Sunday, September 21, 2014

Hidden in the Stars by Robin Caroll

Hidden in the Stars
Abingdon Press (September 16, 2014)
by
Robin Caroll




Chapter 1


Beep. Beep. Beep.

What on earth was beeping so loudly? And annoyingly.

Sophia Montgomery blinked. Brightness burst through the slit she’d managed to force open. She squeezed her eyes shut tight again and sucked in air.

A strange stench curled her nostrils. It was almost rancid . . . disinfectant mingled with sweat. That made no sense . . .

There had been two men, banging at the door. Barging in. Knives. Big knives. Grabbing her by the hair and throwing her to the floor. She hit her head against the leg of the chair. The coppery-metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

Sophia tried again to open her eyes. W-what? she mouthed, but not a sound escaped. Burning shards closed around her throat as she tried to swallow against a gravelly resistance. Dear God, what’s happening?

“Shh. Don’t try to talk,” a woman’s crackly voice soothed. “The doctor will be here in a moment.”

Doctor? Sophia struggled to sit, but every muscle in her body resisted, a sure sign she’d overdone at practice. Gentle hands eased her still. A cool, damp cloth stroked her forehead.

“You thought you could get away with it?” one of the men had yelled. His breath hissed against her face. Her neck.

She blinked again, this time prepared for the light. Or so she thought. The brilliance burned. She moaned and snapped her eyes closed.

“I’m sorry. Let me turn down the light,” the woman whispered in her guttural toned voice.

Click. The sound echoed in Sophia’s head.

“There. This should be better.”

Sophia tried squinting a third time. While still brighter than the darkness she’d been comfortable in, the light wasn’t so searing. She barely made out the figure of a woman at her side, hunching over her bed.

Wait a minute. Something wasn’t right. Where was she? God?

“Well, good morning,” a man’s cheerful voice boomed.

Still squinting, Sophia shifted her gaze to the voice’s origin. The fuzzy silhouette moved close to her.

“I’m Dr. Rhoads. Nod if you can hear me okay.”

A doctor? What was going on? She nodded and forced her eyes open wider as pain ricocheted around her shoulders.

“Good.” Cold hands touched her forehead. She must have reacted in some way because he chuckled softly and said, “Sorry. Everyone says I have the coldest hands in Arkansas.”

Arkansas . . . but she lived in Texas. Plano. Close to the gym where she trained.

Training! Lord, what is going on?

The doctor shined a light in her eyes, searing them with its intensity. She snapped them closed and turned her head, moving out of his hold.

“I know it’s uncomfortable, but I had to check your pupils.”

Sophia forced her eyes open, willing them to focus on the man. She could now see his white coat. Dark hair. Big smile—too big. She opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but razors sliced inside her throat.

“Don’t try to talk. You sustained serious damage to your throat, including your vocal chords. We’re treating the injury, and you’ve responded well, but you won’t be able to talk until the swelling of your larynx subsides considerably.”

She closed her eyes as scattered images raced through her mind. Pinned to the floor. The bulky man straddling her, putting all his weight on her abdomen. His hands around her neck. Squeezing. Not enough oxygen! Can’t breathe! Tighter. Tighter.

She sucked in air and reached for her neck, but her arms wouldn’t lift her hands. Red, hot arrows of pain shot from her shoulders down to her wrists. Oh, God! She opened her eyes wide and looked into her lap. Everything was in clear focus.

Sophia reclined in a hospital bed, the standard white sheet pulled up to her chest. Her arms sat on top of the sheet. Her hands were wrapped in gauze, big as footballs. Her right arm was in a cast up above her elbow.

The skinny man holding a knife to Mamochka’s throat. Yelling. Demanding. The bulky one stepping on her right hand with his heavy, big boot. More pressure. The pain! Stop! Harder. Bones snapped. Please, please stop. The sobbing. Hers. Mamochka’s.

The pounding of her heart echoed in her head, shoving aside the beeping sound getting faster and louder. No, Lord. Please!

“Calm down, Ms. Montgomery. Your blood pressure is too high. I don’t want to have to give you anything right now,” the doctor said.

“You must relax now, MIlaya Moyna,” the older lady whispered as she patted Sophia’s head with the cool cloth again. There was something so familiar about her . . . but . . . not.

“There you go,” Dr. Rhoads said. “Breathe slowly. In through your nose and out through your mouth.”

Even breathing hurt, but Sophia controlled her panic. Years of practicing self-control had made her a master despite her fears. Her hands. How would she compete?

“Well done, Ms. Montgomery. I’ll go over your injuries with you in detail, if you’re ready.” Dr. Rhoads stared at her, a single brow raised.

She nodded, sending slicing pain shooting down her spine. Sophia set her jaw and refused to wince.

“Okay.” The doctor reviewed her chart. “You have sustained a laryngeal fracture with some mucosal tearing. We’re keeping you on voice rest to minimize edema, hematoma formation, and subcutaneous emphysema. We will continue the use of humidified air to reduce crust formation and transient ciliary dysfunction. We’ll also continue treatment by use of systemic corticosteroids to retard inflammation, swelling, and fibrosis and to help prevent granulation tissue formation.”

Tears threatened, but Sophia blinked them back and concentrated on what the doctor said.

“Since you sustained compound fractures of the larynx, we have you on systemic antibiotics to reduce the high risk of local infection and perichondritis, which may delay healing and promote airway stenosis. You’re also taking anti-reflux medications to reduce granulation tissue formation and tracheal stenosis.” Dr. Rhoads smiled. “Of course, this means you can’t eat or drink anything for a few more days. Understand so far?”

Sophia swallowed instinctively, and regretted it immediately. She didn’t understand everything the good doctor said, but she got enough to know her throat was damaged enough that she couldn’t talk or eat. Still, it didn’t sound permanent, so it was something.

He leaned forward, letting his weight add strength to his hands closed around her throat. No! She couldn’t see past his face anymore. His scowl. His eyes. They weren’t filled with rage, but just . . . empty.

“Sophia? Do you understand?” Dr. Rhoads asked.

She ignored the scattered images and gave a little nod. Her head began to throb in cadence with her heartbeat.

“Good. Moving on . . . you’ve sustained serious, traumatic crush injuries to both of your hands. In surgery, we were able to remove all the tissue we couldn’t salvage. We were able to repair most of the damaged blood vessels to reestablish circulation in your fingers. All the broken bones were realigned and stabilized with temporary pins called K-wires and screws. We repaired the damaged tendons and ligaments. Post-op, you’re doing great. You should be able to begin physical therapy as soon as the bandages are off.” Again, the doctor smiled.

“Tell us.” He stepped down on her hand. Pain. Bones cracked. Sophia cried out. “Stop!” Mamochka screamed. “Tell us.” He put all his weight on his foot. Bounced. Sophia screamed and tried to roll over to protect her hand. He slung her backward and plopped onto her hips, straddling her.

The image disappeared. She stared at her hands lying gauzed and lifeless in her lap. Everything within her wanted to scream . . . cry . . . hit something. Why was this doctor smiling? Didn’t he get it? Her hands were her life! If she couldn’t sustain her weight on her hands, her career was over. Dear Lord, no. Anything but this.

“О'кей MIlaya Moyna,” the woman whispered.

No, it wasn’t okay. And who was this woman to be calling Sophia my sweet? Especially in Russian.

Despite the excruciating pain the movement caused, she twisted her head to meet the woman’s stare. Sophia was certain she’d never met the woman before, but there was something . . . her eyes. They were just like Mamochka’s.

Could it be? The woman looked to be about the right age.

“Now,” Dr. Rhoads interrupted her thoughts, “about your pelvis girdle fracture.”

Her pelvis was busted, too? He straddled her. Mamochka yelled out. Sophia kicked, trying to buck him off of her. She had to help her mother! He pinned her with his weight. Pain shot through her midsection and hips as if she’d missed a dismount and fell off the balance beam. “You aren’t going anywhere. Ever,” he whispered as he leaned over her and wrapped his hands around her neck.

Unaware of her agony, the doctor continued. “There’s only one breaking point along the pelvic ring, with limited disruption to the pelvic bone and no internal or external bleeding. This means your pelvis is still secure despite the injury, and we can expect a prognosis of a quick, successful and complete recovery.”

Great. So her pelvis would have a complete recovery. She could live without being able to talk. But would her hands totally recover? If so, when?

She closed her eyes, refusing the tears access. All her life, coaches and instructors had drilled into her head crying was not an option. Tears were to be saved for her pillow.

So many before her had sustained injuries and left the circuit, only to never return. Was it her fate? Abba!

“The rest of your injuries are minor cuts and bruises that should heal without incident. Several areas required stitches. You have a laceration at the back of your head where you were hit from behind—”

“Doctor,” a man’s deep voice cut off Dr. Rhoads.

Even though things were a little fuzzy to Sophia right now, even she didn’t miss the frown etched into the doctor’s brow.

Dr. Rhoads smiled at her. “Ms. Montgomery, you were very lucky. With the extent of your injuries, you could have been in a coma.”

The other man cleared his throat.

The doctor frowned as he looked at her. “Now, if you feel up to it, there’s a detective here who would like to ask you a few questions. Only if you feel up to it. Do you?”

A detective? She swallowed, then regretted it, but still nodded.

The doctor nodded and stepped back. “Keep it brief, please, Detective. She needs her rest.” Dr. Rhoads patted the bed beside her feet. “I’ll be back later to check on you.”

“Ms. Montgomery, I’m Detective Frazier.” There was the deep voice again, authoritative, but with a hint of danger.

Sophia stared at him as he stepped into her line of vision, and took a full inventory of her first impression of him. Hard to gauge his height since she was in the bed, but he stood taller than Dr. Rhoads. His black hair held a wave, even though it was short. He had broad shoulders and muscular arms apparent under the short-sleeve, button-down Oxford shirt he wore. He was probably no more than twenty-eight or so, at least in her estimation based upon the weariness in his face covered in stubble. His chin was cut and his cheekbones well defined. His nose had been broken at least once. But it was his eyes drawing her attention. They were so dark they appeared like a bar of dark chocolate.

Then again, maybe it was just her distorted vision.





Detective Julian Frazier had been silently assessing Sophia Montgomery from the corner of her hospital room since she’d been brought here following her surgery. Over the last two and a half hours, he’d gotten over the shock of her appearance. He’d been a cop for enough years that the damage a victim sustained shouldn’t have affected him, but he’d seen the pictures of Sophia Montgomery before the assault and to see her now . . .

He pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and approached her bedside. “I have a few questions. Do you know who you are?”

She nodded, and unless he was imagining things, she actually rolled her eyes.

Attitude. Good. She’d need it. According to the doctors, she had a long, painful road to recovery in front of her. “Do you know where you are?”

She stared at him from her swollen, cut, and bruised face. There wasn’t one square inch of her face and neck without some visible sign of her assault. Even her lips were cut and cracked as she tried to lick them. With her head resting on the pillow, she gave a nod.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked, flexing and unflexing his fingers against the coolness of the hospital room. It might be June outside, but the nurses had set the thermostat low enough it felt like winter in the critical care ward.

She blinked.

Then again.

He met her stare with his own. Something about how small she was and the damage inflicted on her, yet she’d survived, nearly undid him. He’d overheard the nurses talking. They’d seen more people struck by vehicles with less damage than Sophia had endured. Whoever had attacked Sophia Montgomery and her mother had been especially vicious. Julian couldn’t stand it. Whoever was responsible would face justice.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked her again.

She tilted her head to the side. With her injuries, it had to hurt.

“You’re unsure?”

She nodded.

Great. If she didn’t remember anything, it would make his job so much more difficult. As it was, he was at a loss how he’d proceed at this point. With her extensive injuries, she couldn’t speak and couldn’t write, so how he was supposed to get her statement was more than a little confusing. He’d definitely have to think outside the box on this one.

She mouthed something. He couldn’t tell what. She mouthed it again. It was one syllable, but he couldn’t make it out. She mouthed it a third time.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.” He snapped his fingers. “Let me get someone to help, okay?”

She nodded, but not before she shot him a look of pure frustration.

He could relate. Ever since he’d been called to the crime scene at almost eleven last night, frustration had been his constant companion. Frustrated this had happened. Frustrated no one had gotten there in time. Frustrated there were no immediate suspects.

Julian turned and stepped out of the hospital room, grabbing his cell phone from his hip. He quickly called his partner.

“She awake?” Brody Alexander asked without greeting. His partner was not one to waste time or breath with small talk when there was work to be done.

“Yep. Listen, we need to get Charlie up here ASAP to read her lips, so I can take her statement.” Julian stared over his shoulder at Sophia’s small and broken form lying so helplessly in the hospital bed. “And send some uniforms. I want someone posted by her room twenty-four-seven until we know what’s going on.”

“Got it.” Brody hung up, business concluded. He might have an abrupt personality that had earned his reputation as an unappealing partner, but he suited Julian. After what happened with Eli, he wanted someone like Brody Alexander: all business.

He needed someone like Brody.

Julian put his cell back in its belt clip and strode back into the hospital room and observed. It had taken the police some time to locate Alena Borin as Sophia’s next of kin, only finding the connection through Sophia’s mother’s maiden name. The older woman fussed over Sophia, but Sophia didn’t look like she recognized her grandmother. Maybe she had suffered some sort of brain injury in the attack. It would make his job much more difficult.

But not impossible. Because Julian refused to let whoever was behind this go unpunished. Someone would pay for this violence. He owed it to Sophia and her mother. The image of Sophia at the crime scene was one he would never forget. It would probably haunt him forever.

He returned to Sophia’s bedside. Her eyes were guarded as she watched Alena Borin’s every move: straightening the covers, gently bathing Sophia’s forehead with the damp cloth. Sophia shifted her focus to collide with his gaze.

The uncertainty in her stare tugged at something buried deep within him. Something he didn’t want to pull out and inspect. He cleared his throat until Ms. Borin gave him her attention.

“I’ve called in a lip reader to take Ms. Montgomery’s statement,” he said to her privately, in a low enough voice Sophia couldn’t hear him. “This will take some time, and I’m sorry, but you can’t be present. Why don’t you go have some lunch?”

The older lady scowled at him, shaking her head.

“Ma’am, you don’t have a choice. This is official police business.”

She glanced down at Sophia, then back to him. “I will not leave her alone.”

“She won’t be alone. I’ll be here the entire time, and there will be officers outside her door within the hour.”

A long moment passed. She didn’t say anything, nor did she move.

“Ma’am . . .”

Ms. Borin snatched up her purse. She smiled at Sophia. “I will be back in less than an hour, MIlaya Moyna.” After patting the foot of the bed and throwing Julian another glare, she marched out of the hospital room.

Julian pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat. Sophia stared at him from behind her swollen face. He could read the wariness in her eyes as if it were a blazing neon sign.

“Do you know who that woman was?” He made a deliberate effort to speak just above a whisper level. The nurses had mentioned she’d probably have a horrible headache when she woke.

She shook her head—no, tilted it.

“You don’t recognize her?”

She tilted her head again.

“You aren’t sure who she is?”

A nod.

Julian stopped. Maybe he should wait for the lip reader, so he didn’t misunderstand. She wasn’t sure if she recognized and knew who Alena Borin was.

Sophia made a sound, but the pain it caused her marched across her face. She mouthed a single word, and this time, Julian understood exactly. “Who is she?” he asked.

She nodded.

He sat up straighter and looked her dead in the eye. “She’s Alena Borin, your grandmother.”




Sunday, September 7, 2014

Thief of Glory by Sigmund Brouwer

Thief of Glory
WaterBrook Press (August 19, 2014)
by
Sigmund Brouwer





Chapter 1


A banyan tree begins when its seeds germinate in the crevices of a host tree. It sends to the ground tendrils that become prop roots with enough room for children to crawl beneath, prop roots that grow into thick, woody trunks and make it look like the tree is standing above the ground. The roots, given time, look no different than the tree it has begun to strangle. Eventually, when the original support tree dies and rots, the banyan develops a hollow central core.

In a kampong—village—on the island of Java, in the then-called Dutch East Indies, stood such a banyan tree almost two hundred years old. On foggy evenings, even adults avoided passing by its ghostly silhouette, but on the morning of my tenth birthday, sunlight filtered through a sticky haze after a monsoon, giving everything a glow of tranquil beauty. There, a marble game beneath the branches was an event as seemingly inconsequential as a banyan seed taking root in the bark of an unsuspecting tree, but the tendrils of the consequences became a journey that has taken me some three score and ten years to complete.

It was market day, and as a special privilege to me, Mother had left my younger brother and twin sisters in the care of our servants. In the early morning, before the tropical heat could slow our progress, she and I journeyed on back of the white horse she was so proud of, past the manicured grounds of our handsome home and along the tributary where my siblings and I often played. Farther down, the small river emptied into the busy port of Semarang. While it was not a school day, my father—the headmaster—and my older half brothers were supervising the maintenance of the building where all the blond-haired children experienced the exclusive Dutch education system.

As we passed, Indonesian peasants bowed and smiled at us. Ahead, shimmers of heat rose from the uneven cobblestones that formed the village square. Vibrant hues of Javanese batik fabrics, with their localized patterns of flowers and animals and folklore as familiar to me as my marbles, peeked from market stalls. I breathed in the smell of cinnamon and cardamom and curry powders mixed with the scents of fried foods and ripe mangoes and lychees.

I was a tiny king that morning, continuously shaking off my mother’s attempts to grasp my hand. She had already purchased spices from the old man at one of the Chinese stalls. He had risen beyond his status as a singkeh, an impoverished immigrant laborer from the southern provinces of China, this elevation signaled by his right thumbnail, which was at least two inches long and fit in a curving, encasing sheath with elaborate painted decorations. He kept it prominently displayed with his hands resting in his lap, a clear message that he held a privileged position and did not need to work with his hands. I’d long stopped being fascinated by this and was impatient to be moving, just as I’d long stopped being fascinated by his plump wife in a colorful long dress as she flicked the beads on her abacus to calculate prices with infallible accuracy.

I pulled away to help an older Dutch woman who was bartering with an Indonesian baker. She had not noticed that bank notes had fallen from her purse. I retrieved them for her but was in no mood for effusive thanks, partly because I thought it ridiculous to thank me for not stealing, but mainly because I knew what the other boys my age were doing at that moment. I needed to be on my way. With a quick “Dag, mevrouw”— Good day, madam—I bolted toward the banyan, giving no heed to my mother’s command to return.

For there, with potential loot placed in a wide chalked circle, were fresh victims. I might not have been allowed to keep the marbles I won from my younger siblings, but these Dutch boys were fair game. I slowed to an amble of pretended casualness as I neared, whistling and looking properly sharp in white shorts and a white linen shirt that had been hand pressed by Indonesian servants. I put on a show of indifference that I’d perfected and that served me well my whole life. Then I stopped when I saw her, all my apparent apathy instantly vanquished.

Laura.

As an old man, I can attest to the power of love at first sight. I can attest that the memory of a moment can endure—and haunt—for a lifetime. There are so many other moments slipping away from me, but this one remains.

Laura.

What is rarely, if ever, mentioned by poets is that hatred can have the same power, for that was the same moment that I first saw him. The impact of that memory has never waned either. This, too, remains as layers of my life slip away like peeling skin.

Georgie.

I had no foreshadowing, of course, that the last few steps toward the shade beneath those glossy leaves would eventually send me into the holding cell of a
Washington, DC police station where, at age eighty-one, I faced the lawyer—also my daughter and only child—who refused to secure my release until I promised to tell her the events of my journey there.

All these years later, across from her in that holding cell, I knew my daughter demanded this because she craved to make sense of a lifetime in the cold shade of my hollowness, for the span of decades since that marble game had withered me, the tendrils of my vanities and deceptions and self-deceptions long grown into strangling prop roots. Even so, as I agreed to my daughter’s terms, I maintained my emotional distance and made no mention that I intended to have this story delivered to her after my death.

Such, too, is the power of shame.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Driftwood Tides by Gina Holmes


Driftwood Tides
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (September 1, 2014)
by
Gina Holmes




Chapter 1



The lab had either made a big mistake and none of the results could be trusted, or else her world was about to be turned upside down. It was this Libby Slater thought of as she rushed from the stationery store, bag in hand.

The day had started out pleasant enough. The weather was beautiful, she’d met Rob for lunch, and not one of her clients had dropped a shoe box of receipts on her desk, assuming she’d sort it all out. But then, in the mid-dle of her ordinary day, she’d logged on to her online health account to check the results from Rob’s and her premarital genetic counseling workup and gotten the shock of a lifetime.

The results should put her mind at ease, the doctor’s note read, but they did just the opposite. Although her fiancé was a carrier for cystic fibrosis, the disease that had taken the life of his younger sister, Libby was not. This was good news, because apparently it took two to tango. Other than that, all the results were a very positive negative. She would have been relieved if it weren’t for her blood type, listed innocently along with the rest of the results: A positive, which wasn’t positive at all. Both of her parents had O blood types, and two Os couldn’t produce an A child. It had to be an error. Had to.

The screech of sirens ripped Libby from her thoughts. Hunching, she slapped her free hand over her ear and waited for the pulsating red lights to pass. Two city blocks later, her ears were still ringing.

A bus with a giant cell phone carrier ad scrolled across it, dotted by finger-smudged windows, screeched to a halt in front of an empty bench. Pneumatic doors hissed open and passengers hurried off so fast they were almost a blur. After the last passenger filed past, she stepped off the curb to cross the street.

She assumed the approaching cab would stop, or at least not accelerate, but she assumed wrong. Jumping back onto the concrete, she felt a whoosh of exhaust part her long hair. In lieu of an apology, the driver screamed as he flew by. Although she couldn’t decipher what he said, the vulgar hand gesture he thrust out the window gave her enough of a clue.

Soon her heartbeat returned to normal, and traffic broke just long enough for her to make a run for it. Hav-ing crossed the one-lane freeway of death, life and limb intact, she stepped again onto the relative safety of the sidewalk.

As she trudged forward, she could practically taste the tiny particles of soot and smog falling on her like mist, and couldn’t help but wonder if breathing them in was making the inside of her lungs look like a coal miner’s.

At last she reached her mother’s brownstone. It was unfathomable that Caroline had paid almost a million dollars for what basically amounted to an old row home, even if it was located on the so-called Park Avenue of Casings.

Although the city was located in North Carolina, Cas-ings was about as un-Southern as a city below the Mason-Dixon Line could be. This muggier, less-sophisticated parody of New York was a place she’d vowed to escape the second she graduated from college. Of course, that was before she fell in love with a man who just happened to be as dedicated to his job here as he was to her. She tightened her grip on the bag of wedding invitations she carried and couldn’t help but smile at the thought of spending forever with the love of her life. But first they needed to survive this fiasco her mother called a wedding.

She climbed the brick stairs and peered over her shoulder, checking to be sure a mugger hadn’t sneaked up behind her before unlocking the door. Inside, the foyer stood dark except for a rectangle of sunlight streaming down from the stained-glass transit window above. The flip of a switch flooded the hall in artificial light.

“Elizabeth?” Caroline’s shrill voice echoed from the dining room. “You’re late.”

Libby rolled her eyes. “I had to pick up the extra invi-tations,” she said, not quite loud enough for her mother to hear. Though, really, it wouldn’t matter if she yelled it; the only person her mother listened to was herself.

Her Danskos thumped against the marble floor as she made her way through the corridor and into the dining room. Caroline sat at the long table with a stack of invi-tations tall enough to invite the entire state. The fact that she’d called Libby at work to tell her to pick up yet more invitations didn’t bode well for Libby’s vision of a quaint ceremony.

“It’s positively barbaric to be doing this ourselves,” Caroline said. “They have companies that take care of these things.”

It was all Libby could do not to delve right into an in-terrogation about her questionable blood type. It was probably a mistake, but just in case, she didn’t want to put Caroline on the defensive and get stonewalled before she got to the bottom of it.

She sighed as she hung her purse on the back of the chair. “So you’ve said. And as I’ve said, I want to know who’s coming to my wedding, and I want to be the one who invites them.” She eyed the invitations dubiously.

“You don’t trust me?” Caroline asked in a sarcastic tone, but her expression was without humor. They both already knew the answer. “We could at least have hired a calligrapher to make them look pretty. Handwriting was never your best subject.”

Libby gave her mother a dull look as she took a seat across from her. She hadn’t realized how sore her feet were until she was finally off them. She kicked off her clogs and stretched her socked feet. “If I left it up to you and the Internet, my only guests would be the who’s who of Casings.” None of whom would be in the who’s who of her small circle of friends.

A bottle of opened champagne sat in the middle of the table along with two crystal flutes. Caroline slid her ten-nis bracelet back on her wrist, then reached for the bottle and poured herself a glass. When she picked up the sec-ond, Libby shook her head. “Nice try.”

Caroline huffed and flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder, revealing a dangling diamond earring—most likely another bauble from one of her long list of admir-ers. “I just thought it would be nice to celebrate a little while we work.”

“No,” Libby said. “You thought it would be nice to get me a little tipsy so you could sneak more of your debutante friends onto the guest list.”

Caroline brought the champagne to her lips and sipped. “You certainly do think the world of me.” She set her glass down and picked up a fountain pen. “Please tell me you didn’t park that piece of junk out front.”

Libby felt her cheeks flush in anger, but certainly not in surprise, at her mother’s superficiality. “No, Caroline. I took a cab to the stationery store, then walked three blocks and almost got run over, all so the snobs you call neighbors wouldn’t know your daughter drives a Jeep.”

It was Caroline’s turn to roll her eyes. “A Jeep from this century would be fine. Honestly, Elizabeth, you make enough money to afford something less dilapi-dated. I saw an Audi that you would look so—”

“Stop. Just stop,” she said, swallowing the indigna-tion. She’d already fought with her mother three times this week, and what had it accomplished? Nothing but two sleepless nights and a headache. Caroline was al-ways going to be Caroline, and she was paying for the wedding, after all. Something Libby had told Rob they never should have agreed to for this very reason. Be-sides, there were bigger fish to fry tonight.

She reached into her purse, bypassing the test results, and pulled out her guest list. Holding her breath, she set the list of names down on the table and slid it across to her mother like a lawyer offering up a settlement. “I went through this last night, and—”

“I have my own list,” Caroline said coolly as she glanced at her. “Don’t look so glum. I took your requests into consideration.”

Requests? Libby thought. What a joke. It was going to be the biggest day of her life, and she had no more say in who was going to be there than the caterer did. “Is Rob at least on your roll?”

Unfazed, Caroline ran a manicured nail slowly down Libby’s list, pausing every so often to consider a name. “Don’t be smart with me, young lady. It’s my hard-earned money paying for every plate.”

Libby looked away, disgusted. If she had the cere-mony she wanted, she wouldn’t need Caroline’s money to pay for it. Caroline wanted the wedding she never had, and through her only child, she was finally going to get it. It wasn’t fair; but then, as Rob always said, life wasn’t.

“I don’t recognize half these people,” Caroline said as her finger slid to the bottom of the page.

An all-too-familiar pain began to throb behind Libby’s left eye. The sooner this wedding was over, the better. “Of course you don’t, because they’re my friends, not yours.”

Shaking her head, Caroline sighed. “Fine, we’ll add them to the master list, but just so you know, this brings the guest count to three hundred.”

“Three hundred?” Libby heard herself shriek. “I said I wanted a small wedding.”

“It was going to be smallish,” Caroline said, “but here you’ve gone and brought me another fifty names. Whose fault is that?”

Covering her face, she took a deep breath, willing herself not to cry. Two more months of this. That was it. She could do this, she told herself. For Rob, she could do most anything.

“Fine,” Caroline said after a few seconds of uncom-fortable silence. “I’ll just cut out the DA’s office, but if you get into any legal trouble, you’re on your own.”

Libby looked over her fingertips. “Why would I—? Never mind.” She reached into the stationery bag and pulled out a sheet of the fancy return labels they’d cho-sen for the invitations. At least she could get started sticking those on. Any progress was better than none. Her phone rang, and she grabbed her purse off the chair, riffling her hand blindly through it. By the time her fin-gers touched the phone, the ringing stopped. As ex-pected, her call log showed Rob’s number.

“What’s he want now?” Caroline asked, sounding more perturbed than usual.

Finally, the perfect segue. Keeping her tone as neutral as she could, Libby decided this was as good a time as any. “We had our genetic counseling, and the results were posted today. I was supposed to tell him what they—”

“Genetic counseling?” Caroline raised a barely visible eyebrow.

“You know Rob’s sister, Heather, died from cystic fi-brosis.”

Caroline downed the rest of her champagne and reached for the bottle. “Rob had a sister?”

She couldn’t tell by her mother’s blank expression if she was just trying to get her goat or if she really was that oblivious. “That disease is hereditary. He wanted to make sure we weren’t both carriers for it or anything else we could pass on to our future children.”

Caroline finished filling her glass and set the bottle down with a clank. “And?”

“Rob’s a carrier; I’m not.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“But I did find out my blood type—A positive.” She held her breath as she waited for her mother’s reaction to the bombshell she’d just dropped, but Caroline had al-ready lost interest and started writing names on the front of the invitation envelopes.

“That’s good to know,” she mumbled.

Directing her nervous energy toward something pro-ductive, Libby began working like an assembly line, carefully affixing address labels to the top left corners of the envelopes. “Yes, it is.” She finished her stack, slid it to the right, and grabbed another. “Did you and George get genetic testing before you had me?”

Caroline shook her head as she worked. “They didn’t really do that when I was . . .” Her voice trailed off. She never could bring herself to say the word pregnant, as if the thought of Libby inside her was too repulsive. Unless, of course, Libby hadn’t been inside her after all.

“Your blood type is O positive like Rob’s, isn’t it?” Libby asked as nonchalantly as she could.

Caroline finally finished scrolling out the first invite. At the speed she was working, it was shaping up to be an excruciatingly long night. “That’s all we have in com-mon.” Caroline could barely stand Libby’s fiancé, but Libby tried not to take it personally. After George had abandoned them, Caroline pretty much hated all men equally. “How do you know my blood type, anyway?”

“I pay attention.”

Caroline squinted at her.

“Wallet,” Libby said, sliding another small stack of envelopes over to the finished pile. “You gave blood that one time, and you still carry the donor card.” So every-one can see how fabulously altruistic you are, she wanted to add. She carefully peeled another label off the plastic sheet and pressed it onto an envelope. “George’s dog tags say he’s O positive too.” For reasons she didn’t know, she still kept her father’s dog tags tucked away in her jewelry box. The military must have made a mistake. Lucky for him, he never got injured enough to need blood.

“I don’t know what his dog tags say. I thought I threw those out with the rest of his junk.” Caroline checked the first name off her list with a satisfied smile. “I just know his blood type is the same as mine because he donated for my hysterectomy.”

That was it, then; the geneticist had gotten her results wrong. They’d just spent nearly a thousand dollars for results they couldn’t trust. Rob was going to be ticked.

Caroline set her pen down and furrowed her brow in Libby’s direction. “Why are you interested in everyone’s blood type?”

Libby curled her toes. “Two O parents can’t have an A child. It’s impossible.”

Caroline’s face turned as white as the tips of her French manicure.

It was in that moment that Libby’s life flashed before her eyes . . . and she knew.

The baby books with no pictures of Caroline preg-nant. Her mother’s claim that she’d lost not only her baby bracelet, but also the umbilical clamp and crib card. Was this why she hadn’t minded when, as a preteen, Libby had defiantly taken to calling her by her first name? “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all she could manage around the boulder in her throat.

Caroline put on a plastic smile. “Tell you what?” she asked, her voice cracking under the facade. “Don’t be silly. The lab made an error. That’s all.” She was usually such a good liar.

“Fine,” Libby said coldly. “I’ll get another test tomor-row.”

Caroline’s expression hardened. “Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?”

Before Libby could answer, Caroline left the dining room in stony silence.

So that was it? She didn’t even have the decency to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Typical. Libby walked to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and downed it like a shot, trying to decide what would give her the fastest escape—calling Rob to pick her up or a cab.

Before she could make up her mind, Caroline re-turned, her spiked heels clicking sharply against the wood floor. She closed her eyes and handed Libby a stack of papers.

Glancing down at the raised seal on the top document, Libby tried to process the unfamiliar names typed neatly on the lines.

With her arms crossed, Caroline tapped her nails against her tanned arms. “Say something . . . please.”

When Libby’s gaze fell on the birth date—her birth date—her mouth went dry again.

After parting her thin, red lips, Caroline closed them without saying a word. It may have been the first time Libby had ever seen her mother speechless.

Caroline strode to the kitchen window and pulled open the roman shade. Sunlight flooded the room, casting her face in harsh light, which gave up every fine line. “With you getting married soon, I guess it was about time any-way. I thought about telling you when you turned eight-een, but . . .” Her voice began to crack. “But I chickened out. I was just so afraid you’d find your real parents and you’d . . .” She said more, but all Libby could focus on was the adoption papers she held.

The smell of Caroline’s perfume wafted by, and sud-denly Libby felt as though she might vomit. The hand that held the papers dropped to her side, while her other hand covered her mouth. This was real. This was really happening.

“I actually thought you should grow up knowing, but your father . . .” Caroline looked out the window, sud-denly interested in the Pathfinder pulling into the neighbor’s driveway.

Libby’s father had left them when she was four. It seemed like only yesterday he had sat her on his lap and, with tears in his eyes, told her to be a good girl and look after Caroline. She thought he was just going to the store and couldn’t figure out why he was being so melodra-matic about it. She’d tried to fill the void with friends, sports, and of course Rob. But not a day went by that she didn’t feel the absence of a daddy in her life. No wonder he’d had no qualms about abandoning his daughter . . . because she hadn’t really been his daughter.

“I’m adopted,” she said, more as a statement than a question. The brownstone had always been stuffy, but at that moment the air felt as heavy as the news being dropped.

So it was true after all. She shouldn’t be surprised. She and Caroline couldn’t have been more different. She and all of her family, really. In a gene pool full of girly girls and country-club men, she had always been the black sheep, preferring cutoff shorts and catching frogs to debutante parties and Gucci bags. They had never got-ten along. And now it made sense why. They weren’t cut from the same cloth.

What would have brought relief in childhood felt heavy and cold now. Caroline was far from a storybook mother, but she was all Libby had ever known. Feeling unsteady, she leaned against the counter. She thought she was on the verge of tears until she heard herself laugh.

Caroline whipped around. “There’s nothing amusing about this, Elizabeth.”

She knew the laughter was inappropriate, especially since she wasn’t feeling happy in the least—confused maybe, scared, angry . . . and sad. Very, very sad.

Her laughter slowly died as she searched Caroline’s eyes for any sign this all might be some sort of terrible joke. But Caroline didn’t joke.

Her gaze darted back to the adoption papers—her adoption papers—and her biological mother’s name: Adele Davison. The place where her father’s name should have been was conspicuously blank.

“Who’s my father?”

Caroline licked her lips nervously and slowly shook her head.

The child’s name—her name—had been Grace. And she had been born in Wilmington, North Carolina, not Casings as she had always believed. Her head swam as she tried to process the fact that nothing was what she thought it was. Not even herself.