For Mom and Dad, and for Scott—who believed even when I didn’t
Contents
About the Publisher
Flames.
I clenched handfuls of Bliss’s silky-thick mane and squeezed my eyes shut, searching my memories for the black haze of smoke. For the smell of burning wood and plastic, of smoldering Phillies shirts and baby photos. For sirens and screams. For anything at all that hinted at fire.
For Dad.
Beneath me, the horse snorted. I sighed, relaxed my grip, and smoothed her mane back into place. Nothing. Once again all I’d conjured up was a big fat bunch of nothing. Over four weeks since the accident that had ended my father’s life, and the memories still resisted my every attempt to unlock them.
I opened my eyes, just as something flashed in my mind.
White walls, white lights. A white lab coat. The searing aroma of bleach.
My skin prickled. From the hospital I’d been taken to, maybe? After the fire? It was the closest I’d come to remembering anything so far.
I grasped at the images, tried to drag them into view, but they vanished as fast as they’d appeared.
Now that my eyes were open, what wouldn’t disappear was the picket fence blocking our path, its white posts stabbing upward and bisecting an unrelenting sprawl of green, green, green.
The other thing that wouldn’t disappear,