Season of Secrets. Marta Perry

for Christmas the year before she died.

      For a moment she held the glass globe in her hand. The lamplight, falling on it, reflected a distorted image of her own face, and the glass felt warm against her palm. She was smiling, she realized, but there were tears in her eyes.

      She set the ball carefully on the table. She’d tell Court about the ornaments, including that one. That kind of history was what he needed from this Christmas in Charleston.

      She’d been working in silence, with only an occasional crackle from a log in the fireplace for company, when she heard a thud somewhere in the house. She paused, her hand tightening on a delicate shell ornament. They hadn’t come back already, had they?

      A few quiet steps took her to the hallway. Only one light burned there, and the shadows had crept in, unnoticed. She stood still, hearing nothing but the beat of her own heart.

      Then it came again, a faint, distant creaking this time. She’d lived in old houses all her life. They had their own language of creaks and groans as they settled. That had to be what she’d heard.

      She listened another moment. Nothing. She was letting her nerves get the better of her at being alone in the house.

      A shrill sound broke the silence, and she started, heart hammering. Then, realizing what it was, she shook her head at her own foolishness and went in search of her cell phone, its ring drowning out any other noise. Marc hadn’t had the phone service started. She’d given him her cell-phone number in case he needed to reach her.

      The phone was in the bottom of her bag, which she finally found behind the sofa in the family room. She snatched it up and pressed the button.

      “Hello?” Her voice came out oddly breathless.

      “Dinah? You sound as if you’ve been running. Listen, do you think a string of a hundred white lights is enough? Court put two strings in the cart when I wasn’t looking.”

      Her laugh was a little shaky. “You may as well get two. If you don’t use the second one, you can always take it back.”

      “I guess you’re right.” She heard him say something distantly, apparently to the cashier. Then his voice came back, warm and strong in her ear. “Is everything all right? You don’t sound quite yourself.”

      “It’s nothing. Really. I was just scaring myself, thinking I heard someone in the house.” When she said the words, she realized that was what she’d been thinking at some deep level. Someone in the house.

      “Get out. Now.” The demand was sharp and fast as the crack of a whip.

      “I’m sure I just imagined—”

      “Dinah, don’t argue. Just get out. And don’t hang up. Keep talking to me.”

      Logic told her he was panicking unnecessarily, probably visited by the terrible memory of coming into the house and finding Annabel. But even if he was, his panic was contagious.

      Holding the phone clutched tightly against her ear, she raced across the room, through the hallway and plunged out the door.