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Praise for

Diane Chamberlain

‘Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read.’

—Closer

‘An excellent read’

—The Sun

‘This complex tale will stick with you forever.’

—Now

‘A hugely addictive twist in the tale makes this a sizzling sofa read … a deeply compelling and moving new novel.’

—Heat

‘This exquisite novel about love and friendship is written like a thriller … you won’t want to put it down.’

—Bella

‘A bittersweet story about regret and hope’

—Publishers Weekly

‘A brilliantly told thriller’

—Woman

‘An engaging and absorbing story that’ll have you racing through pages to finish’

—People’s Friend

‘This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.’

—Inside Soap

‘A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises’

—Star

‘Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’

—Daily Mail

‘Chamberlain skillfully … plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart.’

—Publishers Weekly

‘So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’

—Candis

‘The plot is intriguing and haunting revelations will have you glued to the very end.’

—Peterborough Evening Telegraph

‘I was drawn in from the first page and simply could not put it down until the last. I think I have found a new favourite author.’

—Daily Echo

‘[A] gripping summer read that’s full of twists and turns

—5 stars’

—Woman’s Own

‘The compelling story of three friends who are forced to question what it is to be a friend, mother and a sister.’

—Sunday World

‘A gripping novel’

—The Lady (online)

‘Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.’

—Literary Times

‘A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult for, as this builds, one does indeed wonder if all will come right in the end.’

—lovereading.co.uk

‘I couldn’t put it down.’

—Bookseller

Also by Diane Chamberlain

Kiss River

Keeper of the Light

The Lost Daughter

The Bay at Midnight

Before the Storm

Secrets She Left Behind

The Lies We Told

Breaking the Silence

The Midwife’s Confession

Brass Ring

The Shadow Wife

The Good Father

Her Mother’s
Shadow
Diane Chamberlain
GETS TO THE HEART OF THE STORY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

In memory of Nan Chamberlain Lopresti

Acknowledgements

So many people helped me with my research as I wrote Her Mother’s Shadow. For their various contributions, I would like to thank Rodney Cash, Kimberly Certa, Steve Cook, Paul Holland and my friends at ASA, who are always ready with an answer to my questions, no matter how esoteric those questions may be.

I am grateful to fellow authors Emilie Richards and Patricia McLinn for their brainstorming skills. The inspiration to make Bobby Asher a scrimshaw artist came from my favourite scrimshander, Cathy Guss, whose stunning craftsmanship I discovered a number of years ago.

Special thanks goes once again to Sharon Van Epps, for sharing with me her experiences as she attempts to adopt a child from India. As I write this, Sharon is still engaged in that struggle and it’s my fervent hope that her story has a happy ending.

Betsy Reitz earns a mention in these acknowledgements for winning the essay contest on my website. Betsy’s love of the Keeper of the Light trilogy was evident in her essay. It’s readers like Betsy who make writing worthwhile.

As always, I’d like to thank my agent, Ginger Barber, and my editor, Amy Moore-Benson. I am so lucky to be able to work with both of them.

I would love to hear your thoughts about Her Mother’s Shadow. Please visit my website at www.dianechamberlain.com.

HER MOTHER’S SHADOW

The girl in the kitchen

has her mother’s eyes

the color of new jeans

and old sapphires.

She has her mother’s hair,

scarlet and sienna.

Her mother’s lips

and bird feather hands.

But …

When she turns her head

just so,

The indigo eyes are

flecked with amber.

The hair,

streaked with gold.

She is not her mother

at all.

—Paul Macelli

Prologue

Christmas 1990

THERE WAS CHEER IN THE HOUSE IN THE HEART of Manteo. From the outside, the large two-story frame building that served as the battered women’s shelter was nondescript. There were no Christmas lights hanging from the eaves, not even a wreath on the door, as if the people who ran the house were afraid to draw attention to it, and Lacey supposed they were. Cruel men had put the women and children here, the sort of men she had no experience with and found hard to imagine. But she could see the fear in the women’s faces and knew those men existed. More than that, she did not really want to know.

Although there was no sign of the season outside the house, inside was another story. Fresh garlands decorated the railing that led up to the bedrooms, and branches of holly were piled on top of the huge old mantel. The scent of pine was so strong it had seared Lacey’s nostrils when she first walked inside. A huge tree stood in the corner of the living room, decorated with white lights and colored glass balls and topped by one of her mother’s stained glass angels. The tree was alive, and Lacey did not need to ask if that was her mother’s doing. Of course it was. Annie O’Neill always insisted on live trees. They had one at home, and Lacey knew both trees would be taken inland, away from the sandy soil of the Outer Banks, to be planted once the Christmas season was over.

She had not wanted to come to the battered women’s shelter tonight. She’d wanted to stay home and listen to her new CDs and try on her new jeans with the rivets down the sides. She’d wanted to talk to her best friend, Jessica, on the phone to compare the gifts they’d received and decide what movie they would see the following afternoon. But her mother had insisted.

“You have so much,” she’d said to Lacey the week before. “You will have already opened your presents and had Christmas dinner with me and Daddy and Clay. These women and their children will have nothing. Less than nothing. They’ll have fear for Christmas, Lacey.” Her mother spoke with great drama, the way she always did. “Their families will be torn apart,” she continued. “Serving them dinner, singing a few carols with them—that’s the least we can do, don’t you think?”

Now, standing behind the long tables and dishing out Christmas dinner to the women and children, Lacey was glad she had come. At thirteen, she was certainly the youngest of the volunteers, and she felt proud of herself, proud of her kindness and generosity. She was just like her mother, whom all the other volunteers turned to for direction. Annie O’Neill was the most important person in the room. The tree in the corner probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for her mother. The buffet tables would probably hold half as much food. Maybe the entire shelter would not be here if it weren’t for Annie. Lacey wasn’t sure about that, but it seemed a real possibility to her.

She smiled at the women as she spooned green beans onto their plates. Six women, some of them still bearing the bruises that had sent them to the shelter, and more than a dozen children filed past the tables, balancing real china plates. Her mother had insisted that all the volunteers bring their good china for the women and their children to use. “They can’t eat Christmas dinner off paper plates,” Lacey had heard her say to one of the volunteers a few weeks before. At the time, she thought her mother was just being silly, but now she could see how much the beautiful plates and the cloth napkins and the glittery lights from the tree meant to these women. They needed every speck of beauty and warmth they could get right now.

Outside, a cold rain beat against the house’s wood siding and thrummed steadily against the windows. It had rained all day, a cold and icy rain, and she and her mother had skidded a couple of times as they drove to Manteo.

“Remember how it snowed on Christmas last year?” her mother had said as Lacey complained about the rain. “Let’s just pretend this is snow.”

Her mother was an excellent pretender. She could make any situation fun by twisting it around so that it was better than it really was. Lacey was too old for that sort of pretending, but her mother could always charm her into just about anything. So, they’d talked about how beautiful the snow-covered scenery was as they passed it, how the housetops were thick with white batting and how the whitecaps on the ocean to their left were really an icy concoction of snow and froth. The dunes at Jockey’s Ridge were barely visible through the rain, but her mother said they looked like smooth white mountains rising up from the earth. They pretended the rain falling against the windshield of the car was really snowflakes. Lacey had to put her fingers in her ears to block out the pounding of the rain in order to really imagine that, but then she could see it—the wipers collecting the snow and brushing it from the car. It fluttered past the passenger side window like puffs of white feathers.

“The first Noel …” Her mother began to sing now as she used salad tongs to set a small pile of greens on the plate of a young girl, and the other volunteers joined in the carol. It took Lacey a bashful minute or two to join in herself, and the beaten-looking women standing in line took even longer, but soon nearly everyone was singing. The smiles in the room, some of them self-conscious and timid, others overflowing with gratitude, caused Lacey to blink back tears that had filled her eyes so quickly she had not been prepared for them.

A tall woman smiled at Lacey from across the table, nudging her son to hold his plate out for some green beans. The woman was singing “Oh Christmas Tree” along with the group, but her doe-eyed son was silent, his lips pressed so tightly together that it looked as though no song would ever again emerge from between them. He was shorter than Lacey but probably around her age, and she smiled at him as she spooned the beans onto his plate. He looked at her briefly, but then his gaze was caught by something behind her, and his mouth suddenly popped open in surprise. Or maybe, she wondered later, in fear. His mother had stopped singing, too. She dropped the good china plate filled with turkey and mashed potatoes, and it clattered to the floor as she stared past the volunteers toward the door of the room. Lacey was afraid to turn around to see what had put such fear in the woman’s eyes. One by one, though, the women and children and volunteers did turn, and the singing stopped. By the time Lacey could force herself to look toward the door, the only sound remaining in the room was the beating of the rain on the windows.

A huge man stood in the doorway of the room. He was not fat, but his bulk seemed to fill every inch of the doorway from jamb to jamb. His big green peacoat was sopping wet, his brown hair was plastered to his forehead and his eyes were glassy beneath heavy brows. Held between his two pale, thick, shivering hands was a gun.

No one screamed, as if the screams had already been beaten out of these women. But there were whispered gasps—”Oh, my God” and “Who is he?”—as the women quietly grabbed their children and pulled them beneath the tables or into the hallway. Lacey felt frozen in place, the spoonful of green beans suspended in the air. The tall woman who’d dropped her plate seemed paralyzed as well. The doe-eyed boy at her side said, “Daddy,” and made a move toward the man, but the woman caught his shoulder and held him fast, her knuckles white against the navy blue of his sweatshirt.

Lacey’s mother suddenly took the spoon from her hands and gave her a sharp shove. “Get into the hall,” she said. Lacey started to back away from the table toward the hallway, but when she saw that her mother wasn’t moving with her, she grabbed the sleeve of her blouse.

“You come, too,” she said, trying to match the calmness in her mother’s voice but failing miserably. Her mother caught her hand and freed it from her sleeve.

“Go!” she said, sharply now, and Lacey backed slowly toward the hallway, unable to move any faster or to take her eyes off the man.

In the hallway, a woman put an arm around her, pulling her close. Lacey could still see part of the room from where she stood. Her mother, the tall woman and her son remained near the tables, staring toward the doorway, which was out of Lacey’s line of sight. Behind her, she could hear a woman’s voice speaking with a quiet urgency into the phone. “Come quickly,” she was saying. “He has a gun.”

The man came into view as he moved forward into the room. The woman grabbed the doe-eyed boy, pulling him behind her.

“Zachary,” the woman said. She was trying to sound calm, Lacey thought, but there was a quiver in her voice. “Zachary. I’m sorry we left. Don’t hurt us. Please.”

“Whore!” the man yelled at his wife. His arms were stretched out in front of him and the gun bobbed and jerked in his trembling hands. “Slut!”

Lacey’s mother moved in front of the woman and her child, facing the man, her arms out at her sides as though she could protect them more efficiently that way.

“Please put the gun away, sir,” she said. “It’s Christmas.” She probably sounded very composed to everyone else in the room, but Lacey knew her well enough to hear the tremulous tone behind the words.

“Bitch!” the man said. He raised the gun quickly, squeezing his eyes together as he pulled back on the trigger. The blast was loud, splitting apart the hushed silence in the room, and the women finally started to scream. Lacey’s eyes were on her mother, who looked simply surprised, her deep blue eyes wide, her mouth open as if she’d been about to speak. The tiniest fleck of red appeared in the white fabric of her blouse, just over her left breast. Then she fell to the floor, slowly, as if she were melting.

The man fell to the floor, too. He dropped the gun and lowered his face to his hands, sobbing. One of the volunteers ran into the room from the hallway. She grabbed the gun from the floor and held it on him, but the big man no longer looked like a threat, just weak and tired and wet.

Lacey broke free from the woman holding her and ran to her mother, dropping to her knees next to her. Her mother’s eyes were closed. She was unconscious, but not dead. Surely not dead. The bullet must have only nicked her, since the amount of blood on her blouse was no more than the prick of a thorn would produce on a fingertip.

“Mom!” Lacey tried to wake her up. “Mom!” She turned her head toward the man, who still sat crumpled up on the floor. “Why did you do that?” she yelled, but he didn’t lift his head to answer.

Women crowded around her and her mother. One of them knelt next to Lacey, holding her mother’s wrist in her fingers.

“She’s alive,” the woman said.

“Of course she’s alive,” Lacey snapped, angry that the woman had implied anything else was possible. The sound of sirens mixed with the pounding of the rain. “Her body just needs rest from being so scared.” She could hear her mother’s voice in her own; that was just the sort of thing Annie O’Neill would say.

The woman the man had meant to kill was huddled in the corner, her arms around her son. Lacey could hear her speaking, saying over and over again into the pine-scented air of the room, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” and another woman was telling her, “It’s not your fault, dear. You were right to come here to get away from him.” But it was her fault. If she and her son hadn’t come here, this crazy man wouldn’t have run in and shot her mother.

The room suddenly filled with men and women wearing uniforms. They blurred in front of Lacey’s eyes, and their voices were loud and barking. Someone was trying to drag her away from her mother, but she remained on the floor, unwilling to be budged more than a few feet. She watched as a man tore open her mother’s blouse and cut her bra, exposing her left breast for all the world to see. There was a dimple in that breast. Just a trace of blood and a small dimple, and that gave Lacey hope. She’d had far worse injuries falling off her bike.

She stood up to be able to see better, and the woman who had tried to pull her away wrapped her arms around her from behind, crossing them over her chest and shoulders, as though afraid she might try to run to her mother’s side again. That was exactly what she wanted to do, but she felt immobilized by shock as much as by the heavy arms across her chest. She watched as the people in uniform lifted her mother onto a stretcher and wheeled her from the room. The man was already gone, and she realized the police had taken him away and she hadn’t even noticed.

Lacey tugged at the woman’s arms. “I want to go with her,” she said.

“I’ll drive you,” the woman said. “We can follow the ambulance. You don’t want to be in there with her.”

“Yes, I do!” Lacey said, but the woman held her fast.

Giving in, she let the woman lead her out the front door of the house, and she turned to watch them load her mother into the ambulance. Something cool touched her nose and her cheeks and her lips, and she turned her face toward the dark sky. Only then did she realize it was snowing.

1

June 2003

THE CHAIN AT THE END OF THE GRAVEL LANE hung loose from the post, and Lacey was grateful that Clay had remembered she’d gone out for dinner with Tom and had left the entrance open for them.

“Will you put the chain up after you drop me off?” she asked Tom.

“No problem.” He drove between the posts and onto the forest-flanked lane, driving too quickly over the bumps and ruts.

Lacey pressed her palm against the dashboard for balance. Although it was only dusk, it was already dark along the tree-shrouded gravel lane leading to the Kiss River light station. “You’d better slow down,” she said. “I nearly ran over an opossum on this road last night.”

Obediently, Tom lifted his foot from the gas pedal. “I’m glad you don’t live out here alone,” he said in the paternal tone he occasionally used with her since learning he was her biological father a decade ago. “I’d be worried about you all the time.”

“Well,” Lacey sighed. “I won’t be living out here too much longer.” The Coast Guard had finally decided to turn the nearly restored keeper’s house into a museum, a decision she had hoped would never come.

“You’re upset about it, huh?”

“Oh, a bit.” She was frankly scared, although of what, she couldn’t say. The isolation the keeper’s house had offered her had been more than welcome, it had been necessary, especially this last difficult year. “They’ve restored every inch of it except the living room and the sunroom.” She shared a studio in Kill Devil Hills with Tom, but she’d turned the sunroom of the keeper’s house into a small studio, as well, so she could work on her stained glass when she was at home. “They’ll restore the sunroom after I leave, and the living room will be turned into a little shop and information area.”

“When do they want you out?” he asked. They were nearing the end of the road. A bit of dusky daylight broke through the trees and she could clearly see the gray in Tom’s wiry blond ponytail and the glint of light from the small gold hoop in his ear.

“Some time after the first of the year,” she said.

“Where will you … holy shit.” Tom had driven from the gravel road into the parking lot, and the keeper’s house came into view in the evening light. The upper portions of nearly every window were aglow with her stained glass creations.

She followed his gaze to the house. “In the year and a half I’ve lived here, you haven’t seen the keeper’s house at night?” she asked.

Tom stopped the car in the middle of the lot and a smile came slowly to his lips. Shaking his head, he leaned over to pull Lacey toward him, wrapping her in the scent of tobacco as he kissed the top of her head. She had gotten him to stop drinking, but had failed at getting him to give up cigarettes.

“You’re your mother, Lace,” he said. “This is just the sort of thing she would do. Turn her home into a … I don’t know. Someplace magical.”

She felt defeated. She wanted to tell him that she was not her mother any longer, that she had worked hard this last year to rid herself of her mother’s persona. Apparently she had not succeeded. It was hard to succeed when you had no identity of your own to take the place of the one you were trying to discard.

She was surprised to see her father’s van parked in the lot next to Clay’s Jeep. “Dad is here,” she said. “Weird.”

“He doesn’t come to visit you much?” Tom asked, and she heard the competitive edge in his voice. Tom often displayed a quiet envy of Alec O’Neill for having had the honor of raising her.

“He’s smitten with Rani,” she said, not really answering the question. “He likes having a grandbaby.”

Tom laughed. “You have one hell of a complicated family, you know that?”

“I do, indeed.” Lacey unfastened her seat belt. The tight little nuclear family she’d grown up in had added and subtracted so many people that it sometimes seemed difficult to keep track of them all. To complicate her life even further, she worked with both her fathers, spending her mornings in the animal hospital run by the father who had raised her and her afternoons in the art studio with the father who had given her life.

“Is that a kennel?” Tom pointed toward the large fenced area near the edge of the woods. “Is Clay training dogs again?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “He’s been back at it a few months now.” With Gina and Rani in his life, her brother had undergone a metamorphosis. He was a devoted husband, and practically overnight, he’d developed parenting skills she had never expected to see in him. But it was the day she’d watched him roll chunks of wood and concrete into the forest—obstacles for the dogs he trained in search-and-rescue work—that she knew he was once again a man at peace with his world.

She realized that Tom had not moved his car from the center of the lot.

“Park your car and come in for a while,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, I’ll just head on home.”

“You know you’re welcome,” she said.

“I know that, sugar. But … I just never feel comfortable around Alec. Your dad.”

Lacey smiled. “I’m nearly twenty-six years old, Tom,” she said. “What happened between you and my mother is ancient history and you know my father got over it a long time ago.”

“Some other time,” Tom said.

“Okay.” She opened the car door and stepped out. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She waved as he turned the car around and drove back onto the gravel lane. Slipping off her sandals, she dangled them over her fingertips and started walking across the sand toward the house. The air was thick with salt, and the rhythmic pounding of the waves against the shore was nearly drowned out by the buzz of cicadas.

She often wondered if she should tell Tom the truth about her mother. It was clear that he thought he had been her only affair, as if he alone had been so irresistible that he could cause a woman as saintly as Annie O’Neill to stray. As far as Lacey knew, he did not date anyone, still so haunted by Annie’s ghost that he thought it impossible to find a woman who could take her place. Yet Lacey couldn’t bring herself to hurt him with the truth.

Inside the house, Clay’s black lab, Sasha, ran into the kitchen to greet her, and she dropped her sandals on the floor and bent down to scratch the dog behind his ears. The room smelled of Gina’s cooking—cardamom and turmeric, coconut and ginger. She could hear voices coming from the living room.

“Who’s here, Sash?” she said, as if she didn’t know. “Let’s go see.”

Sasha led the way through the kitchen to the living room, tail wagging, and Lacey stopped in the doorway of the room, not wanting to interrupt the scene in front of her. Gina was stretched out on the sofa, grinning, her arms folded behind her head as she watched Clay and Alec playing on the floor with Rani and her dolls. Clay was making the Indian Barbie, which was bedecked in a pink sari, walk across the rug toward the plastic dollhouse.

“Let’s go to Rani’s house!” he said in a high-pitched voice.

Alec was walking a brown-skinned baby doll—a big blob of a doll compared to the slender, shapely Barbie—around on the carpet. “No,” he said. “I want to go fishing!”

Rani looked alarmed, reaching for the baby doll. “No, no, no!” she said, her enormous black eyes wide in her caramel-colored face. “Everyone comes to my house.”

Lacey laughed. At nearly two and a half, Rani tried hard to control her world. She’d had so little opportunity to control it during her first two years that she was making up for lost time. The little girl looked up at the sound of Lacey’s laughter, then jumped up from the floor.

“Lacey!” she said, running toward her. “I love you!”

Lacey bent down to pick her up. She was a little peanut of a child. So tiny. So full of joy. And so, so wanted.

“Hi, baby,” Lacey said. “I love you, too.”

Gina had struggled to adopt Rani, and once Clay had fallen in love with Gina, he had joined that struggle with his whole heart. They’d spent from July to September in India the year before, fighting the system to get the court’s permission to adopt Rani. The little girl had desperately needed heart surgery, but so many obstacles stood in the way of the adoption that Gina had feared the toddler might die before she could bring her home. Once permission had been received, the three of them were quickly ushered out of the country, escaping before the foreign adoption antagonists could become involved. By that time, Rani was so weak from her heart condition that she could barely hold her head up, and Gina and Clay feared it might be too late to save her. Gina had already made contact with a surgeon in Seattle, so she flew there with Rani. The surgery was successful and the two of them remained in Seattle as Rani healed. Clay had moped around the keeper’s house, unable to think of anything other than the woman and baby he had fallen in love with. He and Gina talked for hours on the phone—for so long, in fact, that Lacey had insisted he get a separate phone line installed in the keeper’s house. In February, Gina and Rani traveled across the country to the Outer Banks. Gina and Clay were married the following day, and Rani, who had arrived shy and quiet and skinny as a twig, quickly blossomed into an insatiable chatterbox who fully recognized her role as the center of the universe. She was spoiled—if it was possible to spoil a child who had spent her first two years with little more than dirt and deprivation—and no one cared.

Lacey carried Rani over to the sofa and sat down next to Gina’s bare feet. She looked at her father, who still sat on the floor, holding the fat baby doll on his lap. “What are you doing here, Dad?” she asked.

Alec set the doll down on the rug and leaned back on his hands. “I wanted to talk to you and Clay,” he said. His serious tone was worrisome. She looked from her father to Clay, who shrugged, apparently as much in the dark as she was. The two men looked so much alike. Long, lanky bodies, translucent blue eyes. The only difference between them were the lines on her father’s face and the gray in his hair. Clay could look at Alec O’Neill and know exactly how he, himself, would look in another twenty years.

Gina sat up and reached for Rani. “I’ll put her to bed,” she said, as if knowing this conversation was meant for Alec and his children and not necessarily for her.

“Good night, sweetie.” Lacey planted a kiss on Rani’s cheek before handing her over to Gina.

Her father stood up as Gina left the room. “Let’s go outside,” he said.

She and Clay followed him through the kitchen, down the porch steps and onto the sand, which felt cool now beneath her feet. In another few weeks the sand would be warm, even at night, never losing the heat from the day. As if on automatic pilot, the three of them started walking side by side toward the remains of the lighthouse. Illuminated by the half-moon, the white lighthouse glowed, its broken rim a ragged line across the night sky. A breeze had kicked up in the short time she’d been inside the house, and Lacey’s long, wild hair blew across her face. If she’d known about the change in weather, she would have tied her hair back before stepping outside. People thought her hair was impossibly beautiful. She thought it was merely impossible.

“What’s up, Dad?” Clay asked, and Lacey wondered if he, too, was remembering the last time their father had asked to speak to both of them, the day he told them that their mother had been unfaithful to him throughout their marriage.

“I received a letter today,” their father said. “I forgot to bring it with me for you two to read it, but essentially it stated that a parole hearing is scheduled in September for Zachary Pointer.”

Clay stopped walking and turned to face his father. “Parole?” He sounded as astonished as she felt. “He’s only been in prison … what? … twelve years?”

“Apparently that’s long enough to get him out on parole.”

Lacey caught her hair in her hands and began to braid it down her back, concentrating hard on the task. She didn’t want to think about Zachary Pointer or relive that night, although the memory was always so near the surface that just the mention of his name would bring it back. Nothing could prevent her from remembering his face, the crazed look in his wild eyes. She could still hear his angry and ugly words toward his wife and see her mother’s noble—and successful—attempt to protect the woman.

Lacey had refused to attend the trial back then; in those days she could focus on nothing other than trying to survive the pain of losing her mother. But once and only once, before she realized what she was looking at and could turn away, she saw Pointer on television. The big man was leaving the courthouse with his lawyer. She’d been riveted by the sight of him. He wept when he spoke to the reporters. She’d been struck by the humanness in his face, by the unmistakable remorse and sorrow and shame she saw there. Now she pictured him in prison all this time, alone with the pain of that remorse. He’d been sick. Mentally ill. There’d been no doubt in her mind, but the jury had adamantly ruled against an insanity plea. Maybe she and Clay and their father should listen to the arguments for allowing him out on parole. Twelve years was a long time.

Stop it, she thought to herself. She had her mother’s genes, whether she wanted them or not; she was doomed to feel compassion for everyone.

“He should have been fried,” she said, the words so alien coming from her mouth that her brother and father both turned to stare at her.

“Well, we’re in agreement then,” her father said after a moment. “We’ll fight his parole. I’ll hire an attorney to find out what our next step should be.”

In her bedroom later that night, Lacey opened the windows wide and let the strong breeze whip the sheer seafoam-colored curtains into the room. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she could hear laughter coming from Clay and Gina’s room. She loved them both and loved that they were together, but the sound of their laughter increased the feeling that often crept over her in the evenings: loneliness. The feeling would only intensify once she was under the covers. That was the most alone time in the world, being in bed at night, in the dark, when all you had for company was your thoughts. The emptiness she felt was not new. It had started when her mother died. She’d lost her father then, too, as he became absorbed in grief. Once he started seeing Olivia, the woman he’d eventually married, he’d shifted that absorption to her. Although Olivia had been very kind to Lacey, she’d been more parent than friend, wrapped up in her own pregnancy and her growing love for Lacey’s father.

Sometime that year Lacey learned that she could fill the void with boys, however temporary that filling might be. She grew to be a woman, the boys grew to be men, but the void remained, yawning and insatiable, and she’d continued to fill it the only way she knew how. She hadn’t had all that many lovers. Not as many as Clay seemed to think when he chastised her about her promiscuity. But all the men she selected seemed to fit the same mold: they were “bad boys,” edgy and exciting, who wanted nothing more from her than a good night in bed. That was the one thing she’d excelled at. Maybe the only thing.

It had not been a conscious choice for Lacey to begin emulating her mother after her death. She’d tried only to be the sort of woman her mother would have wanted her to be, taking on volunteer activities, tutoring kids, reading to the seniors at the retirement home, donating blood as often as allowed. But the pull she’d felt to the wrong sort of men had always distressed her; surely her mother would have disapproved. Little did she know that she was emulating her mother in that regard, as well, and the revelation had shocked her. Annie O’Neill had been, quite simply, a fraud.

Since learning the truth about her mother and her adulterous behavior, Lacey had not had a single lover. Not a single date. She had avoided men altogether, distrustful of her own judgment. She felt like Tom, trying to fight his yearning for alcohol. Tom could not have a single drink or he would be right back where he started. It was the same with her and men.

She’d discarded other qualities she thought of as her mother’s, as well, pulling back from the many volunteer activities she used to do, turning inward. At Clay and Gina’s insistence, she’d seen a counselor, a woman who had been too damn insightful for Lacey’s comfort level. Lacey had presented herself to the woman as a sex addict. The label comforted her somehow, a neat little package that could be addressed through a twelve-step program, the way Tom’s alcoholism was being treated. But the counselor had not agreed. “Depression, yes,” she’d said. “Some self-esteem issues, yes. Sex addiction, no. You don’t fit the criteria.” She’d forced Lacey to look at pieces of her behavior she could not bear to examine. “You’re always doing things for other people,” the counselor had said, “as though you don’t feel you deserve anything for yourself. Focusing on others keeps you from feeling your own pain. You need to let yourself feel it, Lacey, before you can fix it.”

Well, she thought as she slipped beneath the covers on her bed, she was feeling it now.

2

FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE STAINED-GLASS STUDIO in Kill Devil Hills looked the same as when her mother had worked there. Set back just a few yards from Croatan Highway, its floor-to-ceiling windows were filled with stained-glass panels, but the trained eye would be able to detect a difference between then and now. Tom’s glasswork had changed over the years and was now more geometric, and there was less of it since he had gradually shifted his focus to photography over the years. Lacey’s stained-glass panels hung intermingled with his. She did not think her work was as beautiful as her mother’s had been; she had never mastered some of Annie’s special touches, which had seemed more of an infusion of feeling rather than the result of a specific technique. But Lacey’s work was popular, nonetheless. She had her own style, and her subject matter leaned more toward animals and florals than the stunning gowned women her mother had been known for. Lacey’s worktable was the same one her mother had used, placed next to Tom’s, as it had always been. She used her mother’s tools, as well. For a long time she used her mother’s green safety glasses, in spite of the fact that they were scratched and worn. A year ago, though, she’d tossed them away and bought her own glasses, amazed at how clearly she could suddenly see her work and the world.

Two women—tourists—were in the studio, oohing and aahing over the artwork. Although Tom was out to lunch, a third woman stood next to his worktable, seemingly mesmerized by the work in progress resting on the tabletop. From the corner of her eye, Lacey saw one of the women run her fingers lightly over a stained-glass egret hanging in the window. She would buy it, Lacey knew. She could read the people who came into the studio. Those who were simply spending idle time held their arms folded across their chests as they walked around the room, looking without really seeing. Others, like the woman touching the egret, could not tear themselves away from a particular piece. They studied it from every angle. They reached out and touched. They imagined how the colors would look in their homes. They’d drag a friend over to see the piece. The friend would nod. Sold.

Sure enough, the woman walked toward Lacey, a smile on her lips.

“I’d like to buy the egret,” she said. “Are you the artist?”

Lacey set down her glass cutter and slipped off her safety glasses. “That’s me,” she said, standing up. “I’m glad you’re taking that one. It’s one of my favorites.” This was not a lie, not a ploy to make the woman feel good about her purchase. She loved the shades of green she’d found for the tall grasses surrounding the giant bird. She would make another piece similar to this one now that it was sold, but it would not be exactly the same. She liked the idea that each of her stained-glass panels was one-of-a-kind.

The woman and her friends were just leaving the studio with the carefully wrapped glass egret when a man walked through the front door. His eyes lit briefly on Lacey, then on the large black-and-white photograph hanging on the movable wall in the center of the room. The picture had been there for as long as Lacey could remember.

The man stopped walking. Slipping his hands into his pockets, he stared at the photograph, then at Lacey again. “What a beautiful shot of you,” he said.

“That’s not me,” Lacey said. “That’s my mother.”

“Oh.” The man winced as though embarrassed by his mistake. “Quite a resemblance.”

“People always think it’s me,” she said. A year earlier she had wanted to take that picture down, but Tom was the photographer and she could never have explained to him why a photograph she had once loved had come to disturb her.

“Were you the photographer?” the man asked.

“No. I was only about ten when that was taken.”

“Oh. Of course.” He had wandered toward the display table near the window and carefully picked up one of her kaleidoscopes. “This is beautiful,” he said, holding the heavy stained-glass tube in his hands.

“Look through it,” she said.

He lifted the kaleidoscope to his left eye and faced the window. “It’s beautiful,” he said again, turning the disk, and she knew what he was seeing—triangles of design formed by intensely colored glass beads and slivers of mirror.

Lowering the kaleidoscope, he looked over at her. “Did you make this?”

“Uh-huh.”

He looked like one of those preppy sort of guys you might see modeling clothes in a catalogue. His brown hair was cut short and his eyes were dark, with lashes she could see from across the room. He was hardly dressed for the beach, in his khaki-colored chinos and plaid sport shirt. Although she supposed most women would find him drop-dead gorgeous, he was not her type and that relieved her, because he was obviously interested in her. She would not be tempted. She went for the earthier types—a little disheveled, imperfect features, knowing grins and the sort of eyes that cut right through to her soul. She was grateful that this guy did not come close to fitting that bill.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Lacey O’Neill.”

“And is all this stained glass yours?” He motioned toward the windows.

“Most of it. Some of it was made by Tom Nestor.” She nodded toward Tom’s empty worktable. “He’s at lunch. All the photographs are his.”

The man glanced again at the huge black-and-white print of her mother.

“Including that one,” she said.

He walked across the room to her worktable. He was still holding the kaleidoscope, and he shifted it to his left hand as he held his right out toward her.

“I’m Rick Tenley,” he said.

She shook his hand. “You just here for the week?” she asked, making conversation. Most tourists visited the Outer Banks for a week.

“Actually, no.” He lifted the kaleidoscope to his eye again and gently spun the wheel. “I’m staying in a buddy’s cottage while I’m working on a book. He’s in Europe, and I wanted the peace and quiet.”

She had to laugh. “Not much peace and quiet around here during the summer.”

He lowered the kaleidoscope with a smile. “Well, it’s away from my regular life,” he said. “None of the usual interruptions.”

She spotted Tom walking up the front steps of the studio, and Rick followed her gaze to the door.

“This is the other artist,” she said as Tom walked into the room. “Tom Nestor, this is Rick …”

“Tenley.” Rick turned to shake Tom’s hand. “You do beautiful work,” he said.

“Thanks.”

There was an awkward moment of silence between the three of them. Rick turned to face Lacey again, a question in his eyes she couldn’t read, and in that instant, she knew he wanted something more from her than stained glass.

“Rick is here for the summer, working on a novel,” she said, to break the silence.

“Not a novel,” Rick said. “It’s nonfiction. Dry stuff.”

“Ah.” Tom moved to the coffeepot at the side of the room. He poured himself a cup, then lifted it to his lips, looking at Rick over the rim. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Chapel Hill,” Rick said. “I teach at Duke.”

She couldn’t help but be impressed. He looked too young to teach in a high school, much less a university. “What do you teach?” she asked.

“Law.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s great.”

Tom sat down at his table, slipped on his safety glasses and returned to his work, probably figuring that the stilted conversation was not worth his time.

“How long have you lived here?” Rick asked her.

“My whole life.”

He held the kaleidoscope toward her. “I’d like to buy this,” he said.

“Good choice.” She wondered if he truly liked it or if he was simply trying to ingratiate himself with her. Taking the kaleidoscope from him, she began wrapping it in tissue paper. She could feel him appraising her.

Don’t look at me that way, she thought to herself. From the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at Tom, then back at her, and she guessed he was trying to figure out if they might be a couple. A very odd couple. A twentysomething-year-old woman and a fiftysomething-year-old ponytailed ex-hippie. Apparently, he came to the correct conclusion.

“Any chance you’d have dinner with me tonight?” he asked her. “You probably know all the best places to eat.”

“Oh, sorry, I can’t,” she answered quickly, prepared for the invitation. She thought of telling him she was going to the gym, which was the truth, but then he might ask if he could join her there. She slipped the wrapped kaleidoscope into a plastic bag and handed it to him. “I can recommend some places for you, though.”

“Are you … attached?” He caught himself. “Sorry. That was blunt. None of my business.”

She might have lied, but found she couldn’t with Tom listening in on the conversation.

“Not really,” she hedged. “I’m just … I’m busy tonight.”

“Okay.” He seemed to accept that. “Some other time, maybe.” He held the bag in the air like a salute. “Thanks for the kaleidoscope.”

“You’re welcome.”

She watched him leave the studio and walk across the small lot, where he got into a BMW the same color as his pants. She felt Tom’s gaze on her and knew he was smiling.

“He’ll be back,” Tom said, standing up to pour himself another cup of coffee. “A guy like that isn’t used to rejection.”

3

THE COTTAGE WAS TUCKED DEEP IN THE WOODS on the sound side of the island, but when Rick sat on the small, rotting deck, he could see patches of sun-soaked water between the branches of the loblolly pines. He could hold the kaleidoscope to his eye, aim it toward those silvery patches of water, and watch the beads of glass form designs as he twirled the wheel.

The cottage did not belong to a friend, as he had told Lacey O’Neill. He wasn’t even certain why he’d said that. Maybe he was simply practicing for the other lies he would have to tell. He was actually renting this place. It had two minuscule bedrooms, one more than he needed. No TV to distract him from his writing. No air-conditioning, but he could handle the heat. There was a phone line to connect him to e-mail and the Internet, and electricity for his computer. That was all he required. When he’d first entered the musty-smelling cottage four days earlier, he’d guessed it had not changed in the seventy years or so of its existence. He doubted a stick of furniture had been replaced. The tourists who usually came to the Outer Banks for the summer would disdain this sort of place. They wanted houses that slept ten, televisions in every room, hot tubs, pools, views. That’s why he’d been able to get the run-down cottage for a song. And it was perfect.

There was a short, overgrown path that ran from the deck through the woods to a sliver of sand at the edge of the sound. Each day since his arrival, he’d taken a beach chair down to the water’s edge and read or worked or just watched the boats from his nearly hidden vantage point. Last night, when it had been too hot to sleep, he took his flashlight and walked through the trees to the water’s edge, then swam out into the bay, the quiet of the night surrounding him. He planned to make that nighttime swim a habit. There were grasses or something underwater that had given him the creeps as he swam away from the shore, but once he’d gotten past the grasping tendrils, the cool, dark water had buoyed him up and felt good against his skin. He’d floated on his back, and thought about Lacey O’Neill. That red hair. The warmth in her blue eyes. She was a kind person; you could tell that before she even opened her mouth. He would have to try again with her. He was not the type to give up. You didn’t make it through law school by being a quitter.

He’d practiced law for only a year before going the teaching route. The university had overlooked his lack of experience for his excellent command of his material, and he’d been grateful. He preferred teaching law to practicing it. He’d never liked twisting the truth to fit the needs of his clients, and sometimes that had been not only necessary but expected. He could never tell a lie without remembering his father’s advice. He’d been only eight or nine when he’d overheard his father tell an elderly aunt that she looked nice in a new outfit when in reality, she’d looked like a pruny old woman trying to appear far younger than her years. In private, he’d asked his father if he really believed the old woman looked nice. “Sometimes a lie can be a gift,” his father had said. They were the words Rick tried to follow in his life. He would lie only when it was a gift.

He waited two days before returning to the stained glass studio, and he was glad to find Lacey there alone. The older man with the ponytail had made him uncomfortable. He’d seemed entirely too interested in his conversation with Lacey.

She was standing on a stepladder, hanging a stained-glass panel in the window, when he walked in.

“Hi, Lacey,” he said.

She glanced down at him, and he was pleased to see her smile.

“Hi, Rick,” she said, slipping the wire attached to the panel over a hook above the window.

“Do you need some help there?”

“I do this all the time,” she said as she descended the ladder. Once on the floor, she started to fold the ladder, but he took it from her hands.

“I don’t mean to badger you,” he said, folding it for her. “But you’ve been on my mind. Every time I look through that kaleidoscope, I think about you and your red hair. I’d really like to buy you dinner. Any night. You can choose.”

She sighed with a smile, and he knew he was making it difficult for her to offer a graceful rejection.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The truth is, I’m taking a break from dating these days.”

“Oh. Oh, I understand.” He had the feeling she was being honest, and that only increased his guilt. “I’ve done that a time or two myself. You’re getting over a bad relationship, I guess, huh?”

“Something like that.” She took the ladder from him and carried it over to the side of the studio, resting it against the wall.

“Well, how about if it’s not a date?” he asked. “We won’t dress up. I won’t even pick you up. We can meet someplace very public. And we won’t have any fun.”

That made her laugh. “All right,” she said, shaking her head. “You win.”

They made arrangements for the following night, and he left the studio far happier than when he’d arrived. In the parking lot, he got into his car and buckled his seat belt.

Yes, he thought as he turned the key in the ignition. I win.

4

FAYE COLLIER WALKED INTO THE HOSPITAL GYM and climbed onto her favorite elliptical trainer machine, the one positioned in the middle of the wall of windows, so she could have an uninterrupted view of the San Diego hills while she worked out. Judy and Leda, the two physical therapists in the chronic pain program and her workout buddies, took the elliptical trainers on either side of her. Faye wondered briefly how the three of them looked from the rear. She was Judy and Leda’s supervisor and had a master’s degree in nursing. She was blond, while they were both brunettes, yet she was twenty-five years older than either of them, and when it came to the backs of their thighs, she had no illusion that the physical therapists had her beat.

“What do you think of that new patient?” Judy pressed some buttons on the console and started moving her legs and arms in a long, smooth stride.

“The young guy with bone cancer?” Faye asked. “I think he needs—”

“Hi, Faye.” Jim Price was suddenly next to her, standing between her elliptical trainer and Leda’s. The sight of him put an instant smile on her face. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

“Hi,” she said, slowing her pace on the machine. “I didn’t know you worked out during lunch.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But I just finished the paper you gave me to read and wanted to compliment you on it. Excellent.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. She could feel perspiration, the result of the workout and a poorly timed hot flash, running down her throat and between her breasts. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

“I made a few comments on it,” Jim said. “I’ll show you tonight, okay?”

She was blushing now. Judy and Leda had grown very quiet. They both slowed their machines to soften the noise from the flywheels, and she knew they were hanging on every word of her conversation with Jim. “That’ll be great,” she said. In the light from the window, his eyes were a delicate bronze color. She had not noticed that about him before.

Jim motioned for her to lean down so he could whisper in her ear. “You look terrific,” he said, his breath soft against her skin.

She straightened up again, smiling, and mouthed the word “thanks.”

He left her side, and Faye was grateful that Judy and Leda had the presence of mind not to say anything until he was well out of hearing distance.

“So,” Judy asked. “When’s your next date with him?”

“Tonight,” she said. Even though she had slowed her pace significantly, the monitor showed that her heart rate was the highest it had been since she’d climbed on the machine. She could not believe she was allowing a man to have that sort of effect on her.

“You are so lucky,” Leda said.

Faye knew that many of the women—and some of the men—working in the hospital had a thing for Jim Price. Even the young women wanted him. A widower for two years, Jim had left his surgery practice to take care of his wife during the last few months of her life, and nearly everyone found that sort of love and sacrifice laudable. He had money, looks that were rare for a man of fifty-five, and he was kind to patients and staff alike. Faye had known him for years, since he often referred patients to the pain program she had created, but he had not truly seemed to notice her until a few weeks ago, when her book on treating chronic pain was published. Someone must have told him that she had also lost a spouse, and his interest in her had been doubly piqued. In their first real conversation, they’d discovered another commonality: they had both grown up in North Carolina. That fact seemed to seal their fate as two people who should get to know one another better.

“Is it getting serious?” Leda asked.

“Define serious.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“Of course not. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“But this will be the third date, right?” Judy asked.

“Yes. So?”

Leda laughed. “So you’d better shave your legs.”

“Why?” She felt dense. Old and dense. She was also a little breathless and couldn’t help but notice that Leda and Judy seemed to be having no problem talking as they pedaled the machines.

“The third date is when you do it,” Leda said.

Faye laughed. “Who says?”

“That’s the rule these days, Faye.”

Faye pulled her water bottle from the holder near the machine’s console and took a drink. “Well, he probably doesn’t know the rules any better than I do,” she said. As their superior, she knew she was crossing a boundary by talking to Judy and Leda about her love life, but this was one area in which they were more knowledgeable than she was and she wanted their input. “We talked about that, actually,” she said. “About dating being new to each of us.” She hoped no one was filling Jim in on “the third-date rule.”

“It really depends on what those first two dates were like, though.” Judy let go of the handlebars to pull the scrunchie from her dark hair and stick it in the pocket of her shorts. “Where did you go?”

“Starbucks the first time, and out to eat the second.” Their first date had been a casual, impromptu sort of thing. He’d bumped into her in the hospital corridor, told her he’d read her new book and been impressed by it, and asked her if she wanted to get a drink after work that evening. They’d ended up at a Starbucks instead of a bar, and the coffee date lasted four hours. He did most of the talking, and that had been fine with her. As a matter of fact, she’d asked him questions nonstop to keep him from asking any of her. She was not good at sharing her life story. He had opened up easily about his, though, telling her about his North Carolina childhood, his marriage, his two daughters. He was so open that she’d felt guilty for all she was keeping to herself. But he didn’t seem to mind. He wanted someone’s ear to bend, and she’d been very willing.

“Starbucks doesn’t really count.” Judy took a swig from her own water bottle.

“How long did you stay there?” Leda asked.

“Four hours.” They probably would have stayed longer, but Starbucks had been closing.

“Oh,” they both said at the same time, nodding.

“That counts, then,” Leda said. “That’s totally a first date.”

“And do you talk on the phone a lot?” Judy asked.

“Not really.” He had called her a couple of times and e-mailed a couple more, but nothing lengthy or deep.

“Because a lot of phone calls count as a date.”

Faye laughed. “You two …”

“I would say that four hours on the phone equals one date,” Judy said.

Faye rolled her eyes, nearly too winded to respond. Her thighs were burning.

“Where was the second date?” Leda asked.

“The Sky Room,” she managed to say. Again, he had been the talkative one. By the end of the evening, she realized he had not asked her a single question about herself other than what she wanted to eat. Another woman might have found that annoying. She’d welcomed it.

“Very nice.” Judy nodded her approval. “Did he pay for you?”

“Yes … but I wasn’t sure how to handle that,” she said. “Should I have paid for myself?”

“No. Always let the guy pay,” Leda said.

“I don’t agree,” Judy countered. “You should at least offer to pay your share. Or pick up the check the next time you go out. So, you can pay tonight.”

“I would never pay,” Leda said. “Especially not with someone as wealthy as Dr. Price.”

“Where is he taking you tonight?” Judy asked.

Faye hesitated. She really was saying far too much. She pushed the button to lower the machine’s resistance. “We’re going to a party,” she said. “Some friends of his.”

“And then back to your house for a nightcap?” Judy asked.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Oh, girl,” Leda laughed. “You are ending up in bed tonight. No doubt about it.”

“I barely know him.” Faye felt priggish. “Or rather, he barely knows me.”

“Well, what did you talk about all those hours in Starbucks and at the restaurant?” Leda asked.

“He did most of the talking.”

Leda groaned, shaking her head in disgust. “That is so typical. All they want is someone to listen to them.”

“You make sure he gets to know you before you sleep with him,” Judy said. “You know, you as a person.” She let go of the handlebar to take another swallow of water. “Otherwise you’ll feel used,” she continued. “He can say to himself, I slept with that hot-looking nurse and I didn’t even have to listen to her whine about her life.”

Faye was quiet, enjoying the fact that Judy had called her hot-looking. She hoped she was not being patronized.

“How long has it been for you?” Leda asked.

“Hey!” Faye said with a shake of her head. “I’m your supervisor, remember?”

“This conversation is off the record,” Leda said conspiratorially. “Okay? You need help.”

She let out her breath, knowing she was going to tell them. She did need help. “My husband was my first and only,” she admitted.

“Oh, my God.” Judy stopped her machine altogether. “And he die … passed away, what? Ten years ago?”

Faye had to smile at the euphemism. They worked in a hospital, for heaven’s sake, and Judy never used the term “passed away.” But somehow, everyone had learned to treat Faye with kid gloves when it came to the subject of her late husband.

“Nearly thirteen years,” she said.

“Wow, Faye,” Leda said. “It must feel like being a virgin all over again.”

She grew quiet. That was exactly how she felt, awkward and scared by the thought of taking off her clothes in front of a man, by the uncertainty of what to do, what would be expected of her. No one would call her fat—at least she hoped not—but she had grown bulky the way women often did at middle age, despite working out and watching her diet. She had little waistline left, her thighs were well padded. When she lay on her side in bed, she was aware of the force of gravity on her belly and breasts and could hardly imagine a man wrapping his arm around her in that position. Yet she had been imagining it lately. She’d been wondering what it would be like to lie in bed with Jim Price.

Judy reached out to touch her arm in sympathy. “It will be fine. He’s the type who’ll use protection and make sure you’re … you know, happy.”

“He wouldn’t need to use protection,” she said. “He hasn’t had anyone since his wife. And I’m menopausal.”

“Oh, my God.” Leda laughed. “You’d better take a tube of K-Y Jelly from the supply room.”