Deadline. Metsy Hingle

wrong with Mommy? Why won’t she get up?”

      “She’s hurt. Now go to your room.”

      “I want my mommy,” she cried.

      “Tess, please—”

      And then she heard the sirens. The phone began to ring. Fists banged on the door. And the phone kept ringing and ringing…

      Startled by the ringing phone, Tess sat up in bed and looked around the unfamiliar room. Then she spied the phone on the night table. She grabbed the receiver. “Hello.”

      “Good morning, Ms. Abbott. This is your six-thirty wake-up call.”

      “Thank you,” Tess said.

      After hanging up the phone, she fell back against the pillows. And once again she questioned her decision to come back to Grady. What if her grandfather had been right? That she should allow the past to remain buried.

      She also recalled Ronnie’s question. Would she be able to handle whatever it was that she discovered?

      She didn’t know, Tess admitted. But what she did know was that she owed it to her mother, if not to herself, to find out what really happened that night twenty-five years ago.