Ultimately, she was the one who had to manage her recovery from pills, the Bible study she’d committed to write, and the secrets her mom and dad might be hiding.
I know what your parents did.The words of the mystery letter carried a menacing echo.And after all we’ve suffered, it’s hard to watchyou bask in your fame and money. Your parents aren’t going to get away with it.
Ben
The earthquake goes on and on. I’m panting and my teeth are chattering and I’m sweating even though I’m freezing.
I need to try to get us out of this building, fast, to safe, open grass.
But I can’t see any doors or any stairs. Only rattling walls.
Luke hauls Genevieve into the room. Natasha releases a sob and wraps her younger sister in a hug.
A loudboomsplits the air. The hallways in every direction begin to cave in. Even so, Luke turns to run down the one they’d come from.
Sebastian lunges and grabs Luke’s arm, stopping him.
“Let me go!” Luke’s eyes flash. “I have to get my brother.”
“You’ll be crushed,” Sebastian yells. He’s just as tall and just as strong as Luke.
Luke twists himself free. But as he does, concrete crashes into the hallway, filling it. A cloud of dirt rolls over us.
“No!” Luke screams.
Chapter Five
Natasha Woodward MacKenzie sailed through the door of their dad’s home office the next morning wearing exercise clothing and carrying a travel mug in one hand and a lump of yellow knitting in the other. “I’ve arrived!”
Genevieve walked into her sister’s hug, which smelled like a mixture of oranges and vanilla and communicated the same brisk reassurance it always had.
“‘You must allow me to tell you...’” Natasha began.
“‘How ardently I admire and love you.’” Genevieve finished the quote fromPride and Prejudice. Her practical sister had discovered a passion for Regency-set romances. This past January she’d embarked on a self-proclaimed “Year of Living Austenly” and had been integrating elements of Jane Austen’s world into her own.
They pulled apart. “How are you?” Genevieve asked.
“Ovulating.” Natasha delighted in announcing bodily news bulletins.
“Ah.”
Natasha passed over the lump of knitting. “For you.”
Natasha had attempted many of the crafts practiced by ladies of Jane Austen’s day. Embroidery had been a disaster. Wooden dolls dressed in shells, worse. Early this summer, she’d settled on knitting and had been clothing her family members in mediocre-to-bad knitted accessories ever since.
“Yay!” Genevieve unfolded it and was relieved to recognize what it was. “A winter hat.” Not only did it look like it might fit a ten-year-old, it was too short on one side. “Thank you.”
“Try it on!”
She squeezed it onto her head and smiled. The hat gripped the crown of her head like a toddler grips its mother’s legs.
“You know how bank robbers pull panty hose over their heads?” Natasha asked.
Genevieve nodded.
“You look like a bank robber who only managed to get the panty hose part way down.”
“Just the fashion statement I was hoping to make!”
