That made Emma laugh. Clark women were never afraid of sex.

Her mother kissed her forehead, her lips cool and soft. Then she stretched back in her bed and said, “Now, go on. Your father will be home soon.”

The next day Emma told Sydney all sorts of false and scary things about how it hurt, and she told her all the wrong ways to do it. She never pressed Sydney into giving her details after it happened, but the satisfied look on Hunter John’s face the first time he and Emma had sex had been all she needed to know.

Sydney left town after Hunter John broke up with her at graduation. She’d been devastated to know that school was just a bubble, that she and Hunter John couldn’t be together in real life, that the friends she’d made couldn’t be her friends after they all graduated. They had to step out into Bascom society and do what their parents expected of them, become their family names. And Sydney was, in the end, just a Waverley. She’d been so hurt and angry. No one realized that she hadn’t known the rules. She’d been in love with Hunter John. She thought it would be forever.

Emma would have felt sorry for her if it hadn’t been obvious that Hunter John was hurting just as much. It took so much effort that summer to get him to come around. Even after they had sex and he’d been blown away, he still talked of leaving for college, sometimes even saying that Sydney had the right idea by leaving. He didn’t need this town.

So Emma did the only thing she thought she could.

She stopped taking the pill without telling Hunter John, and she got pregnant.

Hunter John stayed home and married her, and he never complained. They even decided, together this time, that they should have a second child a few years later. He worked for his father, then took over the family manufactured-home construction plants when his father retired. When his parents moved to Florida, Emma and Hunter John moved into his family’s mansion. Everything seemed perfect, but she was never really sure where Hunter John’s heart was, and that always bothered her.

Which brings us to the worst day in Emma Clark’s life.

That Friday night, Emma still didn’t realize something big was about to happen, even though all the clues were there. Her hair wouldn’t curl. Then a pimple popped up on her chin. Then the white dress she’d planned to wear to the black-and-white hospital-fund-raiser ball mysteriously developed a stain on it that the housekeeper couldn’t get out, so Emma had to settle for a black dress. It was a stunning dress—all her dresses were—but it wasn’t what she wanted, what she had planned on, and she felt uncomfortable in it.

When she and Hunter John arrived at the ball, everything seemed fine. Perfect, in fact. The hospital ball was always held at Harold Manor, a Civil War-era home on the national historic registry and the place for social gatherings. She’d been there countless times. It was a wonderful, fantasylike setting, like something out of time. Men wore suits so starched they couldn’t bend at the waist, and women had handshakes as soft as tea cakes. Clark women were at home in such a setting, and Emma was immediately the center of attention, as she always was. But it felt different, like people were talking about her, wanting to be near her, for all the wrong reasons.