Something occurred to Lara. She had been so stupid. She turned to her mother. “You knew.” The common blood that flowed between them told her this much. “You’d tried to talk me out of getting married yesterday. It was the date, wasn’t it? You knew something would happen on that day.”

“They thought Peter actually disappeared on the ninth and that his car wasn’t found until the next day. I’ve hated that day.” Her mother inhaled deeply. “I’d hoped I would be wrong.”

Lara shot her mother a disbelieving stare and laughed. “You’re never wrong.”

“No,” admitted Audrey. “I’m not, but for your sake, I wish that I had been.”

Chapter 6

Kerrigan Falls, Virginia

June 20, 2005 (Nine Months After the Wedding)

After Todd—didn’t show, split, went missing, jilted her, bailed, was abducted by aliens, insert wild theory—Lara had contemplated moving away from Kerrigan Falls.

Nothing had prepared her for the aftermath. First there were people who speculated on the connection between the Todd Sutton and Peter Beaumont cases.

Reporters camped out on Wickelow Bend as though they were expecting something to emerge from the trees. They stalked her, trying to get interviews about the last time she saw Todd and if he believed in the supernatural. A television show, Ghostly Happenings, sent a team of “hunters” for an episode titled “The Devil’s Bend” that was the most watched show of the season, leading to odd phone calls at all hours from true believers in the occult. Lara had been so rattled by the intense attention that she didn’t put up a fuss when Audrey insisted she stay out at Cabot Farms. When cars began driving up to the house in the middle of the night, Audrey installed a gate at the bottom of the hill, then changed their number. Lara wasted the days away reading her horoscope, watching General Hospital, drinking Chardonnay, and doing tarot readings for Caren and Betsy, who’d visited her like she was a high schooler home sick with mono. The apartment she’d shared with Todd sat empty. She couldn’t bear to see it without him in it. The radio station gave her a month off.