SNOW ANGELS

BARBARA W. KLASER

Copyright © 2004 Barbara W. Klaser
All Rights Reserved

http://www.mysterynovelist.com
Please visit the author's website for donation
ISBN 0-9713921-4-5
Edgestone Books HTML format
electronic edition released April 2004

All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

To Mom, in loving memory.

Prologue

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

"You should've turned there, to get to my house."

"I know." The young man in the driver's seat kept his gaze on the road.

"Where are we going?"

"My place." He shot her a grin full of straight teeth. "It's early yet."

He was incredibly good looking. Why couldn't she like him? That would make her parents happy, and make this not such a wasted evening. She wouldn't feel guilty about agreeing to go out with him in the first place. It had been dishonest to accept his invitation merely to please her parents, in an attempt to make them less suspicious of her. Why, to gain their trust, did she have to commit this lie?

She glimpsed the name on the mailbox as he turned into an asphalt driveway. This must be his parents' house, this grand structure at least four times the size of her own home. There were no other cars in the driveway. "Are your parents here?"

"They're out of town with my sisters." He shot her another grin, this one clearly intended to be seductive, an implication of shared conspiracy. A conspiracy she didn't share, or want to.

"I live here." He parked in front of a guest cottage, a hundred feet or so from the main house. It was a miniature replica of the larger structure.

"Do you have a telephone in there? I need to check in with my parents. They wanted me home by ten." She didn't like that he'd brought her here without asking her first.

"Your dad said eleven." He narrowed his eyes.

"I don't think my mom knew he said eleven. I should call, and I have to get home soon."

When they entered the little house, he put his keys on a table by the door and pointed her toward the sofa. "Make yourself comfortable in here, while I get us something to drink."

She put her purse down next to his keys. "No soda or caffeine for me, please. Maybe ice water." She headed for the phone on the desk in the front room.

He paused in his kitchen doorway and pursed his lips. "How about a glass of wine. Don't tell me you've never had alcohol? You're nearly eighteen."

She shrugged. "I have to be up early for work tomorrow." Besides, she was sure her parents hadn't urged her to go out with him so she could drink. That was the last thing they'd intended, and if this was a test she intended to pass.

While he was in the kitchen she quickly phoned her mother and let her know where she was. Then she phoned a friend. "Do you have the keys to the van tonight?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"If I page you from this number, will you come get me? This doesn't feel right." She gave her friend the number and directions.

"Okay, but you're the only girl I know who wouldn't be thrilled to go out with him."

When he returned with their drinks she was seated on the sofa staring at the painting over his mantle, a particularly gruesome hunting scene. He brought her a tumbler of ice water and a glass of red wine. "In case you change your mind." He nodded toward the painting. "Like it?"

"It's not my kind of thing. Do you hunt?" She had friends who hunted, but she'd failed to ever understand their attraction to the sport.

"Since I was a kid, every chance I get." He sat beside her and leaned over to kiss her.

She turned her cheek to meet his lips. "I don't kiss on the first date."

He stared at her as if she'd spoken a foreign language. "My dad gave me the impression you were a wild child, that I was supposed to tame you."

"He said that?"

"Not exactly, but my mom heard your parents are worried that you're hanging out with a bad crowd--some kind of Satanists who always dress in black?"

She sighed, tired of how people twisted things. "I've been dating a guy who's a Pagan. That's not the same thing as a Satanist. He believes in a God and a Goddess, and in following the cycles of nature. My parents don't understand anyone who doesn't believe the same way they do. He wears black a lot because it's his preference, not because of his religion. He's an artist. So am I."

Her date nodded, but the vacant look in his eyes made her pretty sure he didn't understand. "I thought you'd at least give me a kiss after I bought you dinner. Just following the cycles of nature." He grinned.

"If you wanted me to pay for my dinner, you should've said so. I'll pay my share now." She started to get up for her purse.

He chuckled and took her hand. "Will you relax? I was joking. Sit here with me, have a sip of wine. We'll just talk for a while if you want."

She sat back, thinking maybe she wasn't being fair. She resigned herself to an hour more of his company before it would be polite to insist he take her home. The water glass looked cloudy and she wondered how good a dishwasher he was. She decided a sip or two of the wine wouldn't hurt, and she picked it up.

"Cheers." He raised his glass and clinked it against hers, then sipped his. "You're a senior next year, right? What will you do when you graduate?"

It was the first time tonight he'd shown any interest in her plans. He'd spent most of the time talking about himself. The wine was bitter and astringent. She took a sip and put it down.

"I'm going to college on the East Coast. After that I want to travel, see the world outside Cedar Creek. I'll come back eventually and open my own business here, maybe a bakery."

He shook his head. "Once I leave I'm not coming back."

"Not even to visit your family?"

He didn't answer. He stroked her forearm and studied her face. "You're pretty. I never noticed you when we were younger. I wonder why. What if I just kiss your hand?" He raised her hand to his lips.

She giggled, she couldn't help it. Was he serious, or mocking her? He made a low, growling noise, his eyes darkening. He kissed her hand again, then the inside of her forearm. It made her tingle inside, in spite of herself. He stroked her hair, and a moment later her cheek.

He gently raised her wine glass to her lips, and she sipped again, then again, deliberately taking the smallest possible sips, deciding he could be charming when he made the attempt. She took the glass from him, and only pretended to sip after that. She was beginning to relax. In fact she thought the wine must be stronger than normal, because it made her fuzzy headed after a few sips.

She'd risen early this morning to work in the kitchen at the resort, and it was near her usual bedtime, maybe that was why she felt drowsy. She yawned, and when he got up to put on some music, she leaned back on the sofa. She found herself looking at that painting on the far wall again. Still finding it revolting, she closed her eyes.

It took her several seconds to realize he had his arms around her, and was kissing her lips forcefully, his tongue in her mouth, and one hand inside her blouse. He'd rearranged himself and eased her back on the couch. She was lying under him. He started unbuttoning her blouse. She couldn't get enough air.

"Wait." She started to sit up, feeling lightheaded, though she was certain she'd only had a few sips of the wine.

Instead of listening to her, he yanked her blouse open, tearing it.

"No. Stop!"

He dove his hands inside her bra.

Alarm spread through her. She tried to fight his hands off. "No! I said no!" She tried to move away, but he was strong and heavy, with nearly his full weight on her. She struggled harder, and he grasped her wrists tightly, his legs pinning hers to the couch. "No!"

He wasn't listening, or responding to her words, and he was stronger. He removed her shoes, pulled up her skirt and tugged at her panties. "Relax," he said, his tone short, urgent, demanding.

"Let me go!" She fought him. It hurt now to struggle. He gripped her wrists tightly with one hand above her head.

"Should've had more wine," he snarled, breathing fast.

His phone rang, and he ignored it, continuing to struggle with her. It rang again.

"That's my mother, calling to check on me."

He paused and glared at her.

"She doesn't trust me, I told you. She'll keep calling, and if she doesn't reach me, she'll come looking for me."

"She'll think I'm driving you home."

Seconds later the phone had stopped ringing, and she knew he wasn't going to let her go. Not before he got what he wanted. She had to think.

She stopped struggling and lay still. He looked her in the eye, suspicious. She made out to be drowsy, remembering how her baby brother looked when sleep overtook him. She let her eyes close, pretending to fall asleep. She was certain now that he'd drugged the wine, probably the cloudy water, too, and she hoped he'd think it had taken its full intended effect. He sat still, on top of her, with his grip loosening on her wrists. Testing her? She slackened every muscle in her body and felt drowsy again. Whatever the drug was, it was potent. She didn't remember drinking much of the wine, yet she had to grapple to keep her feigned sleep from drowsing into the real thing.

He believed her act, finally, and let go of her wrists. She let one arm drop, then lay perfectly still, willing her muscles to relax. He lifted her skirt, and it was all she could do not to go rigid or fight him, as he took her panties off. Finally he moved farther away, until he wasn't touching any part of her but her legs. She took a deep, slow breath as she cracked her eyes open, feeling sleep tug at her in spite of her fear. He was turned the other way, slipping off his own shoes, unzipping his pants.

Several seconds later he moved a foot or so away from her. He'd pulled a condom packet out and was opening it with his teeth. Now he had his pants down to his knees and was lifting a leg to remove them.

She moved.

He snatched at her blouse as she moved, tearing it more.

She kept going. She ran to the door and grabbed her purse and his keys before he could catch his balance and move far.

She ran. She had no idea how fast he would be, but he looked athletic and he could slip his shoes back on, while hers were still on the floor beside his sofa. She kept running, barefoot, wondering only briefly what objects her feet struck as she moved, running as fast as her legs and her newest surge of adrenaline could carry her.

When she heard his car turn onto the road, she realized he must have had a spare key. A rise of alarm sent her into the woods, out of sight of the road. There she couldn't move nearly as fast, but she kept going, keeping herself out of sight of the road. He passed her.

A moment later he'd turned around and was heading more slowly back in her direction. He shone a flashlight into the woods, first on one side then the other, as he moved slowly up the road.

She stood out of sight behind a large tree and some brush, breathing hard, again fighting sleepiness. She gripped his keys so tightly they dug into the flesh of her hand. She kept the keys tightly balled so they didn't make a noise, and placed them on the ground near her feet, afraid to let them jingle, afraid to breathe too loudly.

How long would it take her to get home on foot? Could she make it through the woods? How far was it to her house? She was too confused, her thoughts scrambling with her fear and the drug. How would she find her way in the dark?

He passed her a second time with his light. She started through the woods in what she hoped was the direction of the resort, staying as close to the road as she dared, to avoid getting more disoriented.

He must've given up, because after his second sweep with the light he didn't come back. Had he gone on into town?

She walked, less panicked now, her adrenaline surplus gradually fading. Her feet hurt. Her wrists ached where he'd gripped her. She became aware that her blouse was ripped and wouldn't button. It hung open, exposing her lace bra. Her skirt was rumpled and crooked; her panties were back at his house. Her hair was a ragged mess, falling down around her face and neck, lopsided and tangled. Her hands shook whenever she tried to hold her blouse together. She gave up and concentrated instead on where she was going, and on blinking away the tears that threatened to blur her vision.

Finally she heard another vehicle on the road. Not his car, but something big. Its headlights were higher off the ground and wider apart. She moved out and waved at it.

It was the van from the resort. It stopped beside her, and she opened the door. Her friend was driving.

"My God, what happened? Hurry and get in. I got to feeling weird about your call, and I called you back, but no one answered. I decided to drive out this way. There's a blanket in the back."

Chapter 1

Success doesn't mean happiness.

Tess Hunter read the words she'd written on the paper in front of her, and blinked at them a few times. They were a portion of her silent argument with a thesaurus in a computer program, this electronic listing on the screen of her laptop that ranked success right in there with words like satisfaction, contentment, happiness. Could the program be wrong about the meaning of success, or was she? Tess Hunter thought she'd found success, at a young age, but it didn't feel like happiness to her. It felt more like a trap.

She sighed and swiveled her chair back to the drafting table, where the half-inked drawing of a Victorian tea party mocked her with its sterility. Tess glanced out the window to her left, focused through the brown band of smog above the horizon visible between hundreds of other structures, and imagined she glimpsed the pale glint of the ocean beyond. This was wishful thinking. She couldn't see it from here. She took a deep breath of the filtered, conditioned air of the building from which she and her partners ran their magazine and publishing business, then looked down at her drawing, and sighed again. "This isn't working."

"It looks great to me." This came from the doorway behind her. Her secretary Debbie held a paper bag out to Tess as she entered her office. "I come bearing lunch. You looked preoccupied earlier, and I didn't think you heard my offer to bring you something, so I assumed you'd want the usual. Tuna salad on rye?"

Tess thanked her and realized how hungry she was, as she took the bag. She removed the sandwich wrapped in white paper, along with a bundle of paper napkins. She unfolded a napkin, then unwrapped and picked up half the sandwich.

"What don't you like about it?" Debbie was looking at the drawing again, her face placid.

Tess paused to chew and swallow her first bite of tuna on rye before she admitted, "I wasn't actually thinking about the drawing. I was . . . muttering to myself."

The drawing hadn't progressed since yesterday, and Tess had spent most of this afternoon sitting here daydreaming, caught up in her thoughts of escape, of rebellion--possibly total abandon.

"Tess." Her partner Harry Ryker leaned his head in the doorway behind Debbie. He spoke in a clipped British accent. "Have you got a moment to meet with Paige and me about the name change?"

Tess glanced down at her sandwich, in an inexplicable instant of panic. She put the sandwich down as Harry Ryker and their other partner Paige Chandler pressed into the office, and Tess's secretary Debbie was the one who escaped.

"Oh, you're having lunch." Paige Chandler was a tall woman with chestnut brown hair and piercing dark eyes. Her glance moved from the sandwich to the drawing on Tess's drafting table. She moved into the room and sat in one of the chairs across from Tess's desk. Harry Ryker followed suit, maneuvering his lean frame into a chair in one swift movement.

Tess sighed and wiped her hands with her paper napkin. "I'm sure we will eventually decide on a new name for the magazine. But today isn't a good day. I'm not making any progress at all on this." She waved at the drawing. "I doubt I'll be much more creative about a name."

"We want to present you with an idea," Paige Chandler said, her face bright with enthusiasm.

Tess wondered what they would both say if she told them she didn't care what they called the magazine because she was leaving. She was in fact making plans to go away for a few weeks to think through what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She glanced at each of them, afraid she'd spoken those thoughts out loud.

"Harry thinks we should add your name to the magazine title, something like Tess Hunter's Treasured Home. Only not Treasured Home anymore, of course. The point of this exercise is to get rid of that. We'd go from Treasured Home to Tess Hunter's Simple Pleasures, or Tess Hunter's Creative Living Magazine. You see?"

Tess shook her head. She saw, yes. They didn't see. Hadn't they noticed how silent she'd been on many decisions of late? Couldn't they hear in her tone that she was backing away from the business, from caring about the business? That she'd been doing so for months? She didn't see how it could be anything but clear to everyone around her that she no longer had the passion about their magazine that a publisher should have.

"You don't understand." Tess hesitated. They weren't just her partners, they were her friends--especially Paige, who'd been Tess's best friend since their first year of college. Tess dreaded letting them down, but she certainly didn't want the magazine named after her!

Paige looked at Harry. "I told you she wouldn't go for it." She leaned toward Tess, "Look, just think about it. Now we do need to go over the names. Let's brainstorm. That doesn't take too much creative genius. Even Harry can manage that."

"Thank you." Harry sent her a look.

"I'm taking a vacation," Tess blurted out. "I don't want to make any decisions, about the name change or anything else, until I've had some time away."

Her words halted Paige, who blinked. "You never take vacations." Then Paige narrowed her dark eyes. "What's going on?"

"I want some time away, to think. I'm planning to visit my family in Cedar Creek, I haven't seen them in years. I've recently been needing to . . . well, to rethink some of my decisions about my career, about my place in the business."

She'd said it.

Paige looked as if she'd been slapped. Harry wore a blank expression, his eyes a bit glazed over.

"Rethink?" Paige repeated. "Your career?"

"Yes. I can't contemplate the name change--especially putting my name on the magazine--before I do that." Tess nodded toward her laptop computer. "I've finished up my columns for the next few issues, and I'm hoping you'll be able to do without me for a few weeks--until the New Year."

Paige and Harry exchanged looks. Both leaned forward. Paige said, "Tess, why haven't you said anything before? You know we're serious about the name change. I mean, I know we go through this drill every year, but that's why I entertained the idea of using your name. Because we're serious about it this time. I thought we all were. You--"

"I know, and I'm sorry I haven't spoken up before now. I should have, but I've been having a terrible time concentrating on anything to do with the business. I've been working shorter days for months. Surely you've noticed. Maybe I'm burned out, and the time off will help me re-light the fire in myself again, but for now I feel this need . . . to escape."

Paige stood up. "Escape?" She wore the look of someone who'd been struck a blow. She looked at Harry. "I need to escape. Right now."

Paige left the room.

Harry stood and looked after Paige, then at Tess. "I thought we were the ones coming in here with a bomb to drop in the workings. I--well--I'll let you get on with . . ." He moved slowly, glancing at her sandwich, her unfinished drawing, and finally the surface of her desk. He paused and took on a sorrowful expression. Then he left the room.

Tess looked down at the desk where he'd focused, and saw her doodle in the center of the paper blotter, where she'd scrawled in bold black letters with her Rapidograph technical pen, "Success doesn't mean happiness."

###

Tess spent Saturday morning trying to avoid all thought of the office, her business, or her partners' reactions to her announcement. The more she resisted thinking about it the more it preoccupied her. She hadn't intended her news to come out that way. She'd hoped to have a meeting with them and calmly lead up to the possibility of her leaving, for a vacation at first, an extended leave, and then discuss the possibility that her absence might become permanent. She'd hoped to take the first few weeks off to prove to them she wasn't needed.

Anyone with some editorial and home arts background could do what Tess had been doing for the past five years. Any decent commercial artist could provide the same caliber of artwork. They didn't carry that many of her illustrations in the magazine and cookbooks these days, most of the time they used photographs. Theirs was no longer a struggling new business. They'd paid off their debts to Paige's father, the publishing business was growing, magazine circulation had increased, and most of the effort didn't directly involve Tess's culinary or fine arts background, or for that matter her ideas. She'd been thinking Paige and Harry could continue the business easily without her. They didn't see it that way, and now she'd blown her chance to ease them into the idea, by blurting out her escape plan in an inept and upsetting way.

Tess moped around her little house overlooking a canyon near the beach. She fiddled around in a haphazard way in the room she'd set aside for painting, then in the kitchen. When she'd moved here months ago, she'd equipped it as a duplicate of the test kitchen at the office, so she could bring work home. She looked around at the appliances with their cold, slick surfaces and suddenly felt lost in her own house.

###

Early Saturday evening Tess picked up the phone and called information, asked for the number of Stoneway Resort in Cedar Creek, and dialed the number. When the reservations clerk at Stoneway answered, Tess asked to speak to her former schoolmate Angie Norwood.

From the time Tess had been eight years old until she'd left Cedar Creek at seventeen, Angie Norwood had been her closest friend. But Tess hadn't been in touch with Angie since she'd left home eleven years ago. She recalled her mother mentioning, during one of their infrequent phone calls, that Angie owned Stoneway now.

"Tess?" A pause. "Tess Hunter? Oh my gosh! Where are you?"

"Angie, I'll tell you my whole life's story since we last spoke, once I'm there, but I'm calling to make reservations to stay at the resort for a few weeks." Tess told Angie the date she wanted to arrive and explained that she planned to stay through the end of the year. "I'm hoping to surprise my family, so please don't tell anyone about my visit yet. I'm also wondering if you'll discreetly check with my parents to find out if they plan to be in town over Thanksgiving and the winter holidays."

Angie agreed to help Tess plan her surprise. She reserved a room for her and said she'd call Tess back on Sunday about the Hunter family's plans. "Pack plenty of warm clothes. It's been snowing like crazy up here, for days. I can't wait to see you!"

###

Tess arrived at work late Monday morning and found Paige Chandler and Harry Ryker waiting for her. She hadn't gotten a cup of coffee or put down her bag before they entered her office, ready to talk about her plans.

"Okay, I'm over my initial shock," Paige said. "I want to know how long you've been feeling this need to escape. It hasn't been for the entire five years, has it? I know I have a forceful personality, and I tend to steamroll people, but I thought you knew me well enough not to let yourself get carried away by my crazy schemes unless you wanted to. Tell me you haven't been involved in this whole business just because I wanted it."

"No, Paige," Tess said. "I wanted it too, but I've been doing a lot of painting, at home, since I bought the house. The drawings I've done for this book are lifeless in comparison. There's the test kitchen, working in an environment that isn't anything like a house, trying to feel inspired to nurture a nonexistent family. It's all become a sham for me. I don't feel anything nurturing or homey at all in this anymore. I look at all the magazines on the racks in the supermarket, and I think the people who put them together have no idea at all what makes a house a home. Including us, to a certain degree. I mean, look at the three of us. We're single, and we spend most of our time here."

Tess stopped, because Paige wore a stormy look in her dark eyes. "There, you see? I can't talk about it without offending you. I'm saying what I feel, Paige." Tess looked at Harry. "I know it's business, that's what it's supposed to be. It's a good business. I'm just not certain I want it to be my business anymore. How can I, feeling this way about it? I'm hoping all I need is some time off, that I'll get over this--whatever it is I'm going through. But I might not, and I want you both to be prepared for that possibility. Can we call it a hiatus, for now, and try not to draw any conclusions from my need for it, until I've had some time away to get a grip on myself?"

Harry and Paige both nodded in grim silence.

"I know this couldn't come at a worse time. I know you're serious about the name change this year. I couldn't let you go any further without saying something." Tess took a deep breath and leaned toward them, over her desk. "What do you need from me before I take my leave of absence?"

Paige met her gaze, her brown eyes still dark and troubled. "You're going home?"

Tess nodded. "For the holidays, for a start. I've made reservations at an inn that an old schoolmate of mine owns, a couple miles outside Cedar Creek. I'm planning to be there in time for Thanksgiving."

"That's week after next," Harry said with a renewed look of panic.

"I don't see any reason to delay, now that you know. The sooner I get away the sooner we'll all be able to decide what direction we're headed."

An hour later, they were conversing like partners again, like business people, Tess thought. They made plans to turn over Tess's work, but Paige stalled at Tess's mention of the book she was working on. "That's your project."

"We haven't even named it. We keep calling it the tea party book," Tess argued.

Paige nodded. "I know. It makes me think of the Boston Tea Party. More now than ever." She said this in a grim tone, with a pointed look at Tess. "But it's your project."

"It's a vacation, Paige, not a revolution."

"It feels like a revolution to me."

"Tess." Debbie stood at the office door, wearing a tragic look. "You have an urgent call."

"Who is it, Debbie?" Tess spoke with an uncharacteristic sharpness, annoyed by the interruption. She needed Paige to understand her. She turned back to Paige, prepared to continue their discussion.

"It's Sheriff Les Kendall. From Wilder County." Debbie's voice was subdued but emphatic. "It's urgent, Tess."

Tess paused and turned back to Debbie as the significance sank in, of receiving a call from the sheriff of the county where her family lived. She picked up the phone. "This is Tess Hunter."

Instead of leaving as she normally would, Debbie walked over to Paige and Harry and spoke softly to them.

On the phone Sheriff Kendall said something to Tess about a van going off a mountain road, over an embankment. Something about people killed in the crash. Tess couldn't absorb the sheriff's words. They jumbled in her mind. She wanted to change them around, to make this not about her family. Then he said the names of those who'd been killed: James Hunter, Catherine Hunter, and Spencer Hunter. Her parents' and brother's names. Killed. In the crash.

Spence is only seventeen. The single thought resounded in her mind, and she was sure she'd said it out loud, but when she did try to speak, her voice broke, and she could only listen to the sheriff go on about what had happened and how sorry he was.

His words hit her like a weight pressing against her chest, constricting her breath. Tess fought past that weight and stood up. She drew in her breath as though she'd been too long underwater. Her mind fought comprehension, wrestled with it. The hand that held the phone dropped to her side. Harry took the phone from her and spoke calmly, quietly to the sheriff. Paige put her arms around Tess, speaking in a comforting tone, words Tess didn't grasp.

Some time later, Tess walked outside to a car under Harry's big black umbrella. She realized later it must have been raining when he drove her to her house overlooking the canyon. She didn't remember the rain, only the sheltering blackness of the umbrella.

Chapter 2

Cedar Creek, California, lay in a small mountain valley north of the Wilder County seat, surrounded by the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Stars lit the sky at dusk, between the soft clouds of a late fall edging early into winter. The silvers, grays, and dusky blues of the sky and distant peaks were only a bit paler than the indigos of the nearer mountains. The blues of dusk enveloped the snowy mountains, softening them. A few bright stars shone like diamonds in the wintry nightfall.

Tess Hunter drove through the town as its lights twinkled on in the deepening twilight. Autumn snow blanketed the ground. The old high school Tess had attended was gone, replaced by a new one half a mile nearer the center of Cedar Creek. Her brother Spence had attended this one, until he died. The thought struck at Tess in the dusk like a blunt object, but she shook off her grief for the moment, concentrating on the drive.

Outside town, the road meandered around mountain slopes covered with trees. A layer of fresh snow lined the road. Tess cautiously rounded the tight curves, especially the one from which the sheriff had said her family's van skidded into the deep ravine only this morning.

Farther up the road, Tess turned, and a minute after that she spotted the amber lights of her parents' house, where it stood alone, set off from the road, surrounded by meadow and backed up by forest, all currently buried under at least a half foot of snow. She parked the rental car in the long driveway beside a dilapidated old pickup truck.

Smoke curled from a chimney. Another light came on in the living room, and Tess imagined her father bending to feed the fire, her mother turning on a lamp.

"Stop torturing yourself." She pushed back the grief that stuck in her chest like a physical object making each breath a labor. Angie Norwood had said she would try to meet Tess here. It must be Angie who was warming up the house. Tess wondered about the old truck. It didn't strike her as something Angie would drive. She gathered one suitcase and an overnight bag from the trunk, hoping Angie wouldn't want to visit. Tess longed to be alone with her grief and to rest from the grueling drive.

She paused beside the driveway and stared at the wooden ramp that had been added alongside the porch. A wheelchair ramp. The sheriff had said something about a wheelchair that Tess hadn't understood in her confusion and shock this morning.

As she climbed the steps, the front door opened. A tall male figure stood in the foyer with the bright overhead light behind him. He was silhouetted against it. Tess paused again, vaguely alarmed, trying to think who he could be. He reached out to take her bags, and then she caught his profile as he turned to place the luggage on the floor. Recognition flickered in Tess's mind.

"You'd better come in out of the cold." His voice was deep and resonant. He reached out and guided her into the house, and his firm hand on her arm warmed her. When he moved it away to close the door behind her she shivered. It was then that she got a good look at him.

He'd been only seventeen when she'd last seen him. Now he stood at least six-foot-two, with wavy black hair and a thick, neatly trimmed moustache above sensuous lips. His eyes were dark green and glinted with gold flecks in the lamplight, their corners lined with tiny creases. His nose and jaws were sturdy and handsome.

"I'm Tess Hunter," she said, in case there was any doubt in his mind as to who she was and why she was here.

"You were only about twelve years old the last time I saw you, Tess, but I think I'd recognize you anywhere. The question is, do you remember me?"

She relaxed. "Joseph Latimer. I used to follow you around everywhere when I was little." As she spoke she pictured the tall, lanky, athletic boy he'd been. She'd had a crush on Joe Latimer from the time she was seven or eight, until he went away to college when Tess was twelve. She'd cried, at fourteen, when her mother heard from his mother that Joe had married.

"As I recall, at the time I rather liked it." He wore a sober expression.

"Liked what?"

"You following me around." He shifted his attention to her luggage on the floor, and motioned toward it. "Do you have more bags?"

"The rest can wait." She took off her gloves and dropped them on top of her bags. "I expected Angie Norwood."

"Angie called and asked me for the key, but I know she's busy at Stoneway this time of year, so I told her I'd open the house for you. I have a key for you, and I've brought in firewood. You'll find the pantry and freezer full. Everything you'll need." He started his last sentence with a vague half-smile that faded into regret.

Tess thanked him and looked around the living room. Nothing here had changed except for the emptiness. The furnishings were the same ones she remembered, though the old couch and armchairs had been reupholstered. The wood furnishings gleamed, and the piano stood in its old place with the keyboard open as if her mom had just finished playing. Her family had been here just this morning, before that last drive.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted from the kitchen, and a small stack of unopened mail lay on the table near the door. Tess recognized the envelope on top. It contained a card she'd addressed to her family days ago.

"I was going to visit them--" The words caught in her throat and threatened to choke her with the intensity of feeling they aroused. She had pushed her grief deep inside, to get through the flight from L.A. and the drive here in the rental car. Now it rose inside her like a great chunk of ice bobbing to the surface, refusing to be ignored. She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned at a movement beside her. Joe Latimer watched her with an indecipherable expression. "I was going to surprise them for the holidays."

Joe's eyes narrowed and a frown deepened the lines on his forehead. "It's too late now, Tess." He spoke in a low voice, as if talking to himself, but he stood beside her so every word was clear, and resounded with emotion. "Why did you wait so long? What were you punishing them for?"

His words hit her with a force that made her step backward. "I didn't--they--my parents--didn't want--"

His look was fierce. A glint in his eyes disappeared when he blinked. His voice shook. "Don't you mean you didn't want to see them, even though your dad was sick? Even though your mother was one of the most nurturing people ever known? What about Spence? They missed you, Tess. I knew them, I loved them. Don't tell me they didn't want to see you. You discarded them, and it's too late to change that now."

He turned toward the hall, cleared his throat, and grabbed a jacket off the rack. He pulled it on, keeping his face averted, then he said a gruff goodnight. He had his hand on the doorknob by the time Tess found her voice.

"Wait. Joe. What was wrong with my father?"

He shook his head and rumbled in a gravelly voice, "He had MS. I'm sure you knew that. He was forced to retire because of it." Then, clearing his throat again, he looked suddenly regretful. He drew in his breath as he opened the door, and uttered more calmly, "If you need anything while you're here, you can call me or Rose. We're in the book." He closed the door and was gone.

Tess turned away, stunned by his words. She switched off the overhead light and stood with her back to the door, staring into the unlit foyer, at her bags on the floor beside the ceramic umbrella stand. The deeper darkness of her father's study yawned to her left. The stairs in front of her rose into a part of the house that seemed to both beckon and oppose her, from beyond the barrier of the stair railing.

Joe Latimer's truck started outside, loud at first and then dropping to an idle as he warmed it up. Seconds later it moved, and eventually the sound droned away onto the road below the driveway.

The chill of Joe's words hung in the foyer, and pushed Tess toward the warmth and light of the living room to her right. A door beside the living room fireplace led to the guestroom. To the left of that lay the open dimness of the dining room. Behind the wall that lined the stairs the kitchen-family room beckoned, reminding Tess of her mother. Tess moved in that direction, through the dining room, then abruptly to her left.

Joe had lit a fire in the big family room fireplace. She threw another log on the fire. On the hearth lay a few copies of Treasured Home. At the sight of them Tess stopped, and her tears startled her, surfacing all at once.

Long minutes later, Tess sat warming herself with a cup of coffee in front of the family room fire, still brooding over Joe Latimer's words, with her coat flung over the rocking chair where she'd removed it. She heard a car outside, and she wondered whether Joe had forgotten something, or if he'd returned to apologize. The vehicle didn't sound like a truck. Tess reached the front door as someone pounded on it.

A young blonde woman stood on the porch, dressed in a long fur coat that looked like sable, with her fur-clad arms folded across her chest. One elegant brown shoe tapped impatiently. Her golden hair fell in loose curls over her shoulders, while her striking face conveyed annoyance. Tess stared, amazed to see this glamorous-looking woman on her parents' doorstep.

The woman brushed past Tess in a cloud of perfume. "I'm looking for Joe Latimer. Is he here?" She didn't ask. She demanded. She turned inside the living room and looked at Tess, her arms still folded. There was something both expectant and imposing about her.

Tess closed the door against the cold. "Joe lives a quarter mile farther along the--"

"I know where he lives. I was told he came here hours ago." The girl swept her gaze around the living room.

"He just left. I think he was headed home."

The blonde cursed and actually stamped her foot.

"Can I help you? I'm Tess Hunter." Tess held out her hand.

The young woman turned a cold gaze on Tess, and a curious expression entered her large brown eyes. "How could you possibly help me?" The brown eyes quickly dismissed Tess.

That was enough for Tess. She moved into the living room, where she faced the blonde. "If you'll treat me civilly by telling me your name and asking politely, I might let you use the telephone. It could save you running around in the cold. If you can't behave, the door is that way." She pointed.

The blonde looked startled, then thoughtful. Finally she shrugged, lowering her dark eyelashes. She murmured coolly, "I'm Jessica Laine." She spoke her name as though she thought Tess should know who she was. "I would like to use your phone. Please. I didn't catch your name."

"Tess. Hunter. The phone is through there." Tess nodded in the direction of the kitchen, wanting the woman to hurry and leave her alone with her grief and her feelings still wounded by Joe Latimer's harsh words.

"Do you mind if I take off my coat? It's nice and cozy in here." Jessica Laine, her tone suddenly sweeter, took off the fur and handed it to Tess, who couldn't help a second look at Jessica's dress. It was made of soft brown wool with gold threads woven through.

"Do you like it?" Jessica asked as she noticed Tess's attention focused on the dress.

"It's very becoming," Tess ventured objectively.

"It's a designer original. I picked it up at a New York fashion show a few weeks ago," Jessica said blithely.

"Really." Tess knew the dress wasn't haute couture. It was reasonably priced in the department stores. Tess knew because she owned the same dress. The coat, on the other hand, felt like real fur. Tess hung it on the rack in the corner beneath the stairs, a little loath to touch it. "The phone's through the dining room there, to the left, in the kitchen." She pointed.

"Have you known Joe long?" Jessica removed beige kid gloves to reveal long, manicured fingernails.

"Since we were children."

"I see." The blonde nodded and left the room. Tess didn't follow. She simply waited, for what seemed an eternity, trying not to hear the sugary tone of the voice in the other room and unwilling to make out what it said to Joe Latimer.

"Joe's at home of all places," the blonde said when she returned to the front room minutes later. She donned her coat. "He was supposed to be up at my place an hour ago. We're having dinner with my uncle tonight. Thank you for the use of your phone, er--Teri?"

"Tess."

Jessica shrugged. "Nite-nite now." With that she left Tess to close the door behind her.

"Nite-nite," Tess mimicked her with a grimace. "You've got to be kidding!"

###

Daisies. Tess held a bunch of white daisies, in the dream, and looked into the deep green eyes of the older boy, Joseph. Tess wakened, and realized the dream was a memory of something that had actually happened when she was seven years old. Joseph Latimer had given her flowers. He couldn't have been more than twelve at the time. She recalled his smile, his kindness, and her affection for him in those years past, when they'd been neighbors.

It was only a dream, brought on no doubt by seeing Joe as soon as she arrived home last night. Tess shrugged it off as she looked around the cold room in which she'd slept, the downstairs guestroom at her parents' house. She hadn't wanted to go upstairs at all, last night. Even so, she hadn't avoided her family's things, because she'd discovered that her father had been sleeping in this room. The bathroom was fitted with hand grips, as well as other amenities clearly intended for someone with a disability. Tess hadn't found any of her mother's things in the bathroom, dresser, or closet. She could only conclude that her parents had been sleeping apart.

Tess had been too tired to puzzle long over these discoveries last night. She'd unpacked only her nightgown and robe and had gone to bed, there to toss and turn on the unfamiliar mattress and wake up at every creak of the old house.

The room was freezing now. Tess got up and quickly put on her robe, turned on the heat, built up a fire, and then crawled into bed with her robe on and pulled the quilt back over her to wait for the room to warm up. She had forgotten how cold mornings could be up here.

The kitchen phone was the only one in the house. Once Tess had dressed she sat on a stool at the counter near the back door, and phoned the sheriff's office in Wilder. After that call she searched for her parents' address book, and found it in a kitchen drawer. It was held together by a rubber band, with old addresses scratched out and new ones entered wherever space permitted, in her mother's neat, elegant hand.

Tess finally came across the listing for a Dr. Peter Lloyd in neighboring Wilder. She wanted to know more about her father's illness, which Joe Latimer had mentioned to her, the illness behind the ramp out front and the wheelchair the sheriff had mentioned. Tess planned to drive to Wilder this morning to see the sheriff and to make funeral arrangements. She called the doctor's office.

Dr. Lloyd answered the phone himself. He knew about the accident and offered his condolences at once. He confirmed that he'd been her father's primary care physician, and he agreed to meet with Tess this morning. "I've been hoping for a chance to speak with you. Did your father call you sometime in the last day or two before his death?"

"No. Why?" Her parents had rarely called her, and when one of them did it was usually her mother.

"We can talk about that when you get here." Dr. Lloyd gave her directions to his office.

As Tess hung up, she glimpsed a pair of beige kid gloves on the counter beside her, and she picked them up. They were Jessica Laine's. She must have left them here last night when she used the phone.

Tess finally found the number for her parents' attorney. When she phoned his office, she learned he was out of town on a tour of Europe and wouldn't return for weeks. She left a message, hoping, as his secretary suggested, that he'd check in sometime during the next few days. Next she called the sheriff, then looked up the mortuary in Wilder, and the small weekly newspaper there.

Tess had her coat on and was about to leave, when the phone rang. She hurried back to the kitchen to answer. Angie Norwood spoke before Tess could say hello.

"Joe Latimer was just here to look at one of our horses. He started grilling me about you. He asked if you'd planned to visit for the holidays. What's going on?"

Tess wondered the same thing. "What did you say?"

"I told him you'd planned to stay here at Stoneway and surprise your folks for Thanksgiving. I didn't like his attitude, though. Was he there last night when you arrived? Had he warmed up the house? He told me he would."

"Yes, he was here." Tess heard an engine out front, and thought it sounded a lot like the old truck Joe had driven last night. Tess thought she'd never get out of the house in time to meet Dr. Lloyd.

"When you're ready, let me help you go through your family's things. Remember, I went through all that when Granddad died. I know how hard it can be."

The doorbell rang.

"Thanks, Angie. I will. I have to go. Someone's at the door." Tess hung up, and shrugged on her coat as she went out to the foyer.

It was Joe Latimer. Tess started to speak, but paused as her gaze followed the lines of the cables in his pale blue Aran sweater down his broad chest to where they met the V of the ice-blue jacket he wore partially zipped over it. Good grief, he was magnificent, she thought, seeing him for the first time in daylight and without fatigue clouding her impression as it had last night.

"Good morning, Tess."

Tess lifted her gaze to meet his deep green eyes. He smiled, and she recalled her dream, of the boy Joseph handing her a bunch of daisies. She couldn't help a baffled smile in return.

"May I come in?"

She nodded, and he moved past her, turning to face her as soon as she'd closed the door. He stood so near that Tess could feel his warmth in the cold air left by the briefly open door.

"I asked Angie this morning about your plan to visit home. She told me it was true." Joe wore a serious expression now. He was so close that his words blew the warmth of his breath onto the top of her head, and she felt light headed as she tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.

"I'm sorry you needed proof." She was determined to keep her cool.

"It didn't fit your pattern."

"My pattern?"

"Your pattern of staying away from here." He watched her intently through narrowed eyes.

"Look, I was about to leave. I have an appointment in Wilder." She needed to escape the sphere of his magnetism, or whatever it was that disoriented her.

Joe remained where he stood, so close she felt cornered between him and the door. She reached up to straighten the collar of her coat. She was too warm in it, with him so near. What did he want? If he'd come to apologize, he hadn't done so yet. He kept looking at her, his expression unreadable. She silently cursed his masculine presence, and its unmistakable effect on her. She wondered how he could make her feel this way, so many years after her silly girlhood crush. She was a businesswoman. She didn't habitually fawn over every good-looking man she met.

A bang on the door behind her made Tess jump. Joe put a hand on her shoulder. She relaxed, leaning into his touch without thinking about it. He was closer now, and his gaze drew her in.

The pounding on the front door continued. Tess turned to open it. Jessica Laine, the blonde visitor from last night, stood there wearing a silver fox fur jacket over a gray suede dress. Her liquid silver necklace shone in the morning sunlight slanting under the eave of the porch.

"Joe, darling, what are you doing here?" She skimmed past Tess into the front hall, without a glance in her direction, and it was suddenly far too crowded with all three of them there in the foyer. "You're supposed to be on your way to meet Uncle Ned. Don't you ever want to get this project off the ground?" Jessica put her arm around Joe's neck and reached up to kiss him. He turned his cheek to meet her lips as she crooned, and Tess squeezed past them into the living room.

"Jessica, we're guests in Tess's home." Joe pulled away from the blonde with a bemused smile. "Why are you here?"

"I left my gloves here last night when I came looking for you."

"You came here?" He glanced at Tess, then again at Jessica. "When?" He was the one who looked disoriented now.

"I called you from here, silly." Jessica turned an insolent look at Tess. Then she smiled. "How are you holding up? When I lost my father, I was devastated, but I understand you weren't that close to your parents and, being older, perhaps you're better able to handle your loss. My cousin Trent asked me, last night, about what happened to your family."

"Trent?" An alarm rose in Tess's mind at mention of the name.

"Trent Cambridge. He's my cousin."

"Your--Trent is here, in Cedar Creek?"

"Of course he's here, he lives here. His father is my Uncle Ned." Jessica turned to grasp Joe's arm. "Joe, we have to go."

"I'll get your gloves." Tess rushed back to the kitchen for them, and returned to find the blonde clinging to Joe's arm, leaning up to murmur in his ear.

As soon as Joe saw Tess he sidled away from Jessica, guided her toward the front door, and opened it. He took the gloves from Tess and placed them in Jessica's hand. "Go on ahead."

"But Joe."

"I'll follow you in a few minutes." He held the door for her and she went out wearing a petulant look.

Joe closed the door and turned to Tess. "Sorry, I have a breakfast meeting with Ned Cambridge to ask for his help financing a project of mine. Jessica's . . . part of the project."

"I have to leave for Wilder," Tess said with a glance at her watch. "I'm running late myself." She grabbed her purse off the coat rack and went to the door, hoping Joe would follow her and leave, so she could as well.

He touched her shoulder. She turned and found herself once again between him and the door.

"Were you all right here alone last night? Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes." Everything she could want, except her family. She met his gaze, and again he had that mesmerizing, warming and arousing effect on her. She didn't understand it. She told herself to turn away, to open the door and say goodbye to the man. Did she have to shoo him out of the house? Instead she stood there gazing into his eyes, the warmth of his body affecting her like the pull of a magnet.

Joe leaned nearer, with a serious, wondering look in his eyes, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

Tess felt a heat from his kiss that she could neither ignore nor explain. She moved back, into the door.

Joe's expression altered. "I shouldn't have done that." He moved around her and she squirmed to one side as he opened the door. He closed it behind him, leaving Tess standing there stunned once again by his behavior, and this time by her own as well, for letting him kiss her. For liking it.

She decided to wait until he drove away before going out to her rental car, and she peered out the sheer curtains in the living room--in time to see him locked in an embrace with Jessica Laine. Joe and the stunning blonde stood between his truck and Jessica's yellow sports car, kissing. They appeared oblivious to anything else including the cold.

Tess could only watch for a split second before she turned away, flushed with humiliation and anger that she'd allowed him to get a physical reaction from her with that single light kiss, when the object of his romantic preference was clearly the glamorous, fur-clad Jessica Laine.

Tess reminded herself why she was here, of her family's deaths, only yesterday, and the arrangements she needed to make, the questions she needed to answer. She couldn't believe she'd let herself get so carried away by Joe Latimer in the few minutes he'd been here. It must be grief, bringing all her emotions close to the surface, that made her react this way. She shook off her lingering images of him, and shifted her thoughts to the unappealing tasks ahead.

Chapter 3

In spite of being the county seat, Wilder wasn't a much bigger town than Cedar Creek. From the main street where Tess parked, the peaks overlooking the town appeared to loom close, obscuring a large expanse of sky. Sunlight brightened patches of deep green and a few thickets of deciduous trees clad in fall color peeked from under their coats of snow on the timbered mountainsides. Conifers marched, straight and tall, down to mingle with the historic streets, shading the false fronts of buildings from an earlier era and filling the sun-warmed air with their resinous perfume.

Tess had arrived a few minutes early, after all, so she stopped in at the diner next to the doctor's office and bought coffee in a paper cup. It turned out to be so bitter and thick it was undrinkable. She took only a couple of sips before she paused to pour the dark liquid into the gutter in front of the doctor's office.

Dr. Lloyd opened his door. "You must be Tess Hunter." He chuckled when he saw what Tess was doing. "I should've warned you about that. I've made us some decent coffee inside. I honestly don't know how they stay in business." He held the door for her.

The doctor was tall and lean, in his late thirties. He was a good looking man, with pale, blue-gray eyes, a largish nose, and golden tanned skin. His hair, possibly once the darker shade of brown still evident in his eyebrows, was bleached by the sun to a flaxen shade. He must spend a lot of time outdoors. In fact he appeared ready to spend today outside, for he was clothed in casual clothes and boots suitable for hiking in the snow. Tess spotted what appeared to be a tackle box on the reception desk.

She followed him through the tiny front waiting room lined with windows and furnished with threadbare chairs, and she recalled this had once been a barbershop. He led her into the reception office, where a coffee maker gurgled its last few drips into a glass carafe. Dr. Lloyd busied himself pouring their coffee, and Tess asked him how long he'd been here.

"In Wilder about four and a half years. In this office, if I may be so bold as to call it that, only about three months. How do you take your coffee?" He smiled, a relaxed, easy grin that made her feel at ease. Tess thought his patients must like him. He exhibited none of the distant coldness too many doctors adopted as a professional demeanor. Even her father had been a bit brusque, and frequently too serious to invite open conversation.

Eventually they both sat in the back office space, which was separated by a thin wall partition and privacy curtain from the single small examining room Tess glimpsed as they walked through. Dr. Lloyd brought out a file folder, and Tess sat in a chair forced too close to his desk for comfort in the tiny office. She sipped her coffee and delayed asking her questions, by inviting his.

"Why did you want to talk to me, Dr. Lloyd?"

He shook his head. "That can wait. First, I understand you have questions about your father. Joe Latimer called me last night. He said you didn't know your dad had MS?"

"MS." She repeated the acronym, wondering why her mother had never mentioned it to her. Of all the things she'd kept from Tess over the years, that made the least sense of all.

"Multiple sclerosis."

She nodded. "I know what MS is, and the sheriff mentioned a wheelchair, but I didn't know my father was ill. I only learned about it after I got here last night--from Joe. My family never mentioned his illness."

Dr. Lloyd's face registered deepening concern. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I had the impression you and your family kept in touch." He placed the folder on the desk and focused his attention on her.

"We exchanged cards and letters, and occasional phone calls, but I haven't actually seen them in years. My parents didn't want to see me."

Dr. Lloyd's troubled look intensified, but he said nothing.

"You see, something happened, when I was seventeen." There was a kind acceptance in his silence that made her feel comfortable enough to explain. "There was an auto accident that I was blamed for. I'd stayed home that night to baby-sit Spence. He was six years old. They said later I took off in my mother's car and smashed it into a shop at the bottom of the first hill heading into town. I was injured, and they found alcohol and barbiturates in my blood. I don't think my parents ever forgave me, or believed me about it." She stopped because of the look on his face.

Dr. Lloyd's pale eyes remained intent on her. "What do you say happened?"

"I don't remember. I recall baking cookies and playing a board game with Spence, then getting him ready for bed. I don't remember getting into the car, or having an accident. I wouldn't have gotten drunk at all, let alone while I was watching Spence. I didn't use drugs--I never have--and I would never have gone off and left him alone in the house. My parents believed I did, though. They had . . . mistaken ideas, about my friends and me. They thought we were getting into trouble, but we weren't, and I've never understood why they thought that. I kept up my grades, and I had a part-time job. I wasn't an angel, but I was basically a pretty good kid. I'd stopped going to church, and I know that upset my mother. My newer friends from my art classes wore clothing my parents didn't like. We explored different spiritual paths. My boyfriend at the time was a Pagan, and he gave me a pentacle necklace. My mother found it in my room along with some books he'd loaned me to read, and, well, she had a fit. She and I had a horrible fight, and my parents made me stop seeing him. That was a few days before my accident."

After forcing her to break up with Alan Stewart, her parents had set her up with Trent Cambridge, a local banker's son whose father her father knew socially. Tess recalled Trent with a shudder, and she avoided that memory, focusing on the night of her accident.

"Something happened, that night, something I don't remember. I was unconscious for a couple of days, in the hospital. When I woke up, I learned the sheriff believed I was at fault for the accident. My parents did too, I'm sure. They sent me to live with my great-aunt in Seattle, after I got out of the hospital, and I stayed with her until I left for college. They kept me away. I've always suspected my parents were afraid to have me around Spence after that."

Tess went on. "That's not why I'm here, Dr. Lloyd. There are things I need to know, about my family's recent lives. Can you tell me how long my father had MS, and do you know when he retired?"

Dr. Lloyd was silent, his gaze now on the far wall, a frown darkening his pale blue eyes. He seemed to have withdrawn from her.

"You don't want to talk to me now," Tess said, her old feelings of rejection coming to the fore, easily taking hold of her. She started to get up.

"Wait. Yes, of course I want to talk to you, Tess. I'm sorry, you reminded me of someone else for a minute. I had no idea there was anything like this--mistrust, or the distance you describe--in your parents' relationship with you. They spoke of you affectionately. I understand your need to gain some closure."

He took wire framed eyeglasses from his pocket and put them on. Then he read from the file he'd opened on the desk in front of him earlier. "Let's see when your father first reported symptoms." He read off the date, a day in April, the spring following her accident.

Tess had been living with her great-aunt in Seattle then. Aunt Christine had been her father's aunt, surely she'd known about his diagnosis. Tess blinked tears from her eyes, but they kept coming. Dr. Lloyd put the file and his glasses aside and produced a box of tissues. He remained silent, letting her cry.

"Dr. Lloyd," she finally said, folding her hands in her lap.

"My name is Peter." When she hesitated, he added, "Your parents called me Peter. Your father wasn't only a patient. Jim was a friend, and a source of sound advice. I arrived in Wilder with a lot of misconceptions about this type of medical practice, and I shared several dinners at their house with your parents and brother, while Jim brought me up to speed."

"Peter, when did my father retire?"

He consulted the folder again. "I helped him with the documentation. He applied for disability retirement four years ago."

"Can you think of any reason why they would keep all of this from me? Should I know about anything else? Could they have intended not to worry me?" She felt disgusted with herself. It seemed self-centered to worry about what they'd thought about her all these years, or what they'd kept from her, more than about the course of her father's disease. But her father was gone now. She dried her tears and sat up straighter. "I've always hoped they had other reasons, besides the ones I've suspected."

Dr. Lloyd shook his head. "I don't know of anything else. I was your father's primary care physician. You might want to talk to the specialist he was seeing." He gave her the name and phone number.

Tess thanked him. "You had something you wanted to ask me."

Dr. Lloyd's eyebrows bunched together. He hesitated. "Your father didn't call you the day before his accident?"

"No. It was usually my mother who called, but she hadn't recently. I'd called her a couple weeks earlier. Why?"

"Your dad told me during our last meeting, the day before he was killed, that he planned to contact you, to approach you about a problem here. I hesitate to ask you now. This is a bad time for you, but it is pressing."

"Tell me. I can always say no, right?" She was curious to know what her father would've wanted her help with.

"He was going to ask if you'd be willing to talk to someone about Trent Cambridge's attack on you eleven years ago."

Tess went rigid, and felt a sudden, intense need to escape. "No--" She stood up. "No. I can't tell you anything about that." She left his cramped office, moving quickly out to the waiting room. He got up and followed her.

A sheriff's car pulled up out front as Tess reached the front waiting room. She paused, looking out the front window. A uniformed officer got out of the car. Tess turned back to Dr. Lloyd.

"Why? Tell me why." She glanced outside again. The officer appeared to look in the front window at her, then leaned against the car, his back to the office. "Is that who you wanted me to talk to?" Tess gestured at the uniformed man.

Dr. Lloyd stood with his hands on his hips, looking resigned. "Duane Prescott, yes. He's investigating the sexual assault of a teenage girl a few days ago."

Tess turned fully around to face the doctor. "By Trent?"

"He's not sure, but he thinks so. She says so. Tess, I'm sorry I've upset you with this. I thought maybe you could help. Your father seemed to think you might be willing, but I realize this is the worst time to remind you of that."

"There's nothing I can tell him, in any case."

"Are you certain? They don't have anything but the victim's word to go on about who assaulted her. No DNA evidence."

"They wouldn't--" Tess froze, looking at Dr. Lloyd's eyes but not seeing them. Remembering. She shook her head. "No. I'm sorry, I truly am, but I have to go."

She went outside, where she looked only briefly in the deputy's direction. He met her look and nodded. Tess started up the sidewalk in the opposite direction. She hazarded another glance back as she continued in the direction of the county building, and she saw the deputy had walked over to talk to Dr. Lloyd, who stood outside on the sidewalk.

Tess walked past her car, and entered the county building a short ways up the block. She told the woman at the desk that she needed information about the Hunter family's accident. She identified herself, and the woman said Sheriff Kendall would speak to her himself. Tess sat on a hard wooden bench in the outer office and fidgeted for the next two minutes.

Her dad had wanted her to talk to the sheriff about Trent. Why? Her dad hadn't believed her about anything, back then, including her accident. Now she was about to talk to the sheriff about her dad's death in an accident. "It's too late," she murmured, and realized she was repeating Joe Latimer's words to her. It's too late now, Tess.

Tess dreaded walking into the sheriff's office. If he planned to ask her about Trent, she wasn't prepared to answer. How could she think about that when she still hadn't digested the news about her family, still hadn't convinced herself they were gone, hadn't begun to fathom the depths of her grief?

Sheriff Kendall came out of his office wearing a grim expression. He appeared to be in his mid fifties. He greeted Tess in a subdued manner, clearly conscious of her loss. He led her into his office and offered her coffee, which she refused. She wanted to get down to business, to get this ordeal over with.

His office was larger than the doctor's, but stark and cold, with a frosted window reinforced with chicken wire and no blinds. Tess found herself gazing at the blind window, feeling as trapped as she had in her office in L.A.

As it turned out, Sheriff Kendall didn't mention Trent Cambridge at all. He spoke only of the accident that had killed Tess's family. He told her there was unusual tire damage and his department was still investigating the crash.

"When we spoke on the phone, you mentioned the possibility that ice caused the crash?"

He shook his head. "It was a fair assumption to start with, and there was patchy ice on some roads that morning, but the witness who saw the van go over reported no ice on that stretch of road. It had been plowed the afternoon before, and the van left skid marks. We found damage to one tire--"

"There was a witness? Were other cars involved?"

He shook his head. "The witness saw the van roll down the bank from a distance away. She also spotted a snowmobile in the area, but whoever was riding it hasn't come forward. They may not have seen anything. These things can happen in an instant." He went on to describe the exact location of the accident, a curve Tess easily recognized from his description.

She shivered involuntarily. "Can you explain the tire damage?"

"It appears to be from a sharp object. It made a clean cut in the sidewall of the tire. The forensics people have it now. We didn't find any hazard in the road."

"If it wasn't an accident, then it was. . ." Tess hesitated, trying to think of another alternative.

"Foul play." Sheriff Kendall said this with a concerned frown. "For now we're considering all possibilities, including that of an accident. We haven't drawn any conclusion yet. We're still examining the evidence."

"You mean murder?" She had trouble wrapping her thoughts around that notion. Who would want to kill the three of them? Why?

He nodded. "That's one possibility."

"Who was driving?" Her question brought back a flood of memories for Tess, and they seemed to hang in the air. The sheriff's silence made Tess imagine for a moment that he remembered, too, but if he did remember another accident, eleven years ago, it would've been hundreds of accidents ago for him. Surely it wasn't as memorable to him as it was to Tess, who'd been blamed for it. The strange thing was, she knew less about her own accident than she knew about the one that killed her family.

Sheriff Kendall's expression grew more grim. "Your brother Spence was driving. I'm truly sorry for your loss, Ms. Hunter." He gave her the information she needed to have her family's remains moved to a mortuary. "We'll release their personal effects to you as soon as we're finished with them."

Tess got up to leave, then turned to the sheriff at the door. "Who was the witness?"

"A neighbor. Rose Latimer."

###

Tess went from the sheriff's office to the mortuary, where she arranged for her family to be cremated and scheduled a simple memorial service for Thursday. At the newspaper office she wrote up an obituary. The paper was a Sunday weekly, so it wouldn't appear prior to the funeral. She had a lot of calls to make, to ensure people knew about the service.

Tess returned to her rental car, still parked in front of Dr. Lloyd's office. The doctor came out to get into his truck, carrying the tackle box she'd seen earlier.

He nodded to her. "I thought I'd fit some fishing in while the sun's out." His expression reminded her of a boy sneaking out of school midday.

She paused beside his truck. "Peter, you mentioned you ate dinner with my family a few times. Do you have any idea who might be a good choice to offer a eulogy? The funeral director suggested it should be someone who was close to all of them."

The doctor sobered and thought for only a few seconds before he said, "What about Joe Latimer? He was a frequent visitor at the house, and his sister Rose was a good friend of your mother's."

Chapter 4

Tess returned to her parents' house and went to the kitchen, where she built up the fire and then set to work, cooking. Her trip to Wilder had left her feeling fragmented, and cooking had often made her feel whole again. She hoped it would do the same for her now.

She needed to use up the perishables in the refrigerator, and there was enough food stored away in the pantry and freezer to feed the entire family for a year. That had always been her mother's way, Tess recalled. She'd spent many a hot summer day helping her mother can and freeze the abundance of fruit and vegetables from their home garden and from local growers.

Tess had no idea what she would do with all this food before closing up the house and leaving Cedar Creek. With her family gone there was nothing to hold her here.

She kneaded whole grain dough for rolls and left it to rise on the warm counter near the stove, where she started a pot of chicken stock simmering. Then she sat down to review the food on hand and decide what to prepare for a gathering here after the funeral.

Midmorning she made a quick call to Paige, to ensure all was going well at the office.

"Harry and I plan to fly up for the funeral. What's the name of the resort you were going to stay at?"

"Stoneway, but you can stay here with me. There's plenty of room." Tess had sensed a distance widening between herself and Paige, ever since Tess had announced her decision to take a leave of absence. She wanted to bridge it somehow. She'd lost her family. She couldn't stand to lose her best friend at the same time.

"We don't want to impose, but it will only be one night."

"Stay with me, please. When we were in college you and your family put me up plenty of times for the holidays," Tess reminded her.

After the call, Tess adjusted the seasonings in the chicken stock and left it on the lowest heat to simmer.

Finally she ventured upstairs and looked through those rooms. She'd avoided coming up here at all since her arrival last night.

The bedroom Tess had occupied as a teenager remained as she'd left it, furnished in pale ivory, with eyelet ruffles on the sheets and curtains, and old fading art posters on the cream colored walls. Old sketches she'd drawn as a girl were still tacked up on the wall above the small desk.

She turned around, wondering why her parents had left the bedroom this way, when they'd so often given her the impression they wanted to forget her. Why had they allowed her to have the largest room in the house in the first place? It was immense, taking up the entire space over the two-car garage.

Tess opened drawers, knowing they'd be empty because she'd taken all her things with her when she left home. But inside the night table she found two necklaces, and she held them up to the light pouring through the windows. One delicate silver chain held a Celtic cross her mother had given her, and the other held a pentacle given to her by a boy named Alan Stewart, whom she'd dated shortly before she left home. Both were sterling silver, simple in design and close to the same size. Seeing them brought back one of the worst arguments she'd ever had with her mother, and Tess hurriedly put them away, but on a second impulse she removed them again from the drawer and held onto them. She turned to look around the room.

She didn't want anyone else to sleep here. She felt a need to reclaim this space where she'd first begun to grow into adulthood, to learn her own likes and dislikes, her own way of being. It was here she'd first dipped a brush in paint. This big room had served as a sanctuary where she could explore her creativity during unbroken hours of solitude.

She looked at the big windows facing east, north, and west, and the entire wall of built-in cabinets, and she thought what a nice studio the room would make. The light was good, there was plenty of storage, and a large work table. She could use the typing table from her father's study for her laptop computer.

Next she went into Spence's room, where the sports-theme wallpaper reminded her of the boy Spence had been when Tess was seventeen. At six, he'd been emerging from babyhood, eager to grow up. Tess sat on the bed and looked around at the room where she'd read to Spence that night, eleven years ago. Her memories of that evening converged. Tess sat on her brother's bed and wept, remembering their last game, the last cookies, and the last bedtime stories they'd shared.

Their parents had gone out with friends. Her mother had left a note on the refrigerator with the phone number. Tess was to stay home and baby-sit Spence, who'd turned six that summer.

As soon as they finished eating dinner and cleaning up, Tess got out his favorite board game, and she and Spence played it there at the kitchen table. As promised and expected on a night the two of them spent at home together, Tess baked cookies. Chocolate chip, Spence's favorite. It was a hot August night, so she kept all the kitchen windows and back door open, with only the old-fashioned, wooden screen door closed against the night and mosquitoes, so the oven wouldn't overheat the house.

Alan Stewart called. He was the boy Tess had been dating, until her parents had pressured her to break up with him a few days earlier. He wanted to know if she'd changed her mind and would see him. She told him no, and ended the call, while an impatient Spence waited to continue their game. Then a girl from her mother's church called, inviting Tess to a social event. Tess wasn't interested and again ended the call as soon as she could.

Her other friends all knew she was babysitting tonight and didn't want to be distracted. Spence was growing fast, and Tess planned to go away to college the following year. She had decided to savor this evening, make it an oasis of childhood for both of them.

So they played, and she baked. She sipped lemonade, and she let Spence eat warm cookies with a glass of milk while they played his game. He got chocolate all over his face, and had a milk moustache, and he was laughing and prattling happily because he'd won the game, when they finally went upstairs for his bath and pajamas. Once he was in bed Tess read to him.

Then there were new smells and sounds, white sheets, people in white lab coats. Pain. A bright light in her eyes, and her mother crying.

"Why? Why would you go off and leave Spence all alone in the house? What were you thinking, driving off like that? You could've been killed. You nearly killed yourself. Do you understand?"

Tess didn't understand her mother's words, or how she'd wound up in the hospital. Her mother broke down in tears, and Tess didn't understand much else she said that day.

Later a sheriff's deputy questioned Tess about an accident he said she'd had with her mother's car. Tess didn't remember an accident. She didn't remember taking her mother's car anywhere. She only remembered reading to Spence, baking him cookies, putting him to bed.

Her father told her she'd had alcohol and barbiturates in her blood. He told her she'd taken her mother's car and driven it through the front of the Masons' flower shop at the bottom of the hill. She'd been unconscious for two days. She'd nearly been killed. He said Tess had gone off and left Spence alone in the house.

Tess didn't believe any of it. Why would she do that?

Her father demanded to know what she was thinking, what was going on with her. Why she'd stayed out all night two nights before she left Spence at home alone. That was when she finally told him about Trent Cambridge trying to rape her and her narrow escape that other night. That night she remembered with crystal clarity.

Her father listened, silent. He nodded as she spoke, but didn't say another word.

Neither of her parents spoke to her much after that. They were quiet, somber, reserved. They took her home and told her to rest. They spoke in low voices in another room. School was supposed to start that week, but they didn't encourage her to get ready. Instead they called Aunt Christine, who drove down from Seattle and packed Tess, her clothing, books, and art supplies back to Seattle with her.

Tess had spent her senior year of high school and the following summer in Seattle. She'd stayed with Aunt Christine until she went away to college in New York the following fall. She hadn't set foot in her parents' house or seen her family since the summer of her accident.

###

Tess decided to use her mother's bedroom and give Harry the downstairs guestroom her father had recently occupied. Paige would sleep up here in Spence's room. Keeping Tess's old bedroom available to her as a studio posed a minor problem, since it was the only room with an empty closet and dresser, and she dreaded the task of going through her family's things to accommodate guests.

Tess spent the next few minutes transferring her luggage up to her mother's room. She then packed the contents of her brother's and her father's dressers and closets into empty cartons she found folded in the garage. She marked each box according to where its contents came from. Instead of going carefully through their things and making decisions about what to do with them, she blindly packed items into boxes, unwilling to make decisions or examine them today.

In the midst of this task, while cleaning out the bedside tables in her father's room downstairs, Tess found some of her mother's personal things tucked away in the nightstand on the side of the bed farthest from the door. Tess paused for the first time in her packing and looked at them. Her mother had spent time here, possibly had slept here every night. Her father would've needed the downstairs room because of his need for a wheelchair.

Finally Tess packed her mother's things away. She didn't pause until she came to the bookcase above the old writing desk near her mother's bedroom door.

The titles on the top shelf included a set of Jane Austen novels, two Thomas Hardy novels, and a book of poems by William Wordsworth. A row of smaller, clothbound volumes on the bottom shelf caught Tess's eye. They were all covered with the same printed cloth, in different colors. Tess took one out for a closer look. It was a journal, filled with her mother's handwriting. Each journal was marked with a different year inside the front cover and on the outside binding. They were arranged on the shelf by year. They more than filled the bottom shelf, with a few stacked horizontally on top of the others.

Tess opened the first one, and glimpsed her mother's name in the first line of the inscription on the front page:

"To my beloved daughter Cathy on your wedding day, from your mother, Sara."

Tess's mother Cathy had mentioned these journals to her when Tess was younger. Tess's maternal grandmother had given them to Tess's mother as a wedding gift. Tess counted twenty-eight of the journals on the shelf, all filled with her mother's writing. Her parents had been married less than twenty-nine years. There was no book with this year's date on the shelf, so Tess went to the bedside and opened her mother's night-table drawers. She found more of the books tucked inside the bottom drawer, but they were all blank. There hadn't been one among her mother's things in the downstairs bedroom, either. The current year's journal was missing.

Tess returned to the bookcase and the completed journals. They'd obviously been important to her mother. She was curious to know what her mother might have written about her in these books. They might contain answers to why her parents had kept her away. She wanted desperately to believe it wasn't because they thought her guilty of abandoning Spence on the night of her accident, or because they suspected she'd been using drugs, or was otherwise unfit to be around her younger brother any longer.

Tess found the first journal Cathy Hunter had started after she married, and placed it on the bed, intending to start reading it that night.

###

For the remainder of Tuesday morning Tess wore a grim track through her parents' address book, making phone calls to tell her family's friends and acquaintances about the funeral service on Thursday. She sat at the kitchen counter, and took deep breaths between calls to regain composure and steel her nerve. At first she had thought the task would grow easier as she went along, but each person she called expressed either shock at the news, or grief of their own. They related memories that fed the intensity of hers, until Tess felt drained.

When she came to the listing for the Latimers, Tess considered making a quick, polite request for Joe Latimer to offer a eulogy, but she remembered his words last night, and she dreaded speaking to him again about her family. She marked the page and continued with her other calls, saving that one for last.

By afternoon Tess was emotionally exhausted, and she still hadn't called the Latimers. She opened the address book to their number, and looked at it for a minute. Finally she dialed--and was infinitely relieved when a woman answered.

"Rose Latimer? This is Tess Hunter."

"Oh, Tess. I'm so sorry about what's happened. I was planning to call you to ask if you need help with anything. The funeral arrangements, or--?"

"Thank you. I'm actually calling to tell you about the service and to ask Joe if he would be willing to offer a eulogy."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure he won't mind, but of course you'll have to ask him. I'll have him call you when he gets in. He should've been home half an hour ago for lunch."

"He works near home?"

"He has a veterinary clinic in town."

When he was a boy, Joe Latimer had always had his dog following after him, tail wagging lazily, and its mouth open in a smiling expression. He'd had pets of all kinds. Once he'd allowed Tess to hold a baby rabbit, instructing her how to grasp it so it didn't jump away. She smiled as she recalled that tiny rabbit, sitting warm and furry in her hand. She supposed it made sense that Joe had become a veterinarian.

"When is the funeral?" Rose's voice brought Tess back to the present. She told her the time and place, and her plans for a buffet lunch at the house afterward.

"Let me bring the beverages. I can contact people you may not know, about the services."

"That would be a great help. Thank you." Tess was stunned by Rose's warmth, after Joe's demeanor last night and his puzzling behavior this morning. Tess tried to remember what she could about Rose Latimer, but it had been Rose's brother Joseph who'd commanded Tess's attention when they were young. Tess recalled his kiss earlier, and her face warmed with the memory--then with a different emotion, as she pictured him kissing Jessica Laine less than a minute later.

Rose was saying, "Your mother was a good friend. I'm going to miss her a lot."

"I understand you saw the accident happen."

Rose was silent for a few seconds. "I was on my way to work, at the school. I was some distance away, but I saw the van go over. I used my cell phone to call for help." After another pause she said in a quivering voice, "Yesterday was the worst day of my life. Joe's too. He came along right afterward, on his way to work, and he helped get them out."

After the call, Tess felt restless. She checked her chicken stock, still simmering on the stove, and then decided to take a short walk outside. She pulled on a jacket at the front door.

The sun had slipped behind clouds in the early afternoon, and now the wind was rising. The fresh, vigorous feel and scent to the air energized Tess and reminded her of snowstorms she'd experienced growing up in these mountains. She used to love to hear the wind sing and bustle in the trees as it did now. Her mother had once told her that trees gave the wind its voice.

Tess walked briskly down to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway and pulled out the mail. There were ads, bills, envelopes that she guessed contained sympathy cards, and one business size envelope with no stamp and no forwarding or return address. The envelope was sealed, but completely blank. It caught her interest at once, because whoever left it had driven some distance to place it in the box without ringing the doorbell--unless they'd come up this morning while she was in Wilder.

Tess stood by the mailbox and opened the blank envelope. She pulled out a single sheet of paper folded in thirds, a typed letter without salutation, signature or date.

"You don't know how lucky you are to find success in your business at such a young age. A magazine and cookbooks. How nice for you. But that can change. If you don't leave town and pay $50,000 cash, newspapers and television stations all over the state will learn that the publisher of Treasured Home ran off and left her baby brother alone while she ploughed her mother's car into the florist's shop. They'll learn about the drugs and alcohol, and we'll see how successful you feel then. Don't go to the police, and don't ignore this! Start packing your bags and putting together the cash. Instructions for payment will follow."

Tess stood there in the cold wind, and read and reread the letter, trying to understand, to think what to do about it. She wanted to wad it up, throw it away and pretend she'd ever seen it. She wanted to ignore it. Who would do this? Who here knew about her business? She hadn't mentioned it to Angie Norwood during their brief phone calls over the past few days. The only people in Cedar Creek she'd ever spoken to about it were her family.

She recalled a phone call from her mother after she'd seen Tess's first slender, plum-colored cookbook in a Sacramento bookstore, with Tess's watercolor painting of a three-tiered dessert tray crammed with pastries reproduced on the dust jacket. Cathy Hunter had purchased the book for herself and called Tess the same evening.

"Recipes and illustrations by Tess Hunter. I can't tell you how proud I was when I saw a whole stack of those books in that store. I wanted to tell everyone in the store that my daughter wrote them. They're beautiful. We're so proud of you, Tess."

Tess's eyes filled as she remembered her mother's words. The day of that call had been the first time in years that she'd thought either of her parents could be proud of her.

Now she felt empty, and incapable of doing anything but going to sleep. She trudged through the snow, up the driveway, and into the house. She returned to the kitchen and went numbly through the motions of preparing food for the funeral gathering. She didn't know what else to do. She couldn't do anything about this letter, now, except go to the police, which the blackmailer had warned against. She thought of calling Paige and Harry, since it was a threat to them as well. Instead Tess worked in her mother's kitchen. Cooking had always been a balm for Tess, as it had been for her mother. She tried to lose herself in that familiar activity, but it didn't work the same magic for her this afternoon that it had in the past. A dark, onerous cloud hung over everything. As if the weight of her grief hadn't been enough, now fresh fear for her business, friends, and employees--in addition to a new and profound loneliness--weighed her spirits.

Late that afternoon snow fell.

Chapter 5

Early in the evening Tess chopped leeks and sorrel from her mother's supply in the refrigerator and used them, along with her chicken stock, to make soup. She added potatoes and let them soften enough to mash with a spoon. Finally she added cream, and chopped roast chicken from the refrigerator. She adjusted the seasonings as the thickened mixture reheated to serving temperature. Then she ladled herself a bowl of the soup and sat at the kitchen table to eat it with a hot buttered roll and a simple lettuce salad, attempting to regain some semblance of peace from the silent, solitary meal.

After dinner she bathed and put on her warmest nightgown, then crawled under the electric blanket in the upstairs bedroom that had been her mother's.

She picked up her mother's first journal, and soon found herself caught up in events that had occurred years before her earliest memories, seeing them vividly from her mother's point of view.

She read of her own birth and her mother's first blissful, if tiring, days of parenthood. The early worries and joys of watching an infant take her first steps into childhood unfolded with the turn of the pages. It touched Tess deeply to realize those loving words had been written about her. Could this be the same woman who years later made transparent excuses to keep her daughter from coming home for semester breaks and holidays?

Tess dozed off while reading, and the ringing of the doorbell wakened her. The bedside lamp was still on, and the journal she'd been reading lay open beside her where she'd dropped it. It was eight o'clock. She got up and put on her fleece robe and slippers and hurried down to answer the persistent ringing, brushing hair back from her face with her fingers as she went.

Tess left the chain lock fastened and inched the door open. "Who is it?" she called against a gust of freezing air that nearly compelled her to swallow her words.

Joe Latimer peered through the opening at her. "It's Joe. May I come in?"

Tess slid the chain off the door and opened it.

Joe game in with a gust of cold, and quickly closed the door. "Whew! Thanks. It's a mess out there."

He turned around, took in Tess's appearance--her robe and fuzzy slippers--and grinned. "Uh-oh. I thought you city people stayed up later than this." Snow clung to his hair and eyebrows, quickly melting in the warmer air of the house.

"I guess I'm still a country girl at heart." Tess watched him coolly, hiding her bafflement. Why had he come here on a cold, snowy night, when he'd made it plain he thought badly of her? Why had he kissed her this morning?

"I don't suppose you have a fire going?" Joe glanced toward the darkened living room, then turned his gaze on her again. The warmth in his eyes was an embrace. They held her attention, and Tess took a moment to register what he'd said.

"A fire. No, but--here, you'd better take these things off." Without thinking she reached up and took his knitted hat, while he removed his gloves.

He smiled again at her familiar action, then unzipped his jacket, and sat down on the nearest living room chair to unlace his boots. "Do you mind if I make us both some hot chocolate?"

Tess stared at him curiously. Then she looked down at his hat in her hand. He took it from her with a quick "Thanks," and strode toward the kitchen in his socks, carrying his boots. Tess followed. Joe placed his boots, hat and gloves on the family room hearth and started to add wood to the coals.

"Let me do that," Tess said, and took over.

When she turned away from the fire a minute later, Joe already had the milk heating, and as Tess watched he took cocoa and mugs out of the cabinets. He was obviously as familiar with the kitchen as she was. Tess sat in the old rocking chair near the fireplace to watch him.

He looked up with a sheepish grin. "I got used to making myself at home here. I never did get to eat dinner tonight. I was hungry, and I found myself pulling into your driveway out of habit, thinking about your mom."

Tess stood up. "You haven't eaten? I have soup and some bread I can warm for you."

He watched her with a half smile lighting his eyes as she came over and joined him in the kitchen. She took out the soup and started it warming alongside the pan of milk and cocoa, then placed a couple of the whole-grain rolls in the toaster oven. Tess returned to the center island stove to find him still watching her. He abruptly looked away and gave the pan in front of him a stir.

"What brings you out in this weather?" she said.

"I had an emergency call this afternoon. I was on my way home. Visibility got bad below the turnoff to your place, and the heater's out in my truck. I used to visit your folks a lot. Sorry, it looks as if you were asleep."

"I was reading in bed." A glance at him told her he didn't believe her. "I may have dozed a little."

He gave her a slow, knowing smile. "You took a long time to answer."

She grinned back at him. "Okay, I was sound asleep at eight o'clock. Stop looking so smug about it."

He held her gaze for several seconds. "I was always fascinated by the way your eyes lighten in color when you smile. They're a pale blue now, a shade lighter than your robe." He continued to study her. "You look a lot like your mom."

"Do I?" Tess's voice faltered.

"That photo of you on the living room mantle deceived me. It made me picture this cool, savvy business woman in a suit, someone I've never met and never wanted to." His look turned solemn. "You know, I miss them a lot."

She nodded and said nothing. She wanted to ask him about her family, but she was afraid he'd rebuke her again, or she wouldn't like the answers.

Neither of them spoke again until the soup, bread, and hot chocolate were ready. Joe carried mugs over to the table for both of them while Tess ladled out his soup and arranged warm rolls on a plate with a pat of butter. She placed the food in front of him, sat down and picked up her mug.

"This smells wonderful." He took a spoonful of the soup and made a pleased sound in his throat, his eyes half-closed.

"It's potato leek with roast chicken." She sipped her cocoa and watched him take another spoonful, then quickly bite into the warm buttered roll. Joe was so intent on his food, she wondered if he'd missed lunch as well as dinner.

Tess continued to sip her cocoa. Once she raised her eyes to find him studying her. Her heart gave a lurch as their eyes met.

"Watch your cocoa," Joe said as she tilted it. There was a hint of laughter in his voice. Tess shifted her gaze to the fire, unable to still her thoughts with him watching her like that. His attention made something come alive in her, something that felt restless to answer. She was wide awake now.

He gestured at his empty bowl as he put down his spoon. "I needed that. Did your mom make the soup?"

"No, I did. With her roasted chicken."

"That's right, you write cookbooks." He continued eating, finishing his second roll. She couldn't help noticing that he knew about her cookbooks, as did the blackmailer, but Joe hadn't lived here in Cedar Creek when she was hurt in that accident. Did he know about it?

"You never married." He didn't ask it, he stated it.

"No."

"Too busy with your career?"

Tess shrugged. "There's always been time to date. No one held my interest for long."

"You had a crush on me for years. Has your attention span shortened since then?"

Tess smiled. "I thought that was my secret. Was I so transparent?"

"Remember how you used to follow me around, back then? You never guessed how enchanted I was by that. Other boys were falling for girls their own age, but I thought you were the dreamiest thing I'd ever seen. There, your eyes lit up again."

She had paused, watching him. "I was thinking how it would have thrilled me, back then, to hear you say that."

"I don't suppose it would give you the same thrill now."

"I hardly know you now. Besides, we were children." Why did you kiss me today? Tess wanted to ask it, but she didn't.

They finished in silence. Tess took their dishes to the sink while Joe went to the fire to put on his boots. He sat in the rocking chair to lace them while Tess washed dishes. She brought a sponge over to wipe off the stove, where she faced in his direction. Joe had his boots on now and stood watching her work. He moved closer.

"How long will you stay?" His green eyes glinted at her.

"I don't know. There are a lot of things to settle. I'd planned to spend a few weeks here, before I received the news."

His glance slid away. He nodded toward the window. "It's coming down out there. At least I don't have much farther to go. Are you all right alone here?"

"I'm fine, Joe. I live alone. I'm used to it." She turned and picked up the dish towel. She wasn't used to living in this particular empty house, surrounded by memories of her childhood, with no family here to share them, but she wasn't about to admit that to him. Then she thought of the blackmail letter. She felt a great need to tell someone about that, but she'd decided to wait until after the funeral. She wouldn't let the blackmailer drive her away before then.

He turned to face her. "Do you need help making final arrangements?"

"Um, yes. Did Rose mention I phoned your house earlier?"

He shook his head. "I haven't been home since morning."

"I called to ask if you would give the eulogy."

His eyes darkened, but he nodded. "I have a lot I'd like to share about them."

Tess sighed, realizing what a weight that simple yet critical detail had been for her today. "I don't know how to thank you."

He looked reluctant, but said, "There is one thing. Your father had a cane I gave him. It was a gift, an antique made of hardwood, with a brass handle. I'd like to have that, as a keepsake."

Tess had to think for a minute. With all the packing she'd done of her family's things she'd never considered that her father might have used a cane. "I haven't seen it, but the sheriff still has their belongings from the accident." She still called it an accident, unable to get her mind to contain the idea that it might be murder. She recalled the sheriff had mentioned her father's wheelchair was found among the wreckage. "Would he have had the cane and his wheelchair with him?"

Joe nodded. "He took the cane everywhere. He hated the wheelchair, and used it as little as possible. I bought him that cane because he detested anything that looked like it came from a medical supply." Joe was frowning now. He looked away for a moment.

"Consider it yours. Tell Rose, too, if there's anything she wants, to let me know. I don't know what I'll do with all their things."

"If you need help going through them, let us know." He faced her again with a pained look. Then he came around in front of the stove and faced her. "You know, Tess, I had my reasons for feeling the anger I expressed last night. I loved your family. I thought you did too, when you were a girl. I've never understood why you stayed away."

She considered telling him why, but if he loved them as he said he did, she doubted he'd accept what she had to say. "It was between my parents and me."

He looked incredulous. "What about Spence? He missed you. Did something between your parents and you have to affect him as well?"

"I didn't want it to."

Joe leaned forward and put his hands lightly on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes and spoke quietly. "But it did, Tess."

"I can't change that now. I wish I could." Tears stung her eyes, tears she didn't want to shed in his presence.

"Didn't you ever want to see him? Didn't you miss them?"

"Of course I did." Tears stung her eyes. "How do you think I felt when--" Her throat constricted. She didn't want to cry with him so close, watching her this way. She cleared her throat. "I had reasons for not visiting, reasons I don't want to go into. That's in the past. Isn't it bad enough they're gone? Do we have to go over every wrong thing that ever happened?" Tess blinked back her tears and raised her chin to meet his gaze.

"I've made you cry. I'm sorry." Joe raised a hand to her chin, touched it lightly. His touch, his nearness somehow warmed and comforted her. He looked into her eyes, his own brilliant, searching. His expression changed, softened.

He moved closer, until his lips touched hers. She drew in her breath, and started to move out of his grasp, but then her hands met the hard expanse of his chest, and his lips touched hers, warm and supple. She let her lips linger on his for a few seconds, on the edge of surrendering in a single-minded response, before she backed away.

Joe stood there looking after her, wearing a dark gaze that Tess couldn't read. Then he moved.

"Goodnight." He uttered this in a low, raspy voice with an abrupt nod of his head, and he strode out of the kitchen.

Tess followed and watched him pull on his jacket at the door. "Drive carefully," she said as he opened it.

He glanced back at her, nodded again, and closed the door quickly behind him. Her lips still tingled from his kiss as Tess turned away. She touched them and listened to the sound of his truck as he started it.

Upstairs, Tess nestled under the warm bed covers, picked up her mother's second journal, and opened it to where she'd left off.

It took some time and effort to get her mind off Joe Latimer so she could concentrate on reading, but she eventually did with the help of her worries about the blackmail letter, which nagged at her with greater intensity as the hours passed. There was a chance her mother's journals could help solve that mystery, once she worked her way into the more recent ones. She was determined to read them in sequential order, to get a fix on when her parents had begun to change in their feelings, suspicions, and eventually their behavior toward Tess.

She read late into the night, skimming over everyday events and seasonal celebrations. She skipped over the humorous account of how she'd lost her first tooth. She knew these things. She could go back to them later. She wanted to get to the bottom of her questions about her family. She wanted to have answers for Joe if he asked again.

Finally, shortly after one in the morning, Tess put down the eighth volume and switched off the bedside lamp.

As she lay awake, her thoughts kept returning to the last page she'd read. It was her mother's account of how seven-year-old Tess followed young Joe Latimer everywhere and never stopped talking about what Joseph had said, or what Joseph had done. Her mother described Joe as a "tall, lanky, black-haired boy with thoughtful green eyes. He never seems to tire of Tess tagging after him, and he brought her a bunch of daisies this morning. Tess's first flowers from a beau?"

Tess tossed and turned that night, her dreams full of the boy Joseph Latimer, whom she'd sought out so persistently as a child.

Later in the night her dreams changed. She ran barefoot down a road, away from a car that pursued her. The faster she tried to run, the slower she moved. Tess wanted to escape into the woods, but she couldn't make her legs move in that direction. Finally she stood still in the middle of the road, unable to move at all, while the headlights bore down on her. Closer.

Tess woke with a start.

Had that been a noise? An engine? She didn't hear anything now, but something had roused her completely from sleep a second ago.

She sat up and listened, sensing a stillness in the old house that seemed remarkable, considering all the strange noises it had made to keep her awake her first night here. She listened for a few minutes, but heard nothing out of the ordinary. Still feeling anxious, restless, she attempted to reason herself into relaxing. The dream must have wakened her.

Then another sound caught her attention, and adrenaline sent her heart racing. This sound had come from downstairs.

Tess crept out of bed and listened, mouth open, as she made her way out to the stairs. She stood on the upstairs landing and waited. It was a rattle, like that of a doorknob. The front door. Someone was fiddling with the door lock. Trying to pick it?

A scream rose in her throat, threatening to let loose along with her panic. She put a hand over her mouth. Whatever the person wanted, there was no good reason she could think of that they'd try to pick her lock in the middle of the night rather than use the doorbell. She had to do something.

She switched on the light over the stairs, then continued down the stairs into the foyer, where she switched on the foyer and porch lights with one swipe of her hand across the wall panel.

The rattle of the doorknob stopped abruptly. Then Tess was certain she heard movement on the floorboards of the front porch. She pictured someone darting down the porch steps.

Silence, except for Tess's heartbeat pulsing in her ears as she imagined a figure running off through the snow out there, but she couldn't be sure unless she saw them. She turned off the two inside lights. Leaving the porch light on, she went into the living room and parted the drapes a crack to peer outside.

A gust of wind whined in the trees or the chimney. Branches scraped the roof of the porch. The dark shapes of the trees outside danced in their snow blankets, shrouded by falling snow. The front door shook with the gust, and the doorknob rattled. Snow spattered against the big living room window in front of her, and Tess backed away from it with a startled cry.

Finally she laughed, and berated herself for panicking at the wind. She returned upstairs to bed. She'd settled down again, gotten her pillow back into the right shape, her head into the right depression on the pillow, when she heard another noise that wasn't the wind.

Somewhere outside, down near the road or up on the hill beyond the driveway, an engine started and whined away into the night, too quickly for her to get a handle on the sound. It was drowned out by another gust of wind.

Chapter 6

Paige, Tess and Harry rode to the funeral together in Paige's rental car on Thursday. The mortuary in Wilder stood at the nearer end of town. When they arrived, Tess spotted Joe Latimer standing on the steps beside a woman, who thankfully wasn't Jessica Laine. Joe spoke to the woman, and she waved discreetly to Tess. Moments later Joe introduced her as his sister Rose.

Rose Latimer was tall, brown-haired, and unremarkable except for her eyes, which were the same dark green and gold as Joe's. She wore a long beige coat, open over a sedate forest green dress of the type Tess's mother used to wear to church. She was a lot thinner than Tess remembered, when she was eventually able to recall her as a young adult. Rose had been two years ahead of Tess and Angie in school, and Tess recalled with an inner cringe the time Angie had made fun of Rose's round shape. Tess hoped Rose didn't remember--but how did one forget an experience like that? Tess introduced Paige and Harry. A smile transformed Rose's face, and she was suddenly beautiful. The transformation caused Tess to take pause.

Joe held the door for all of them and they went inside.

Tess sat through the ordeal of the funeral, conscious of the sea of people seated in the large room. She hadn't expected so many. The minister from her mother's church officiated, and Joe offered the eulogy, which ended too soon, leaving the gathering in a silence broken only by sniffles and low murmurs. At the conclusion of the service, the minister announced on Tess's behalf that those in attendance were invited back to the house for a buffet lunch.

Tess returned to the house with Paige and Harry, where she went directly to the kitchen, to stress over the amount of food she'd prepared. Harry pitched in, helping to set the food out in the dining room. They heard cars drive up, and Tess was filled with unaccountable panic at the prospect of running out of food within minutes, when Paige answered a knock at the back door.

Joe and Rose Latimer had arrived with the beverages, as promised, and more food, which they carried in the back door. Lots of food, Tess realized as she watched them carry in one dish after another from Rose's car. Stunned by the sudden and miraculous abundance, Tess stammered her thanks as the first guests arrived and filtered into the living and dining rooms. Rose and Joe set to work, arranging the buffet as though Tess had given them detailed instructions, when she hadn't said a word.

They turned to find Tess watching them, dumbfounded by their generosity, and Joe said simply, "We realized you wouldn't know how many people to expect. Rose wanted to help."

"Thank goodness for you and Rose." It was all Tess had time to say. More guests were arriving, and she turned her attention to them.

Within a short time two dozen or more people were gathered in the big country kitchen and family room, where they'd visited with Tess's mother Cathy numerous times through the years.

"This was her favorite room," Tess heard someone say.

"Tess," a familiar voice called, and Tess turned as Angie crossed the living room to hug her tightly. They spent a few minutes talking, and Tess promised to come out to Stoneway to spend time with Angie while she was in town. Then another guest approached Tess with a story about her father. Another to talk about something her brother had done. This went on, and finally Paige brought Tess a plate of food and suggested she sit for a few minutes.

Tess's head spun with her own memories, mingled with the kind words and memories of her guests, and she suddenly wanted some time alone to cry. She hadn't realized the funeral would have this impact on her, and she told Paige so. Paige sat in a corner with her to eat and they kept their backs to the crowd, allowing the other people to fade into the background for a few minutes.

Tess was in the dining room a short time later when a male voice beside her said, "I'm so sorry, Tess." She turned, and took a moment to realize who the man was.

"Alan." Tess hugged him tightly. This was Alan Stewart, whom she'd dated for several months before she left home that last summer.

"I wasn't sure you'd recognize me."

Alan had been a skinny eighteen year old. Now his shoulders were broader, and he was taller than Tess remembered. His hairline was receding, and he had given up the immature goatee he'd worn back then along with the black clothing. Today he wore a neat gray suit and tie. He was clean shaven, with short brown hair. His face, once babyish, now appealed with a kind of reasonable, adult sensitivity. His hazel eyes lit up as he regarded Tess. "I'm relieved to see you here, looking so well. I wish it wasn't under these circumstances. Will you be in town long?"

Tess nodded. "I'm taking a leave of absence from my business. I'd planned to be here next week, and I was going to stay through New Years. I haven't changed that plan, it's just changed itself, dramatically. It's hard to take it all in." She found herself dipping toward tears again, and shook them off. "How are you doing, Alan? Are you painting?"

Tess and Alan had met in art class, during high school, and they, along with a few other students who'd considered themselves budding artists, had formed a tightly knit group, encouraging each other and learning together.

"I spent a few years working as a graphic artist, doing some web design on the side. Now I work part time at a local print shop, in addition to my metal sculpture and painting. I've opened a gallery in town. You should come see it while you're here. Did you ever open your bakery? And more importantly, do you still paint?"

"No bakery, but I have been painting. In fact, I'm turning my old bedroom upstairs into a studio to work in while I'm here."

"You'll have to come see my gallery. Laura Reynolds is one of the contributing artists. So is Ed Greene. They're a married couple now, you know. I'm renting the space for the gallery from Joe Latimer. Laura has a bookkeeping service there, too. It's an old Victorian house where Joe used to have his clinic before he moved into his new building across the street. Jessica Laine is opening a bath products boutique there. Only I think she's in it for fun, and to have an excuse to be in contact with Joe on a regular basis. Joe's sister Rose is opening a bookstore. Here are Laura and Ed now."

Tess turned alongside him to greet her old friends. Ed Greene and Laura, who was now his wife, had been a part of their informal artists' circle when they were teenagers. Both of them greeted Tess enthusiastically, subdued at first over her loss. Soon they were deep in conversation about their artwork. Laura, Ed and Alan were excited at the prospect of having Tess in town for at least a month, and they all agreed she needed to get some of her work into Alan's gallery.

Angie Norwood joined them, and turned the conversation with Alan and Ed to skiing and hunting. Angie's attention suddenly focused on a teenage girl who stood in the buffet line, and Angie went over to bring the girl, her plate half full, over to meet Tess. The girl looked reluctant, troubled.

"Tess, this is Karen Jensen, Spence's girlfriend. Karen worked for me at Stoneway until a few days ago." To Karen, Angie added, "Tess and I were best friends when we were girls."

Karen sent Angie a sideways glance, but greeted Tess with her hand extended.

"Karen, I'm so sorry to have to meet you like this." Tess hadn't known Spence had a girlfriend.

The girl nodded shyly and turned away. Tess thought she was headed back to the buffet, but instead she brought two adults over and introduced them to Tess as her parents, Margaret and Hank Jensen. "Spence's sister, Tess." Karen appeared close to tears.

A few minutes later Angie had to leave, to see to her guests at Stoneway, and Tess excused herself to walk her out. "I'm sorry we didn't get to talk more, Angie."

"You'll have to come out and spend some time with us, like we planned, before you leave. You will, won't you?" Angie turned at the door to face Tess.

"Of course."

"I have some old photos I'm dying to show you. Oh, and my brother Kevin's birthday party is in a few days. I'm sure he'll want you to be there. Remember Kevin?" She made Tess promise to attend the party.

After Angie left, Tess remained in the foyer for a minute, savoring the moment to herself before heading back to be with her guests.

She overheard two women talking in the living room, just the other side of the partial wall that divided the living room from the foyer where Tess stood.

"I don't see any alcohol here," the first woman said, arguing with her companion. "No drugs, no weird religious symbols, not even a stick of incense."

"Of course you wouldn't, after that funeral, with the minister from their church and all," the second woman said. "She hasn't lived in this house for years, but if she'd been here when the accident that killed them all happened, you'd wonder if she was the one driving. Nearly killed herself that other time. They were sued because of it. She tried to blame it on someone else, but the drugs were in her blood. I think she may have served time in jail, or a juvenile detention center. They said she was staying with relatives, but if so why didn't she come back to visit, after she was an adult? She left and never came back, until now."

Tess walked away in the other direction, through the study, to avoid seeing who it was who said those things. She knew they were talking about her and her accident, the reason she thought her parents had sent her away.

It crossed Tess's mind that it might be one of her guests today who was blackmailing her. She stood in the study, stunned for a moment by the idea that they might have the nerve to come here, eat, and pretend to grieve with her, while they harbored such diabolical motives. Tess returned to the kitchen and visited with the people there, trying to forget, trying not to wonder whether everyone here had heard gossip about her, trying not to believe she had an enemy here among all her family's friends.

By late afternoon, nearly everyone had gone home. The weather had turned stormy again, and people wanted to get home before driving became difficult.

Rose Latimer collected her clean, empty dishes, and Joe helped her load them into her car. Tess hugged Rose gratefully, thanking her again for her help. Then Paige went to the door with Harry. Both had their suitcases in hand.

"Thank you both for being here. I wish you could stay another night." Tess wanted to beg them to. She hadn't mentioned her prowler of two nights ago to them, or the blackmail letter, afraid they'd insist she return to L.A.--as if that were a safer place. Now she dreaded sleeping alone in this house.

Paige shook her head. "We'd better get to a lower elevation before we get snowed in here." She didn't miss Tess's look of disappointment. She hugged her tightly and gave her a sisterly kiss. "Take care, sweetie."

Harry followed with a hug and kiss for Tess as well. "We've a magazine to get to the printer, but we'll call you soon. Take care." Then he was out the door behind Paige. Tess held the door, noting theirs was the last car remaining out front, besides her rental.

She closed the door, locked it, and went to the kitchen to check the back door. She locked it, and looked around the kitchen. Rose and Paige had cleaned so well that Tess couldn't tell anyone had eaten a meal here today. Leftovers were packed neatly into the refrigerator, so Tess wouldn't have to cook tonight. A stack of firewood was freshly heaped on the floor near the fireplace.

Tess was about to turn off the kitchen light when she heard a thump at the back door. She hesitated to open it, but when she peered out the window there was Joe, with another load of wood, his breath steaming. She let him in and he deposited the wood on top of the stack already there. Tess remembered now that he'd parked out back when he arrived with Rose and the food and beverages.

"With a storm coming you can't afford to be without enough fuel in the house. The wall heaters aren't enough when the cold sets in." He brushed his hands and sleeves off, watching Tess. "I overheard you say you're staying on through New Years." He smiled mildly. "I'm glad to hear it."

"I can't thank you and Rose enough, for all your help today, and for the words you shared at the service."

"Will you be all right here tonight?" He seemed genuinely concerned, which touched her.

She paused, wanting more than anything to ask him to stay a little longer, but she feared allowing herself to learn to want his company any more than she already did--and she only now realized how much she did.

"I'll be fine."

"Storms don't frighten you?"

"Storms don't frighten me. I find them exciting. Honestly, I'll be fine." She lifted her chin and met his gaze.

"I'm sure you will." He buttoned his overcoat. "I'd better get home before this gets any worse. It's blowing up already out there. Remember to lock up." With a curt goodnight he went out the back door.

Tess moved through the rest of the house, closing up, drawing curtains against drafts. She stopped at the upstairs hall window and listened to the wind in the trees behind the house, their branches rattling against the roof. She looked down when a bright light made her realize that Joe was still there, seated in his truck behind the house, starting his engine and turning on his headlights. He let the engine warm up for a minute before he eased the truck around to the driveway.

On her return to the foyer downstairs, to turn on the front porch light, Tess noticed an envelope on the hall table addressed to her. Her name was typed on the outside. If not for the shape of the envelope she would've expected it to be another sympathy card, but this was a long business envelope, like the blank one she'd found in the mailbox yesterday. She opened it and unfolded the single sheet of paper it contained.

It was another blackmail letter, a printed copy, identical to the first.

Tess stared at the page, wanting to laugh, to believe it was someone's idea of a sick joke, a joke they felt they needed to repeat because no one had laughed the first time. Yet she knew this was serious. She remembered the gossips she'd overhead hours earlier, and felt sure everyone in town was aware she'd been blamed for that accident years ago, although she'd never been charged. If word of who she was in the publishing world got out, along with the story that she'd left her little brother at home alone that night, what would it do to her business? What would it do to Paige and Harry, and all their employees?

Tess carried this second blackmail letter over to the sofa and sat down to think. She got up, after a few minutes, and went to the study for paper and a pen. She sat at her father's desk and made a list of everyone she remembered being here this afternoon. One of those people had left this letter. She realized after a few minutes that she didn't know all their names. She would need to ask Rose and Joe to tell her who some of the guests had been.

Meanwhile the wind howled outside, and the snow didn't fall, but drove against the windows.

Eventually Tess went upstairs and got ready for bed. Again she felt exhausted, and she wondered if this was depression, seeping into her bones, cold, slogging and hopeless. That would be natural, a part of the grieving process. She shrugged. This was more than grief, it was grief combined with blackmail, grief combined with the possibility of murder. She'd never felt so alone in her life.

She resolved to call Paige and Harry tomorrow, give them a heads up about this letter, and offer to dissolve her part in the partnership right now. Somehow she'd make things right. Tonight it would be enough to sleep through this storm.

She wondered again if her mother's journals would have an answer to this blackmail question. Would she find information in them about her accident? Something Tess herself didn't remember? Something her parents learned after Tess went to live in Seattle with her aunt?

Then her thoughts turned to Dr. Lloyd's words, to his mention of her father planning to call her. Tess searched through her mother's journals again for the current year's book. Of course it was futile. Nothing had changed. It still wasn't there.

Chapter 7

Friday morning revealed a world layered with a new accumulation of white. Snow had fallen all night long, the storm easing up toward dawn. Now the sky was clearing, and the sun reflected off snow, blinding Tess when she first opened the west-facing front door. Snow had drifted onto the porch and steps, so she had to take a broom out with her and sweep it out of her path. She shoveled the walkway and driveway. Then she watched the snow removal service's red truck labor up the road with a snowplow on the front of it. She was heading back into the house when she again noticed the smooth, virgin blanket of snow on the front yard.

Tess couldn't help herself, it filled her with the same urge she'd felt as a girl when faced with new snow. She ran over and plopped down in the cold stuff, and moved her arms and legs to make a snow angel. She got up and repeated her action twice more, once on each side of the asphalt walkway. Three snow angels soon graced the yard, beckoning her back to the house, where she changed clothes and ate a hot breakfast.

When it came time to plan her day, all Tess could think about were the blackmail letters. She took out her list of the people who'd come to the house yesterday and looked it over. She needed more information before she broke the news to Paige and Harry. She dialed the number for the Latimers, but got their answering machine. Frustrated, Tess drove into town. She planned to visit Joe at his veterinary clinic and request his help with her list.

On the drive, she slowed as she approached the curve in the road where her family's van had gone over. There was a pullout across the road from the spot, on the inside of the curve. On an impulse, Tess parked there, got out, and crossed over to the outside curve, which edged a steep drop off into a ravine filled with rocks, brush and trees, under the fresh covering of new snow. She had to watch her footing, because snow had been piled at the side of the road by the snowplow, and she couldn't tell for sure where the shoulder ended and the drop off began, beneath the dirty ridges of cleared snow. She kept her distance, and peered over into the ravine where the van had rolled into a stand of trees, way down there near a creek bed. It was a long way down. She'd been told the van had rolled a few times before it hit the trees and rocks below.

She wondered if her father's missing cane was somewhere down there, buried under snow. If it was wood, it could have been thrown from the wreckage and landed among tree branches where it had been virtually invisible to the sheriff's people.

Tess found herself shivering as she visualized the crash scene. She scrambled back into the car, cranked up the heater, and drove on into town.

Cedar Creek's main street was a fantasy scene this morning. Everything was frosted with new snow, and Tess drove through with a feeling of being inside the pages of a fairy tale. She'd joked, while living in L.A