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PROLOGUE
WIDOW LAKE
2013
Amy Dean had made a lot of mistakes in her twenty years. Some of them her fault for being stupid and naïve. Some of them not her fault because she’d been thrown into the deep uncharted territory of the foster system by every adult in her life. Feeling unloved and unwanted, she’d blindly paddled through the muddy waters, sinking and flailing until she’d almost drowned. So many times, she’d imagined herself trapped by the ghosts that dwelled in the haunted lake, her grave unmarked, her disappearance unnoticed.
She’d learned the hard way to hang tough. To fight. To tolerate the ghosts and not allow the pain to destroy her.
But then she had Paisley and the world was filled with a bright beam of hope.
She stroked her precious two-year-old little girl’s soft brown hair and rolled her aching shoulders as she tucked Paisley into the back of her beat-up VW and buckled her seatbelt. Today she’d cleaned houses for the “Ladies of the Lake”—that’s what they called their little group. Three of them were nice and paid her well, the other an obsessive-compulsive control freak who demanded Amy redo things a thousand times if she saw a wrinkle in the bedding or found a speck of dust anywhere.
She wanted to quit that woman more than anything. But Paisley had to eat and needed new shoes and a roof over her head. Amy would do whatever it took, swallow her pride and work for dirt cheap to take care of her beloved daughter.
Yes, she’d made mistakes. But as she drove the short distance to Lake Haven Apartments, the complex which housed half the students at Widow Peak College, she heard little Paisley’s soft breathing echoing in the back of the car and refused to call her a mistake.
Paisley was the best thing that had happened to her. After years of torment and anguish, Amy had a family. Someone to love. Someone who loved her back.
Someone who made her want to be better. To earn a degree and get a proper job so they could move to a nicer place and take vacations like real families did.
“We’ll be home soon, baby,” she murmured as she turned onto the road leading to the complex. She recognized a few cars belonging to other coed girls, although she hadn’t made friends. While they indulged in party mode on the weekends and even during the week, she worked during the afternoons, had a child to look after and studied when Paisley went to bed. And truthfully, she didn’t want to discuss her daughter with them. Too many questions. Ones she didn’t want to answer. Her baby was her business and nobody else’s.
Not that she minded staying in. A party was what had gotten her into trouble three years ago. That trash can full of hooch punch…
Her stomach roiled at the thought. Dumb. Foolish. Rum had short-circuited her brain and turned her into mush. The drunken blindness had robbed her. Then he took the rest. She hadn’t cried out or fought. She was too far under.
Then six weeks later… the morning sickness began.
Dark clouds hung heavy tonight over the steep Appalachian Mountains adding a gloomy feel.
Inhaling to ward off the emotions that swamped her when she was tired and needed to sleep but had to hit the books, she parked, slid out and retrieved her backpack, hurrying to get Paisley from her car seat. Her sweet toddler had fallen sound asleep and clutched her blanket like a lifeline.
Paisley snuggled into her as she walked up the sidewalk. Nerves gathered in Amy’s belly—the streetlight that had been broken for a week still hadn’t been fixed and it was practically pitch dark. A noise to the right—footsteps maybe—made her jerk her head around.
The sense that she was being watched overcame her, making her hands tremble, and she dropped her keys. Paisley raised her head as Amy stooped to retrieve them, but she soothed her before getting them inside.
Thankfully she’d left the hall light on before she’d left, and she made it to the bedroom without tripping. As Amy tucked her daughter into her crib, Paisley opened her eyes for a split second and looked at her all sleepy-eyed.
“Night-night, baby,” Amy whispered.
“Night-night.” Paisley’s eyes were already drifting shut. Amy kissed her soft cheek and adjusted the sound machine to Paisley’s favorite lullaby, then turned to go back to the living room and tackle tonight’s studies.
But the squeak of the floor in the hall made her freeze. Another squeak. Then breathing. Slow. Shallow.
Someone was in the house.
Fear clenched her chest and she turned back to scoop up Paisley and hide her in the closet, but the breathing grew louder and louder. Then someone jumped her from behind.
She screamed and fought, desperate to throw off her attacker but he knocked her to the floor and jabbed a knife to the base of her neck.
And then there was pain and darkness…
She reached out for her daughter… had to save her… but the world tilted into nothing, and when she heard her baby cry, she knew it was too late.
ONE
WIDOW PEAK
