And for the millionth time she thought Because there is no God to end it.

There had been a time when that thought would have left her feeling upset and adrift. The belief system that had been the platform of her life had suddenly dropped out from under her. Now she just felt sad. Life had been so much easier when she was naïve to the cruel realities of the world. With experience came wisdom—also known as disillusionment.

At least she had had nearly forty years of blissful ignorance. Leah hadn’t managed to even get out of childhood before the truth stripped the joy from her. Lauren wished she could have somehow spared her youngest from the experience. If she somehow could have put Leah into suspended animation that day before they realized Leslie was missing . . . Or if she could have erased any memory of her sister and the hell they had all been put through . . .

But Leah was a victim as much as Lauren was a victim because Leslie had been victimized.

She was so tired of it. Victim was not a word that she would ever have used to describe who she was. She would have said that she didn’t have it in her to be a victim, and yet she was—a truth made all the more bitter considering her reasons for coming to Oak Knoll.

How had he found her? How had he known to come to this house?

How dare he?

The anger that rose up through her was enough to choke on.

It was five after four in the morning. The world was still and dark. The wind had died. The universe seemed to be holding its breath so as not to wake the sleeping inhabitants of Earth.

The shock and fear that had grabbed hold of her earlier in the night had faded as well. A strange calm fell through Lauren now.

She sat quietly, sipping at her drink, thinking nothing would come of Detective Mendez’s good intentions. This was just another verse in a poem of futility, like a nightmare that returned again and again but with different players.

Mendez would try to be helpful, but nothing would come of it. She would become angry and frustrated. Her fury would scorch the earth of Oak Knoll like Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea.

Perhaps this was purgatory, or a living model of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.

Perhaps the time had finally come to take a different path.