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Prologue

OF THE THREE McBride cousins, twenty-six-year-old E their afternoon outing in the woods behind her house Whichthat Emily had seen her father buried only hours earlier

It wasn’t that Emily was hard-hearted But her father had been ill for a very long ti in a way thatyears Emily had cared for him, nursed him, tried to comfort him She needed this time for herself, even if it was only for a visit with Savannah and Tara in the Georgia woods where they’d spent so many pleasant hours as children

Fifteen years ago, as a lark to fill a lazy summer afternoon, the cousins had buried an old cypress chest containing individual plastic boxes filled with mementos of their childhood A ti it up on Savannah’s thirtieth birthday Though that occasion was still a feeeks away, E it today, since they were all together

“I’ood idea,” Savannah had protested, looking strangely reluctant

“It has only been fifteen years,” Tara agreed “Ti after more time has passed, don’t you think?”

Emily fir it up And we’re only a feeeks away froreed upon We ht as well open it”

For so Emily really wanted to do Maybe she simply wanted to be reminded of happier times

E out of sympathy for her Perhaps Savannah had suddenly decided that Emily needed a diversion from the sorrow of the past few days But Savannah probably had no idea how badly E about the future

Digging into the garbage bags, encrusted with dried mud that had protected the objects within the chest, Savannah extracted the three shoebox-sized plastic boxes Each one had a name written on the top in pererness that was notably lacking in her cousins

She didn’t knohy they were so reluctant to indulge in a bit of nostalgia Emily had very happy ht the whole thing a marvelous adventure, and she’d been thrilled that her cousins had included her She’d idolized Savannah and Tara, who’d been fifteen and almost fourteen at the tily patient with her, never seeiggling and gossiping in this clearing in the woods

E as she pulled one iteurine she’d won at the county fair A perfect-attendance ribbon from school A necklace she’d made with lacquered pasta shells A Barbie dressnohy had she thought that would be significant fifteen years later?

Her sraph of her family—herself as a baby, surrounded by her father, her mother and her half brother Lucas Eraph who looked happy to be there

And then she found the letter she’d written to herself Scanning the childish handwriting, she winced as she read her grandiose plans of seeing the world outside the liia She’d pictured a future life filled with family—her father and brother, her aunts, uncles, cousins, a husband and children

She had never i so alone in this town that had once felt like home

She was just about to close the box when she felt so wrapped in tissue paper at the botto else in, but it had been a long ti and pulled out so heavy and solid

It was a bracelet Gold Fashioned of heavy, carved links, with

an ornate, solid oval clasp It looked very old—antique, maybe