that ghosts exist so that he can find her again. It's also the story of Lia Pike, whose husband and father are prominent in the eugenics movement of the 1930s in Vermont, which saw many "undesirables" sterilized involuntarily. I like the way Ms. Picoult deals with complex issues in her novels, and that is what made this book work for me: eugenics in the 1930s to embryo DNA screening in the 21st century.
    • 4/5
      This book is another long typical Jodi Picoult novel which seems to drag on, which is why I did not finish it. I got about half way in and decided that it was just not maintaining my interest.
    • 4/5
      Good read. I enjoyed the story lines. And I enjoy Picoult's writing.
    • 4/5
      This was a ghost story in many ways; the ghosts of a young man's life haunt him daily, the ghost of a real life haunt a young boy with a terminal illness, and the corporeal ghost of a young woman who died decades ago. I wasn't expecting much when I read this, but I was drawn in. It's not My Sister's Keeper, but it is, indeed, a keeper.
    • 4/5
      Very slow book.... I normally get grabbed by her books and find it hard to put them down. I didn't have that problem with this one at all, though eventually I found it pretty interesting.
    • 4/5
      i love this author, but this wasnt one of my favorites of hers. i found it tough to get ito, but pnce i did, i really enjoyed it. usually though i cant put her books down, so it was a little dissapointing.
    • 3/5
      Anyone who knows me knows that I have this love/hate relationship with Jodi Picoult. (Well, it's sort of a one-way thing, really.) I think she is a wonderful, fluid writer with a powerful gift for altering her voice to suit each character. So when she screws something up, I get madder at her than I do at other, less talented writers.Second Glance indulges in a typical Picoult conceit: it is told from a number of perspectives, and many of them seem unrelated at first; as the novel progresses, the story lines converge. Ross Wakeman, consumed with guilt over his fiancee's death, has become a ghost hunter and a bit of a drifter. Ross wants nothing more than to see a bona-fide ghost, but the after-life only taunts him with hints and questions. Ross's sister Shelby, caring for a small son with XP syndrome, just wants to keep her son and her sometimes suicidal brother alive. Geneticist Meredith has a little girl who sees ghosts - or perhaps she is psychotic. And cop Eli and 102 year old Az are Abenaki Indians who are trying to keep an ancient burial ground form being developed.Sounds disconnected? Unfortunately, it is. Picoult shows her usual skill at bringing characters alive; but it wasn't enough to keep me interested, because it seemed to take forever to bring these people together. I admit it, I had to skip ahead, or else I was going to give up on the novel altogether. Also as usual, Picoult's ending seemed a bit contrived, but I give her a pass on that; this novel is more fantastical than her usual novels, and a slightly fantastic ending seemed quite reasonable to me. Bottom line: if you can stay interested until page 150 or so, you won't be mad at yourself for finishing it.
    • 4/5
      Not my favourite Picoult book, but not bad. She does a good job creating the characters and almost made me believe in the paranormal world!

    Book preview

    Second Glance - Jodi Picoult

    PART ONE

    2001

    True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

    —FRANÇOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, MAXIM 76

    ONE

    Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third.

    He fell asleep at the wheel and drove his car off a bridge into a lake—that was the second time—and was found on the shore by rescuers. When his half-sunken Honda was recovered, the doors were all locked, and the tempered glass windows were shattered like spiderwebs, but still intact. No one could figure out how he’d gotten out of the car in the first place, much less survived a crash without even a scratch.

    The third time, Ross was mugged in New York City. The thief took his wallet and beat him up, and then shot him in the back and left him for dead. The bullet—fired close enough to have shattered his scapula and punctured a lung—didn’t. Instead it miraculously stopped at the bone, a small nugget of lead that Ross now used as a keychain.

    The first time was years ago, when Ross had found himself in the middle of an electrical storm. The lightning, a beautiful blue charge, had staggered out of the sky and gone straight for his heart. The doctors told him that he had been legally dead for seven minutes. They reasoned that the current could not have struck Ross directly, because 50,000 amperes of current in his chest cavity would have boiled the moisture in his cells and quite literally made him explode. Instead, the lightning had hit nearby and created an induced current in his own body, one still strong enough to disturb his cardiac rhythm. The doctors said he was one hell of a lucky man.

    They were wrong.

    Now, as Ross walked up the pitched wet roof of the O’Donnells’ Oswego home in the dark, he did not even bother with caution. The wind coming off Lake Ontario was cold even in August, and whipped his long hair into his eyes as he maneuvered around the gabled window. The rain bit at the back of his neck as he worked the clamps onto the flashing and positioned the waterproof video camera so that it was pointing into the attic.

    His boots slipped, dislodging some of the old shingles. On the ground, beneath an umbrella, O’Donnell squinted up at him. Be careful, the man called out. Ross also heard the words he did not say: We’ve got enough ghosts.

    But nothing would happen to him. He would not trip; he wouldn’t fall. It was why he volunteered for the riskiest tasks; why he put himself into danger again and again. It was why he’d tried bungee jumping and rock climbing and crack cocaine. He waved down to Mr. O’Donnell, indicating that he’d heard. But just as Ross knew that in eight hours, the sun would come up—just as he knew that he’d have to go through the motions for another day—he also knew he couldn’t die, in spite of the fact that it was what he wanted, more than anything.

    The baby woke Spencer Pike, and he struggled to a sitting position. In spite of the nightlights kept in every room at the Shady Pines Nursing Home—nearly enough combined wattage, he imagined, to illuminate all of Burlington, Vermont—Spencer couldn’t see past the foot of his bed. He couldn’t see anything these days, thanks to the cataracts; although sometimes he’d get up to take a leak, and in the mirror, as he passed by, he would catch a glimpse of someone watching him—someone whose brow was not spotted and yellow; someone whose skin was not sighing off his bones. But then the young man Spencer had once been would disappear, leaving him to stare at the crumbs that were left of his life.

    His ears, though, were sharp. Unlike the other sorry old morons in this place, Spencer had never needed a hearing aid. Hell, he heard things that he didn’t even care to.

    On cue, the baby cried again.

    Spencer’s hand scrabbled over the covers to the call button beside his bed. A moment later, the night nurse came in. Mr. Pike, she said. What’s the matter?

    The baby’s crying.

    The nurse fussed behind him, turning pillows and raising the head of the bed. There are no babies here, Mr. Pike, you know that. It was just a dream. She patted the right angle that had once been his strong shoulder. Now, you need to go back to sleep. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow. A meeting, remember?

    Why, Spencer wondered, did she talk to him as if he were a child? And why did he react like one—sinking back beneath her gentle hands, letting her pull the covers up to his chest? A memory swelled at the base of Spencer’s throat, something that he could not quite pull to the front of the fog but that brought tears to his eyes. Do you need some Naproxen? the nurse asked kindly.

    Spencer shook his head. He had been a scientist, after all. And no laboratory had yet crafted the drug that could ease this ache.

    In person, Curtis Warburton was smaller than he seemed to be on television, but he lacked none of the magnetism that had made Bogeyman Nights the highest-rated show in its time slot. His black hair was shot, skunklike, with a white streak—one he’d possessed since a night nine years ago, when the ghost of his grandfather had appeared at the foot of his bed and led him into the field of paranormal investigation. His wife, Maylene, an elf of a woman whose psychic abilities were well known to the Los Angeles police, perched beside him, taking notes as Curtis posed questions to the owners of the house.

    First was the kitchen, murmured Eve O’Donnell, and her husband nodded. A retired couple, they’d bought this home on the lake as a summer retreat, and in their three months of tenancy had experienced supernatural phenomena at least twice a week. About ten in the morning, I locked up all the doors, put on the alarm system, and went to the post office. When I came home, the alarm was still on . . . but inside, the kitchen cabinets were open, and every cereal box was on the table, spilled on its side. I called Harlan, thinking he’d come home and left behind a mess.

    I was at the Elks Club the whole time, her husband interjected. Never came home. No one did.

    And there’s the calliope music we heard coming from the attic at two in the morning. The minute we went upstairs, it stopped. Open the door to find a child’s toy piano, missing its batteries, sitting in the middle of the floor.

    We don’t own a toy piano, Harlan added. Much less a child.

    And when we put in the batteries, it didn’t even play that kind of music. Eve hesitated. "Mr. Warburton, I hope you understand that we’re not the kind of people who . . . who believe in this sort of thing. It’s just . . . it’s just that if it’s not this, then I’m losing my mind."

    Mrs. O’Donnell, you’re not going crazy. Curtis touched her hand with trademark sympathy. By tomorrow morning we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on in your home. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Ross was getting this on camera. Depending on what happened later, the O’Donnells might find themselves featured on Bogeyman Nights, and if so, this footage was critical. The Warburtons received over three hundred e-mails a day from people who believed their houses were haunted. Eighty-five percent of the claims turned out to be hoaxes or mice in the rafters. The rest—well, Ross had been working with them long enough to know that there were some things that simply could not be explained.

    Have you experienced any spectral visions? Curtis asked. Temperature changes?

    Our bedroom will be hot as hell one minute, and then we’ll be shivering the next, Harlan answered.

    Are there any spots in the house in particular where you feel uncomfortable?

    The attic, definitely. The upstairs bathroom.

    Curtis’s eyes swept from the hand-knotted Oriental rug to the antique vase on the mantel of the fireplace. I have to warn you that finding a ghost can be a costly proposition.

    As the Warburtons’ field researcher, Ross had been sent to libraries and newspaper archives to locate documents about the property—and hopefully the bonus information that a murder or a suicide might have occurred there. His inquiry had turned up nothing, but that never stopped Curtis. After all, a ghost could haunt a person as well as a place. History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one’s eyelids.

    Whatever it takes, Eve O’Donnell said. This isn’t about money.

    Of course not. Curtis smiled and slapped his palms on his knees. Well, then. We’ve got some work to do.

    That was Ross’s cue. During the investigation, he was responsible for setting up and monitoring the electromagnetic equipment, the digital video cameras, the infrared thermometer. He worked for minimum wage, in spite of the money that came in from the TV show and from cases like this one. Ross had begged the Warburtons for a job nine months ago after reading about them in the L.A. Times on Halloween. Unlike Curtis and Maylene, he had never seen a spirit—but he wanted to, badly. He was hoping that sensitivity to ghosts might be something you could catch from close contact, like chicken pox—and, like chicken pox, might be something that would mark you forever.

    I thought I’d check the attic, Ross said.

    He stood in the doorway for a moment, waiting for Eve O’Donnell to lead the way upstairs. I feel foolish, she confided, although Ross had not asked. At my age, seeing Casper.

    Ross smiled. A ghost can shake you up a little, and make you think you’re nuts, but it’s not going to hurt you.

    Oh, I don’t think she’d hurt me.

    She?

    Eve hesitated. Harlan said I shouldn’t volunteer any information. That way if you see what we do, then we’d know. She shivered, glanced up the narrow stairs. My little sister died when I was seven. Sometimes I wonder . . . can a ghost find you, if she wants to?

    Ross looked away. I don’t know, he said, wishing he could have offered her more—a concrete answer, a personal experience. His eyes lit on the small door at the top of the stairs. Is that it?

    She nodded, letting him pass in front of her to unlatch it. The video camera Ross had mounted outside watched them from the window, a cyclops. Eve hugged herself tightly. Being here gives me the chills.

    Ross moved some boxes, so that no shadows would be caught on tape that could be explained away. Curtis says that’s how you know where to find them. You go with what your senses are telling you. A wink on the floor caught his eye; kneeling, he picked up a handful of pennies. Six cents. He smiled. Ironic.

    She does that sometimes. Eve was edging toward the door, her arms wrapped around herself. Leaves us change.

    The ghost? Ross asked, turning, but Eve had already fled down the stairs.

    Taking a deep breath, he closed the door to the attic and shut the light, plunging the small room into blackness. He stepped off to the side where he would not be in range of the video camera, and activated it with a remote control. Then he fixed his attention on the darkness around him, letting it press in at his chest and the backs of his knees, as Curtis Warburton had taught him. Ross cracked open his senses until the lip of disbelief thinned, until the space around him bloomed. Maybe this is it, he thought. Maybe the coming of ghosts feels like a sob at the back of your throat.

    Somewhere off to the left was the sound of a footfall, and the unmistakable chime of coins striking the floor. Switching on a flashlight, Ross swung the beam until it illuminated his boot, and the three new pennies beside it. Aimee? he whispered to the empty air. Is that you?

    Comtosook, Vermont, was a town marked by boundaries: the dip where it slipped into Lake Champlain, the cliffs that bordered the granite quarry where half the residents worked, the invisible demarcation where the rolling Vermont countryside became, with one more step, the city of Burlington. On the Congregational church in the center of town hung a plaque from Vermont Life magazine, dated 1994, the year that Comtosook was lauded as the most picture-perfect hamlet in the state. And it was—there were days Eli Rochert looked at the leaves turning, rubies and amber and emeralds, and he simply had to stop for a moment and catch his breath.

    But whatever Comtosook was to tourists, it was Eli’s home. It had been, forever. He imagined it always would be. Of course, as one of the two full-time police officers in the town, he understood that what the tourists saw was an illusion. Eli had learned long ago that you can stare right at something and not see what lies beneath the surface.

    He drove along Cemetery Road, his usual patrol haunt on nights such as this, when the moon was as beaded and yellow as a hawk’s eye. Although the windows were rolled down, there wasn’t much of a breeze; and Eli’s short black hair was damp at the nape of his neck. Even Watson, his bloodhound, was panting in the seat beside him.

    Old headstones listed like tired foot soldiers. In the left corner of the cemetery, near the beech tree, was Comtosook’s oddest gravestone. WINNIE SPARKS, it read. BORN 1835. DIED 1901. DIED 1911. Legend had it that the irritable old woman’s funeral procession had been en route to the cemetery when the horses reared and her coffin fell out of the wagon. As it popped open, Winnie sat up and climbed out, spitting mad. Ten years later when she died—again—her long-suffering husband hammered 150 nails to seal the lid of the coffin, just as a precaution.

    Whether it was true or not didn’t much matter to Eli. But the local teens seemed to think that Winnie’s inability to stay dead was good enough reason to bring six-packs and pot to the cemetery. Eli unfolded his long body from the truck. You coming? he said to the dog, which flopped down on the seat in response. Shaking his head, Eli slipped through the cemetery until he reached Winnie’s grave, where four kids too wasted to hear his footsteps were huddled around the blue-fingered flame of a Sterno burner.

    Boo, Eli said flatly.

    It’s the cops!

    Damn! There was a scuffle of sneakers, the ping of bottles clinking together as the teens scrambled to get away. Eli could have had them at any moment, of course; he chose to let them off this time. He turned the beam of his flashlight onto the last of the retreating figures, then swung it down toward the mess. They left behind a faint cloud of sweet smoke and two perfectly good unopened bottles of Rolling Rock that Eli could make use of when he went off duty.

    Bending down, he pulled a dandelion from the base of Winnie’s headstone. As if the motion had dislodged it, a word rolled into his mind: chibaiak . . . ghosts. His grandmother’s language, which burned on Eli’s tongue like a peppermint. No such thing, he said aloud, and walked back to the car to see what else this night might hold in store.

    Shelby Wakeman had awakened exhausted after a full day’s sleep. She’d been having that dream again, the one where Ethan was standing beside her in an airport, and then she turned around to find that he’d disappeared. Frantic, she’d run from terminal to terminal looking for him, until at last she flew out a door onto the tarmac and found her nine-year-old standing in the path of an incoming jet.

    It terrified her, no matter how often Shelby told herself that this would never happen—she’d never be in an airport with Ethan in the middle of the day, much less lose sight of him. But what frightened her most was that image of her son standing with his arms outstretched, his buttermilk face lifted up to the sun.

    "Earth to Mom . . . hello?"

    Sorry. Shelby smiled. Just daydreaming.

    Ethan finished rinsing his plate and setting it into the dishwasher. Do you think it’s still daydreaming if you do it at night? Before she could answer, he grabbed his skateboard, as much an appendage as any of his limbs. Meet you out there?

    She nodded, and watched Ethan explode into the front yard. No matter how many times she told him to be quiet—at 4 A.M., most people were asleep, not racing around on skateboards—Ethan usually forgot, and Shelby usually didn’t have the heart to remind him.

    Ethan had XP, xeroderma pigmentosum, an incredibly rare inherited disease that left him extremely sensitive to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. In the world, there were only a thousand known cases of XP. If you had it, you had it from birth, and you had it forever.

    Shelby had first noticed something was wrong when Ethan was six weeks old, but it took a year of testing before he was diagnosed with XP. Ultraviolet light, the doctors explained, causes damage to human DNA. Most people can automatically repair that damage . . . but XP patients can’t. Eventually the damage affects cell division, which leads to cancer. Ethan, they said, might live to reach his teens.

    But Shelby figured if sunlight was going to kill her son, all she needed to do was to make it infinitely dark. She stayed in days. She read Ethan bedtime books by candlelight. She covered the windows of her house with towels and curtains that her husband would rip down every night when he came home from work. No one, he’d said, is allergic to the goddamned sun.

    By the time they were divorced, Shelby had learned about light. She knew that there was more to fear than just the outdoors. Grocery stores and doctors’ offices had fluorescent fixtures, which were ultraviolet. Sunblock became as common as hand cream, applied inside the house as well as out. Ethan had twenty-two hats, and he donned them with the same casual routine that other children put on their underwear.

    Tonight he was wearing one that said I’M WITH STUPID. The brim was curled tight as a snail, a shape Ethan cultivated by hooking the lip of the hat beneath the adjustable band in the back. When Shelby saw the caps being stored that way, she thought of swans tucking their heads beneath a wing; of the tiny bound feet of the Chinese.

    She finished cleaning up the kitchen and then settled herself with a book on the edge of the driveway. Her long, dark hair was braided into submission, thick as a fist, and she was still hot—how on earth could Ethan race around like that? He ran his skateboard up a homemade wooden ramp and did an Ollie kickflip. Mom! Mom? Did you see that? It was just like Tony Hawk.

    I know it, Shelby agreed.

    So don’t you think that it would be totally sweet if we—

    We are not going to build a half-pipe in the driveway, Ethan.

    But—

    "Jeez. Whatever." And he was gone again in a rumble of wheels.

    Inside, Shelby smiled. She loved the attitude that seemed to be creeping into Ethan’s personality, like a puppeteer throwing words into his mouth. She loved the way he turned on Late Night with Conan O’Brien when he thought she was somewhere else in the house, to try to catch all the innuendoes. It made him . . . well, so normal. If not for the fact that the moon was riding shotgun overhead, and that Ethan’s face was so pale the veins beneath his skin glowed like roads she knew by heart—if not for these small things, Shelby could almost believe her world was just like any other single mother’s.

    Ethan executed a shifty pivot, and then a Casper big spin. There was a time, Shelby realized, when she couldn’t have distinguished a helipop from a G-turn. There was also a time Shelby would have looked at Ethan and herself and felt pity. But Shelby could hardly remember what her existence had been like before this illness was flung over them like a fishing net; and truth be told, any life she’d lived before Ethan could not have been much of a life at all.

    He skidded to a stop in front of her. I’m starving.

    You just ate!

    Ethan blinked at her, as if that were any kind of excuse. Shelby sighed. You can go in and have a snack if you want, but it’s looking pink already.

    Ethan turned toward the sunrise, a claw hooked over the horizon. Let me watch from out here, he begged. Just once.

    Ethan—

    I know. His voice dipped down at the edges. Three more hardflips.

    One.

    Two. Without waiting for agreement—she would concede, and they both knew it—Ethan sped off again. Shelby cracked open her novel, the words registering like cars on a freight train—a stream without any individual characteristics. She had just turned the page when she realized Ethan’s skateboard was no longer moving.

    He held it balanced against his leg, the graphic of the superhero Wolverine spotted white. Mom? he asked. "Is it snowing?"

    It did, quite often, in Vermont. But not in August. A white swirl tipped toward her book and caught in the wedge of the spine; but it was not a snowflake after all. She lifted the petal to her nose, and sniffed. Roses.

    Shelby had heard of strange weather patterns that caused frogs to evaporate and rain down over the seas; she’d once seen a hailstorm of locusts. But this . . . ?

    The petals continued to fall, catching in her hair and Ethan’s. Weird, he breathed, and he sat down beside Shelby to witness a freak of nature.

    Pennies. Curtis Warburton turned over the coin Ross had handed him. Anything else?

    Ross shook his head. It had been three hours, and even with a raging storm outside providing a well of energy, the paranormal activity had been minimal at best. I thought I saw a globule on the screen at one point, but it turned out to be a smoke alarm hung in the back of the attic.

    Well, I haven’t felt a damn thing, Curtis sighed. We should have taken the case in Buffalo instead.

    Ross snapped some used film back into its canister and tucked it into his pocket. The wife, Eve? She mentioned a little sister who died when she was seven.

    Curtis looked at him. Interesting.

    The two men walked downstairs. Maylene sat on the living room couch in the dark with an infrared thermometer. You get anything? Curtis asked.

    No. This house is about as active as a quadriplegic.

    How is it going? Eve O’Donnell interrupted. She stood at the doorway of the living room, her hand clutching the collar of her robe.

    I think it’s safe to say that you’re not alone in this house. In fact, Curtis held out the penny Ross had given him, I just found this.

    Yes . . . sometimes there are coins lying around. I told Ross that.

    Did you?

    Ross turned, frowning. But before he could ask Curtis why he was playing dumb, his boss started speaking again. Ghosts can be mischievous that way. Especially the ghost of a child, for example.

    Ross felt the charge of the air as Eve O’Donnell lay her trust at Curtis’s feet. I have to tell you, Curtis said. I’m getting some very strong sensations here. There’s a presence, but it’s someone you know, someone who knows you. Curtis tipped his head to one side and furrowed his brow. "It’s a girl . . . I’m getting the sense it’s a girl, and I’m feeling a number . . . seven. Did you by any chance have a younger sister who passed?"

    Ross found himself rooted to the floor. He had been trained to consider the fact that 85 percent of the cases they investigated were hoaxes perpetrated by people who either wanted to waste their time, or get on national TV, or prove that paranormal investigation was anything but a science. He couldn’t count how many times they’d found a speaker hidden in the moaning wall; fishing line wrapped around a quaking chandelier. But he’d never considered that the Warburtons might be putting on a show, too.

    It would be an additional charge, of course, Curtis was saying, but I wouldn’t rule out holding a séance.

    Ross’s head throbbed. Curtis, could I speak to you privately?

    They put on their coats and went out, standing under the overhang of the garage as the rain poured down. This better be good, Curtis said. You interrupted me as I was hooking her.

    You don’t think there’s a ghost here. The only reason you know about her sister is because I told you.

    Curtis lit a cigarette; the tip glowed like a slitted eye. So?

    So . . . you can’t lie to that woman just to make a few bucks and get her reaction on camera.

    "All I’m doing is telling the O’Donnells what they want to hear. These people believe there’s a ghost in this house. They want to believe there’s a ghost in this house. Even if we’re not getting much activity tonight, that doesn’t mean a spirit isn’t laying low with visitors around."

    This isn’t just a ghost, Ross said, his voice shaking. "This was someone to her."

    I didn’t peg you for such a purist. I figured after all these months, you’d know the routine.

    Ross did not consider himself to be particularly gullible. He’d seen and done enough in his life to always be on the lookout for what was real, because he so often felt like he wasn’t. I know the routine. I just didn’t know it was all fake.

    Curtis whipped the cigarette to the ground. "I’m not a fake. The ghost of my grandfather appeared to me, Ross. I took a goddamned photo of him standing at the foot of my bed. You draw your own conclusions. Hell, remember that shot you got of a face rising out of the lake? You think I set that up? I wasn’t even in the same state you were in at the time. Curtis took a deep breath, calming himself. Look, I’m not taking the O’Donnells for a ride. I’m a businessman, Ross, and I know my clients."

    Ross couldn’t answer. For all he knew, Curtis had managed to slip the penny he’d found beneath the tripod, too. For all he knew, the past nine months of his life had been wasted. He was no better than the O’Donnells—he’d seen only what he wanted to believe.

    Maybe she was psychic, because at that moment Maylene stepped outside. Curtis? What’s going on?

    It’s Ross. He’s trying to decide what road to take home—I-81, or the Moral High Ground.

    Ross stepped into the driving rain and started walking. Let them think what they wanted; they’d certainly encouraged Ross to do the same. He didn’t bother to return for his digital camera or his knapsack; these were things he could replace, unlike his composure, which he was fast in danger of losing. In his car he turned the heater on full blast, trying to get rid of the chill that wouldn’t let go. He drove a mile before he realized that his headlights weren’t on. Then he pulled off to the side of the road and took great, gulping breaths, trying to start his heart again.

    Ross knew how to scientifically record paranormal phenomena and how to interpret the results. He had filmed lights zipping over graveyards; he had taped voices in empty basements; he had felt cold in spots where there could be no draft. For nine months, Ross had thought he’d found an entrance to the world where Aimee was . . . and it turned out to be a painted door drawn on a wall.

    Damn it, he was running out of ideas.

    Az Thompson awoke with his mouth full of stones, small and smooth as olive pits. He spat fifteen into the corrugated leather of his palm before he trusted himself to breathe without choking. He swung his legs over the side of the army cot. He tried to shake the certainty that if buried in the packed earth beneath his bare feet, these rocks would grow into some cancerous black thicket, like the ones covering the castle in that White Man’s fairy tale about a girl who couldn’t wake up without being kissed.

    He didn’t mind camping out; for as long as he could remember he’d had one foot in nature and one foot in the yanqui world. Az stuck his head out the flap of the tent, where some of the others had already gathered for breakfast. Their signs—placards to be worn around the neck, and picket posters tacked onto wood—lay in a heap like ventriloquist’s dummies, harmless without some spirit behind them. Haw, he grunted, and walked toward the small campfire, knowing that a space would be made for him.

    The others treated him the way they would if Abe Lincoln got up and walked out of that tent—with humility, and no small amount of awe, to find him alive after all this time. Az wasn’t as old as Abe, but he wasn’t off by much. He was 102 or 103—he’d stopped counting a while ago. Because he knew the dying language of his people, he was respected as a teacher. Still, his age alone made him a tribal elder, which would have been something, had the Abenaki been a federally recognized tribe.

    Az heard the creak of every joint in his spine as he settled himself on a folding chair. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from beside the fire pit and peered at the land, a parcel located at the northwesterly intersection of Montgomery Road and Otter Creek Pass. At its crest sat the big white house, now an eyesore. It would be the first thing to go, Az knew, just like he knew everything about this property, from the surveyor’s measurements to the recorded number of the deed plan. He knew the spots where the ground froze first in the winter and the section where no vegetation ever managed to grow. He knew which window in the abandoned house had been broken by kids running wild; which side of the porch had fallen first; which floorboards on the stairs were rotted through.

    He also knew the license plate numbers of every vehicle the Redhook Group had parked on the perimeter. Rumor had it that Newton Redhook wanted to build himself Comtosook’s first strip mall. On one of their burial sites.

    I’m telling you, said Fat Charlie, it’s El Niño.

    Winks shook his head. It’s screwed up, is what it is. Ain’t normal to rain roses. That’s like a clock running backward, or well water turning to blood.

    Fat Charlie laughed. Winks, you gotta switch back to Letterman. Those horror flicks are getting to you, man.

    Az looked around, noticing the light dusting of flower petals all over the ground. He rolled his tongue across the cavern of his mouth, tasting those stones again. What do you think, Az? Winks asked.

    What he thought was that trying to explain rose petals falling from the sky was not only useless, but also futile, since the things that were going to happen had already been set into motion. What he thought was that rose petals were going to be the least of their problems. Az focused the binoculars on a bulldozer chugging slowly up the road. I think you can’t dig in the ground, he said aloud, without unearthing something.

    This was how Ross had met Aimee: On the corner of Broadway and 112th, in the shadow of Columbia University, he had literally run into her, knocking all of her books into a murky brown puddle. She was a medical student studying for her anatomy final, and she nearly started hyperventilating at the sight of all her hard work being ruined. Sitting in the middle of the street in New York, she was also the most beautiful woman Ross had ever seen. I’ll help you, Ross promised, although he didn’t know a fibula from a phalanx. Just give me a second chance.

    This was how Ross proposed to Aimee: A year later he paid a cab driver to take them past Broadway and 112th en route to dinner at a restaurant. As instructed, the man pulled to the curb, and Ross opened the door and got down on one knee on the filthy pavement. He popped open the small ring box and stared into her electric eyes. Marry me, he said, and then he lost his balance and the diamond fell down a sewer grate.

    Aimee’s mouth fell open. Tell me, she managed finally, that didn’t just happen.

    Ross looked down the black grate, and at the empty box. He tossed it into the sewer, too. Then he pulled another ring, the real ring, from his pocket. Give me a second chance, he said.

    Now, in a deserted parking lot, he tipped the bottle up to drink. Sometimes Ross wanted to scratch himself out of his skin, to see what was on the other side. He wanted to jump off bridges into seas of concrete. He wanted to scream until his throat bled; to run until his soles split open. At times like this, when failure was a tidal wave, his life became a finite line—the end of which, through some cosmic joke, he could not seem to reach.

    Ross contemplated suicide the way some people made out shopping lists—methodically, with great attention given to detail. There were days when he was fine. And then there were other days when he took census counts of people who seemed happy, and those who seemed in pain. There were days when it made perfect sense to drink boiling water, or suffocate in the refrigerator, or walk naked into the snow until he simply lay down to sleep.

    Ross had read of suicides, fascinated by the creativity—women who looped their long hair around their own necks to form a rope, men who mainlined mayonnaise, teenagers who swallowed firecrackers. But every time he came close to testing a beam for the weight it would hold, or drew a bead of blood with an X-Acto knife, he would think of the mess he’d leave behind.

    He didn’t know what death held in store for him. But he knew that it wouldn’t be life, and that was good enough. He had not felt anything since the day Aimee had died. The day when, like an idiot, he had chosen to play the hero, first dragging his fiancée from the wreckage and then going back to rescue the driver of the other car moments before it burst into flames. By the time he’d returned to Aimee, she was already gone. She’d died, alone, while he was off being Superman.

    Some hero he had turned out to be, saving the wrong person.

    He threw the empty bottle onto the floor of his Jeep and put the car into gear, tearing out of the parking lot like a teenager. There were no cops around—there never were, when you needed them—and Ross accelerated, until he was doing more than eighty down the single-lane divided highway.

    He came to a stop at the railroad bridge, where the warning gate flashed as its arms lowered, slow as a ballerina. He emptied his mind of everything except inching his car forward until it broke the gate, until the Jeep sat as firm on the tracks as a sacrifice.

    The train pounded. The tracks began to sing a steel symphony. Ross gave himself up to dying, catching a single word between his teeth before impact: Finally.

    The sound was awesome, deafening. And yet it moved past him, growing Doppler-distant, until Ross raised the courage to open his eyes.

    His car was smoking from the hood, but still running. It hobbled unevenly, as if one tire was low on air. And it was pointed in the opposite direction, heading back from where he’d come.

    There was nothing for it: with tears in his eyes, Ross started to drive.

    Rod van Vleet wasn’t going home without a signed contract. In the first place, Newton Redhook had left him responsible for securing the nineteen acres that comprised the Pike property. In the second place, it had taken over six hours to get to this nursing home in Nowhere, Vermont, and Rod had no plans to return here in the immediate future.

    Mr. Pike, he said, smiling at the old man, who was plug-ugly enough to give Rod nightmares for a week. Hell, if Rod himself looked like that by age ninety-five, he was all for someone giving him a morphine nightcap and a bed six feet under. Spencer Pike’s bald head was as spotted as a cantaloupe; his hands were twisted into knots; his body seemed to have taken up permanent position as a human comma. As you can see here, the Redhook Group is prepared to put into escrow today a check made out to you for fifty thousand dollars, as a token of good faith pending the title search.

    The old man narrowed a milky eye. What the hell do I care about money?

    Well. Maybe you could take a vacation. You and a nurse. Rod smiled at the woman standing behind Pike, her arms crossed.

    Can’t travel. Doctor’s orders. Liver could just . . . give out.

    Rod smiled uncomfortably, thinking that an alcoholic who’d survived nearly a hundred years should just get on a plane to Fiji and the hell with the consequences. Well.

    You already said that. You senile?

    No, sir. Rod cleared his throat. I understand this land was in your wife’s family for several generations?

    Yes.

    It’s our belief, Mr. Pike, that the Redhook Group can contribute to the growth of Comtosook by developing your acreage in a way that boosts the town economy.

    You want to build stores there.

    Yes, sir, we do.

    You gonna build a bagel shop?

    Rod blinked, nonplussed. I don’t believe Mr. Redhook knows yet.

    Build it. I like bagels.

    Rod pushed the check across the table again, this time with the contract. I won’t be able to build anything, Mr. Pike, until I get your signature here.

    Pike stared at him for a long moment, then reached out for a pen. Rod let out the breath he’d been holding. The title is in your wife’s name? Cecelia Pike?

    It was Cissy’s.

    And this . . . claim the Abenaki are championing . . . is there any validity to that?

    Pike’s knuckles went white from the pressure. There’s no Indian burial ground on that property. He glanced up at Rod. I don’t like you.

    I’m getting that sense, sir.

    The only reason I’m going to sign this is because I’d rather give that land up than watch it go to the State.

    Rod rolled up the signed contract and rapped it against the table. Well! he said again, and Pike raised one eyebrow. We’ll be doing our due diligence, and hopefully we’ll finish this deal as soon as we can.

    Before I die, you mean, Pike said dryly as Rod shrugged into his coat. You don’t want to stay for Charades? Or lunch . . . I hear we’re having orange Jell-O. He laughed, the sound like a saw at Rod’s back. Mr. van Vleet . . . what will you do with the house?

    Rod knew this was a touchy subject; it always was for the Redhook Group, which usually razed whatever existing properties existed on the land before building their own modern commercial facilities. It’s actually not in the best shape, Rod said carefully. We may have to . . . make some adjustments. More room, you know, for your pizza place.

    Bagels. Pike frowned. So you’re going to tear it down.

    Unfortunately, yes.

    Better that way, the old man said. Too many ghosts.

    The only gas station in Comtosook was attached to the general store. Two pumps from the 1950s sat in the parking lot, and it took Rod a good five minutes to realize there simply was no credit card slot. He stuck the nozzle of the pump into his gas tank and pulled out his cell phone, hitting a preprogrammed number. Angel Quarry, answered a female voice.

    Rod held the phone away from his ear and cut off the call. He must have dialed wrong; he had been trying to reach the home office to let Newton Redhook know the first hurdle had been cleared. Frowning, he punched the buttons on the keypad again.

    Angel Quarry. May I help you?

    Rod shook his head. I’m trying to reach 617-569—

    Well, you got the wrong number. Click.

    Flummoxed, he stuffed the phone in his pocket and squeezed another gallon into his tank. Reaching for his wallet, he started toward the store to pay.

    A middle-aged man with carrot-red hair stood on the porch, sweeping what seemed to be rose petals from the floorboards. Rod glanced up at the sign on the building—ABE’S GAS & GROCERY—and then back at the shopkeeper. You must be Abe?

    You guessed that right.

    Is there a pay phone around here?

    Abe pointed to the corner of the porch, where a phone booth tilted against the railing, right beside an old drunk who seemed disinclined to move aside. Rod dialed his calling card number, feeling the shopkeeper’s eyes on him the whole time. Angel Quarry, he heard, a moment later.

    He slammed down the receiver and stared at it. Abe swept once, twice, three times, clearing a path between Rod and himself. Problem? he asked.

    Must be something screwed up in the phone lines. Rod dug a twenty out of his wallet for the gas.

    Must be. Or maybe what those Indians are saying’s true—that if they don’t get their land back, the whole town’ll be cursed.

    Rod rolled his eyes. He was halfway back to the car by the time he recalled Spencer Pike’s comment about ghosts. He turned around to ask Abe about that, but the man was gone. His broom rested against the splintered porch rail; with each breeze, the neat pile of flower petals scattered like wishes.

    Suddenly a car pulled up on the opposite side of the gas pumps. A man with shoulder-length brown hair and unsettling sea green eyes stepped out and stretched until his back popped. Excuse me, he asked, do you know the way to Shelby Wakeman’s house?

    Rod shook his head. I’m not from around here.

    He didn’t know what made him look in the rearview mirror after he got into the car. The man was still standing there, as if he did not understand what should happen next. Suddenly Rod’s cell phone began to ring. He dug in his breast pocket, flipped it open. Van Vleet.

    Angel Quarry, said the woman at the other end, as if he’d been the one to call; as if that made any sense at all.

    Yeah, I’m coming, Shelby muttered, as the raps on her front door grew louder. It was only 11 A.M. If this moron woke Ethan . . . She knotted her hair into a ponytail holder, tugged her pajamas to rights, and squinted against the sun as she opened the door. For a moment, backlit by the daylight, she didn’t recognize him.

    Shel?

    It had been two years since she’d seen Ross. They still looked alike—the same rangy build, the same intense pale gaze that people found it hard to break away from. But Ross had lost weight and let his hair grow long. And oh, the circles under his eyes—they were even darker than her own.

    I woke you up, he apologized. I could . . .

    Come here, Shelby finished, and she folded her baby brother into an embrace.

    Go back to sleep, Ross urged, after Shelby had spent the better part of an hour fussing over him. Ethan’s going to need you.

    "Ethan’s going to need you, Shelby corrected. Once he finds out you’re here, you might as well forget about getting any rest. She set a stack of towels on the end of the guest room bed and hugged him. It goes without saying that you stay as long as you like." He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder and closed his eyes. Shelby smelled like his childhood.

    Suddenly she drew back. Oh, Ross, she murmured, and slipped her hand beneath the collar of his shirt, pulling out the long chain that he kept hidden underneath. At the end hung a diamond solitaire, a falling star. Shelby’s fist closed around it.

    Ross jerked away, and the chain snapped. He grabbed Shelby’s wrist and shook until she let go of the ring, until it was safe in his hand. Don’t, he warned, setting his jaw.

    It’s been—

    "Don’t you think I know how long it’s been? Don’t you think I know exactly?" Ross turned away. Why was it no one spoke of how kindness can cut just as clean as a knife?

    When Shelby touched his arm, Ross didn’t respond. She didn’t force the issue. Just that one small contact, and then she backed her way out of the room.

    Shelby was right—he ought to sleep—but he also knew that wouldn’t happen. Ross had grown used to insomnia; for years it had crawled under the covers with him, pressed the length of his body with just enough restless indecision to keep him watching the digital display of a clock until the numbers justified getting out of bed.

    He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He held the ring so tightly in his hand that he could feel the prongs of the setting cutting into his skin. He would have to get something—string, a leather cord—so that he could wear it again. Wide awake, he focused his attention on the

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