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Prologue
Near San Francisco, California
July Fourth
Dead.
Her son was dead!
Cold to the bone despite the summer’s heat, she couldn’t breathe, had to gasp for air.
Her throat clogged with grief, pain, and a deep, intense fury.
Standing alone in this cemetery where gravestones stood in sentry-like rows, she clenched her fists and wanted to rail to the heavens where, across the night sky, fireworks burst in thunderous booms and great sprays of light.
The demons that had tormented her mind hadn’t lied.
As bitter as the harshest Montana winter, desperation cut through her heart. Blinking against tears, she dragged her gaze from the inscription on the small marble stone at her feet.
A low-lying fog was rolling in, swallowing the lights of the city situated on the far shore of the bay. The iconic Golden Gate was partially obscured, only the bridge’s tall towers knifing through the fog to a black sky glittering with stars, a backdrop to the fireworks. She watched another shooting star rise high, streaks of fiery glitter bursting, then fizzling before her eyes. For a few awe-inspiring seconds, the pyrotechnics bedazzled, then faded, their short life spans over in quick, brilliant bursts. Over almost before they’d begun.
Like her son’s brief life.
Her heart tugged so painfully she fell to her knees. She’d known this was possible, perhaps even probable, that he’d died, but throughout these past lonely years, she’d held out a glimmer of hope that he’d survived, that they would be reunited, that she would feel the warmth of his arms around her neck as she held him close. “Oh, baby,” she whispered.
Once again she turned her attention to the small gravestone, a tiny marker in a sea of larger, more elaborate tombstones. In various shapes and sizes, some tall, some ornately carved, others more plain, the headstones stood unmoving, hulking along the slope that curved downward to the city and the dark, black waters of the bay.
Why?
Oh, God, why?
Closing her eyes, she drew in several deep breaths.
Don’t question. It is what it is.
More importantly: What are you going to do about it?
Jaw clenched, she thought of those who had wronged her.
Those who had used her.
Those who had abused her.
Those who had taken out their animosity against her on the innocence of her child.
Still on her knees, she reached forward and traced the dates inscribed on the frigid stone with the tips of her
fingers. Barely four years from date of birth to date of death.
Her heart cracked with the pain. “Oh, honey,” she murmured, her throat catching as thoughts of that unlikely birth swirled in her brain. The agony of labor, the fear of the unknown, the rush in her blood at hearing the newborn’s cry, and then the emptiness as her son was stolen from her, taken from that isolated delivery room. She’d heard the whispers in the hospital.
“. . . deeply disturbed.”
“. . . mentally unstable.”
“. . . severe psychosis.”
