“Not my fault.” The woman sat back on her high heels. Lara could see that the heels were still pristine, not a speck of dirt on them.

Lara looked around, wondering if anyone else—other than the horses—could see them, but the grass swayed quietly. From a distance she heard the screen door slam.

“One day,” he said. “I’ll find you again, Lara Barnes.”

He touched her on the tip of her nose, causing her to faint again. When she woke up a few moments later, they were gone.

Chapter 5

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

October 10, 2004

Sometime in the night, Lara woke to find the curtain blowing softly over her bed. She’d downed a sleeping pill when they’d returned home from the church, so mercifully she’d slept until now. She looked at the clock: five fifty-two A.M. She’d been unconscious for nearly twelve hours. Nothing about her wedding day had happened as she’d planned. She slid out of the sheets and crept downstairs.

Before drifting off, she remembered hearing phones ringing and doors slamming. She’d half expected to find Todd standing by her bed when she woke with some wild story about getting drunk in the woods or falling down a well. She looked around her room. No note.

But nothing? Has he really not come here?

She padded into the dining room and searched for a sign that he’d called while she slept—even a terse note from her mother telling her “the boy” had left a message. Nothing. The house was silent. It was unthinkable, really. Surely there had been some mistake, some logical explanation. She wouldn’t be forgiving him, not this time, but at least he owed her some kind of answer for standing her up at their wedding. There was a finality to this silence, like she’d been forgotten, abandoned.

Wedding gifts in silver wrapping sat on the dining room table in a haphazard jumble. She wondered if her mother hadn’t knocked them from their neat pile on purpose. Audrey, still in her blue bathrobe, was asleep on the wingback chair in the living room with the light on. She’d been reading and hadn’t bothered to take off the heavy layer of wedding makeup.