The Gazebo. Kimberly Cates

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      CHAPTER 1

      THE SMALL WHITE HOUSE at the end of Linden Lane didn’t look like the kind of place where secrets lived. But no one in the river town of Whitewater, Illinois, knew better than Deirdre McDaniel that appearances could be deceiving.

      The lawn was manicured with military precision. No dandelion had dared invade from behind enemy lines—the yard of the neighbor, whose lackadaisical attitude toward weed control had been the bane of Deirdre’s father’s existence.

      She wasn’t sure which would have hurt worse—seeing her childhood home down at the heels, the way vacant properties often were, or witnessing her older brother’s valiant attempt to keep the place ready for their father’s inspection when the hard truth was Captain Martin McDaniel was never coming home.

      Deirdre shifted the white van into park and killed the engine. Catching the inside of her full lower lip between her teeth, a nervous tick no one else could see, she stepped out of the car, her grip tightening on the keys in her hand.

      Breezes tugged chin-length wisps of unruly mahogany hair about a face too sharply drawn, with its pointed chin and high cheekbones. Eyes so intensely blue they seemed a breath away from catching fire stared at the red-painted front door. She wished there was a key somewhere among the cluster in her hand she could use to lock away her memories, but it was too late. They flooded through her, the past far more vivid than the glorious late-September day.

      She could remember crushing wrinkles into her mother’s crisp cotton Easter dress as she gave Emmaline McDaniel a chocolate-bunny-smeared hug. She could smell the wood shavings on her father’s callused hands and hear herself wheedling her big brother, Cade, into letting her join the “boys only” club that had the coolest tree fort in the neighborhood.

      She could see Spot, the ragged coal-black mutt she’d rescued, racing down the lane howling, the neighbor cat’s claws dug into his back, triumphant glee on its feline face. Deirdre’s father with his military bearing and loathing of weakness glowering in disgust.

      If that dog was a marine we would’ve shot it by now.

      But СКАЧАТЬ