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Now, lying in bed beside her husband—Jecca would need a while to get used to that idea—she thought how she’d told Tris that she was sublimely happy. And she was. She’d realized that she’d been afraid of happiness because her world had been so small. She’d had her father and Joey and that was all. But now her life had expanded to include most of an entire town.
“Are you laughing?” Tris asked from beside her as he slipped his leg over her bare one. After their enthusiastic lovemaking of last night, neither of them had bothered to put on clothes.
“In joy,” she said.
He moved closer to her, Jecca opened her arms—and her cell phone buzzed.
“Forget it,” Tris murmured as he nuzzled her neck.
“It might be Dad or someone in Edilean might be sick,” she said as she reached for her phone.
At the last, Tris lifted his hand.
Jecca picked up the phone. It was an e-mail from Kim. REMEMBER HOW YOU AND SOPHIE TRIED TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE MAN I USED TO SEARCH FOR? HE SHOWED UP LAST NIGHT AND HE’S STAYING WITH ME. I’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH HIM SINCE I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD. HAVE A NICE HONEYMOON AND BRING ME BACK A FRIAND MOULD. TRAVIS LIKES TO EAT.
Jecca read it twice, the second time aloud to Tris. “Do you know anything about this man?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll call Lucy and find out what’s going on.”
Tris took the phone from her hands and put it on the bedside table. “Where’s my New York girl who doesn’t like people to know her business?”
“She—” He kissed her.
“She lear#82
“She likes—” He kissed her even deeper.
“I’ll hear all about it when we get back,” Jecca said as she pushed Tristan onto his back.
“I agree,” he said and kissed her deeper still.
Turn the page for a preview of
Jude’s newest novel,
Stranger in the Moonlight
From Pocket Books
Prologue
Edilean, Virginia
1993
In all of her eight years, Kim had never been so bored. She didn’t even know such boredom could exist. Her mother told her to go outside into the big garden around the old house, Edilean Manor, and play, but what was she to do by herself?
Two weeks ago her father had taken her brother off to some faraway state to go fishing. “Male bonding,” her mother called it, then said she was not going to stay in their big house alone for four whole weeks. That night Kim had been awakened by the sound of her parents arguing. They didn’t usually fight—not that she knew about—and the word “divorce” came to her mind. She was terrified of being without her parents.
But the next morning they were kissing and everything seemed to be fine. Her father kept talking about making up being the best, but her mother shushed him.
It was that afternoon that her mother told her that while her father and brother were away they were going to stay in an apartment at Edilean Manor. Kim didn’t like that because she hated the old house. It was too big and it echoed with every footstep. Besides, every time she visited the place there was less furniture, and the emptiness made it seem even creepier.
Her father said that Mr. Bertrand, the old man who lived in the house, had sold the family furniture rather than get a job to support himself. “He’d sell the hou
se if Miss Edi would let him.”
