CHAPTER ONE
1993
Genevieve O’Shea Mallory was afraid to go to sleep. It wasn’t that she was afraid she wouldn’t wake up. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleep at all. It was that she dreamed.
It waswhatshe dreamed.
Gen had been back at the old house for exactly five days, and for each of those five days—deep in the night, when Gen couldn’t protect herself against the turmoil that had driven her here—she’d had the nightmare.
Each night, hard into the darkness, she’d awakened tear-streaked and sobbing, desperate to blot out the sights and sounds that followed her from sleep. Stunned into shaken silence by emotions she couldn’t remember ever having felt in her waking life. Increasingly obsessed by the irrational conviction that there was something more to the dreams than just the bubbling up of grief and guilt and old terrors.
Each night she woke plagued by the suspicion that something in the old house itself was creating these dreams, something so embedded in the wood and metal and memories that it had finally escaped to torment her. Something that waited for her here, where her grandmother and great-grandmother had watched the sea before her.
Straightening from the old rocker she’d curled herself into, Gen walked out onto the porch. It was going to rain. She could feel it in the gusting sea breeze, could taste it in the humid air. The world around her shuddered and whispered, and the clouds raced in from the sea.
She loved storms. She loved to watch them whip the water into a frenzy and torment the trees. The sky split open and the earth answered, and Gen stood outside on her porch, at her home, on the island that had belonged to her family since before the Civil War, and sang back.
But not tonight. Tonight the storm seemed to have invadedher,as well, stirring her up as much as the ocean beyond her door. Her heart was beating faster, as if she was waiting for something. Her palms were sweating. She couldn’t go out, and she couldn’t stay still.
And she couldn’t go to sleep.
Gen took one more look up into a sky mottled by tumbling clouds and faint moonlight and headed back in to call Annie. It was only eight p.m. on the other coast, and she’d promised. And if there was one thing Gen could pride herself on, it was that she never broke a promise to her daughter. That had been Michael’s specialty.
“Hello, Mom. Is my girl there?”
Three thousand miles away, Gen’s mother could be heard rustling to attention. “You’re calling late tonight.”
“I was out walking on the beach.”
Gen could hear the worry in her mother’s voice even before she admitted it. “Are you okay, honey?”
Gen knew better than to even hesitate. “I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
But then, her mother didn’t know the truth. She didn’t realize that after only five months, Gen was finished mourning Michael’s death. Or maybe she’d never mourned at all. She’d lost Michael a long time before the plane crash that had taken his life. Watched helplessly as the man she’d once loved succumbed to the pressure of power and opportunity, inexorably changing into someone she didn’t know anymore. Someone she liked even less.
Just as she had every day since the Georgia State Police appeared at her door, Gen tried to call up Michael’s handsome blond features, the same sharp brown eyes and mesmerizing smile that had been reproduced on Annie to enchanting effect. But Gen couldn’t quite see him anymore. His face was fading, had been fading, and she wished with all her heart she could say she was sorry.
She wasn’t so much. What she was, was afraid. But that wasn’t something she could admit to her mother or her daughter. Her mother had never understood, and her daughter would understand all too well.
“Mommy? Hey, guess what? I got to see some seals today. It was so cool!”
Even with the acid of unease building in her chest, Gen couldn’t help but smile. Annie was her baby, her friend. Her gift from a dying marriage. Nothing was more important in her life than the trust of that little girl, who had lost so much already.
“That’s neat, baby. Are you behaving?”
Gen could imagine the scowl. “Aw, Mom. Gram says we can go horseback riding tomorrow.” A pause now, just like always. “Are you okay?”
Aching now, sharp enough to take her breath. That her little girl should worry about her. Gen wished she could tell someone how she felt. She wished she could explain the conviction that she was being watched in her empty house, that the dreams that plagued her meant something more.
She wished she could explain the fact that when she should be healing, she was becoming obsessed with the sight of a blue-eyed stranger she met only in her sleep.
“I’m really fine, honey. I just needed to get away from all the hassle from Dad’s business. You know.”
“Yeah, Mom. And I’m really glad I got to come here. It’s just...”
Gen closed her eyes, wishing she could dispel the sick sensation. Wishing she understood it better, that she hadn’t handed it on to her little girl, that irrational terror of abandonment.
“Do you want me to come out?”
