BooksBarbecue
Back Safe in My Arms Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Sara Shepard
  3. Also by Sara Shepard
  4. Dedication
  5. PART ONE
  6. —
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Piper
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. Seventeen
  26. Piper
  27. Eighteen
  28. Piper
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Piper
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Twenty-Five
  37. Piper
  38. Twenty-Six
  39. Twenty-Seven
  40. Twenty-Eight
  41. Twenty-Nine
  42. Thirty
  43. Thirty-One
  44. Thirty-Two
  45. Thirty-Three
  46. Piper
  47. Thirty-Four
  48. Epilogue
  49. Acknowledgments
  50. About the Author
  51. What’s next onyour reading list?

A few of the pages were stuck together, and she fought to pry them apart. When she did, a Polaroid photograph fluttered out and slid under the bureau. Lauren dropped to her knees to fish it out. She had to shake dust off the photo, too, and watched as motes drifted through the air toward the floor. Then she turned it over.

She’d looked at this photo when they first started dating, but today, it looked entirely new. Graham was in his twenties. He had a beard, which didn’t suit him. He stood against a bright white stucco wall in a sunlit lane. It was a quintessentially Italian scene—cobblestoned streets, leaning bicycles, tiny, thrown-open windows. The same red book of Italian recipes that sat on the bed was tucked under Graham’s arm, and he was smiling. There was a woman with him, too. It was the ex-girlfriend, a woman Lauren knew little about but who had accompanied Graham on this trip. When they’d first started dating, she’d glanced at this photo briefly but then put it away, feeling intimidated. But now, she looked closer.

The woman was tall, with long, silky dark hair and the kind of body that could pull off wearing a strappy sundress with no bra. She had her arm draped casually around Graham’s shoulders, but there was something fake about her smile that Lauren didn’t like. Her eyes were an aqua blue. She had long lashes, a pointed chin, and high cheekbones. But what really did it was the Marilyn Monroe–style beauty mark above her lip. Lauren recalled staring at that beauty mark the first time she’d laid eyes on this person, and watching the mouth beside it move so beautifully as she spoke to all the parents, telling them their children would be safe and sound.

The ground beneath her seemed to shift, then give way. She was staring at Piper Jovan.

Twenty-Five

It was a good thing Clarissa was here all day. And it was a good thing Graham was at work . . . because Lauren didn’t trust herself. If someone were to disturb her in this bedroom right then, flames might shoot from her mouth. This felt like waking up on another planet with a completely unknowable landscape. The lakes were lava. The air was sludge. The sky was purple. The world was unrecognizable, and no life could be sustained.

She stared down at Graham’s smiling face in the faded photo. His smirk made her stomach twist. Was her memory acting up—had he mentioned he’d dated Piper? But no. She would have remembered that.