Acclaim for New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

‘… Truly uplifting …’

—Now magazine

‘This is a beautiful book’

—Bookbag on Just Breathe

‘… Unpredictable and refreshing,

this is irresistibly good’

—Closer Hot Pick Book on Just Breathe

‘A human and multi-layered story

exploring duty to both country

and family’

—Nora Roberts on

The Ocean Between Us

‘Susan Wiggs paints the details

of human relationships with

the finesse of a master.’

—Jodi Picoult, author of Lone Wolf

‘The perfect beach read’

—Debbie Macomber on Summer by the Sea

Also by

Susan Wiggs

The Lakeshore Chronicles SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE THE WINTER LODGE DOCKSIDE SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE FIRESIDE LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

The Tudor Rose Trilogy AT THE KING’S COMMAND THE MAIDEN’S HAND AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS

Contemporary HOME BEFORE DARK THE OCEAN BETWEEN US SUMMER BY THE SEA TABLE FOR FIVE LAKESIDE COTTAGE JUST BREATHE All available in eBook

Snowfall at Willow Lake

Susan Wiggs

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Rose Marie Harris,

who owned and operated Paperbacks Plus, the best

little bookstore in Washington State for the past

twenty-seven years. She’s the kind of bookseller every

writer dreams about—well-read, enthusiastic, caring

and helpful, with an uncanny knack for putting the

right book into the hands of the reader who is sure

to love it. A book signing at Paperbacks Plus always

involved plenty of food, friends and fun, making for

unforgettable events, year in and year out.

To Rose Marie, Kate, Lois and the rest of

the staff—it was a great run, ladies.

Thanks for everything.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The daily work of a writer involves spending many hours alone with a roomful of fictional characters, and it takes a lot of love and understanding from the real people in my life to put up with that.

Thanks to the real Momzillas, who are nothing like the ones in this book.

I am truly blessed by the women writers in my life. Their moral support and brain power enrich the entire experience of making stories and art, and their talents keep me in awe—Anjali Banerjee, Carol Cassella, Sheila Rabe, Suzanne Selfors, Elsa Watson, Kate Breslin, Lois Faye Dyer, Rose Marie Harris, Patty Jough-Haan, Susan Plunkett and Krysteen Seelen.

Thanks also to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, my ever-patient editor, Meg Ruley, my agent, and her associate Annelise Robey, for invaluable advice and input.

Thanks to my publisher and readers for turning the Lakeshore Chronicles into a great success. The books came from me, but the success from you.

I’m so very grateful for my family, including our newest arrival, Barkis the wonderdog. Special thanks to my wonderful mom and dad—I only wish I could be as good as you think I am.

Part One

February

Lake Effect

Each winter, when cold arctic air sweeps across North America, snow squalls may form along the lee shores of lakes. These squalls, known as lake-effect snowstorms, bring locally heavy snowfalls to a relatively small area. Often, while squalls hit one area, brilliant blue skies prevail only a short distance away.

One

Avalon, Ulster County, New York

Every station on Noah Shepherd’s truck radio was broadcasting the incessant warning. The National Weather Service had issued an advisory—a prediction of snow, ice and wind—whiteout conditions in a lake-effect snowstorm. Authorities were urging people to stay home tonight, to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles only. The county airport had closed hours ago. Even the heaviest snow-removal equipment was having trouble lumbering along the highway. Only madmen and fools would be out in this.

Well, madmen, fools and large-animal vets. Noah wished his windshield wipers had a faster setting. The wind-driven snow was coming so hard and fast it was like a solid wall of white. He could barely tell whether or not he was on an actual road.

Legend had it that during lake effect, magic happened. Right, he thought. If this was magic, he’d stick with reality.

After delivering the Osmonds’ foal, he should have taken them up on their offer to stay the night, waiting until the weather and roads cleared before making his way back to his home and adjacent clinic miles away. However, according to reports, it could be days before the storm played itself out and it was likely to get worse before it got better. He had the Palmquists’ geriatric beagle in the clinic, a cat recovering from spinal surgery and his own animals, which currently included an abandoned pup. He knew he could always call his neighbor, Gayle, to look in on them, but he hated to bother her. With her husband serving overseas and three kids underfoot, she sure as hell didn’t need to go traipsing over to his place to check on the animals.

Besides, his scrubs were covered in birth blood and fluid. He needed a shower, bad. He was wearing his favorite hat, a wool cap with earflaps. It was from his “early dork” phase, as one of his former girlfriends had called it. Noah had quite a few former girlfriends. Women his age tended to want something other than life with a country vet.

He leaned forward over the steering wheel, squinting at the road ahead. Illuminated by his headlamps, the snowflakes appeared to be flying straight at him in a movielike special effect. He thought of Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon went into warp speed. And that thought, of course, inspired him to whistle the Star Wars theme between his teeth. Bored with crawling along, he imagined his windshield was a window to a galaxy far, far away. He was Han Solo, and the snowflakes flying at him were stars. He issued orders to his copilot, who perked up at the sound of his master’s voice. “Prepare for throttle up. Chewie, do you read? Go at throttle up.”

Rudy, a mutt in the passenger seat, gave a huff in response, fogging the window.

Noah’s last girlfriend, Daphne, used to accuse him of being a kid who would never grow up. And Noah, who had the subtlety of a jackhammer, suggested only half-jokingly that they make a few kids of their own so he’d have someone to play with.

That had been the last he’d seen of Daphne.

Yeah, he had a real way with the ladies. No wonder he worked exclusively with animals.

“General Kenobi, target sighted, a thermal detonator,” he said. In his mind, Noah pictured a galaxy slave clad in a chain mail bikini. If only the universe would actually send him someone like that.

Then he changed his voice to a wise baritone with a bad English accent. “I trust you will find what you seek. And … shit.” A pale shadow glimmered in the road right in front of him. He turned the wheel and eased off the accelerator. The truck fishtailed. Rudy scrabbled around on his seat, trying to stay put. In the middle of the road stood a big-eyed doe, ribs showing through its thick winter coat.

He leaned on the horn. The doe sprang into action, sprinting across the road, leaping the ditch and disappearing into darkness. Midwinter was the worst time of year for the wildlife. The starving season.

The radio station played its usual test of the emergency broadcast system. He turned it off.

Almost home. There were no landmarks visible to tell him so, just an inner sense that he was nearing home. Other than college and vet school at Cornell, he’d never lived anywhere else. Each rural mailbox was supposed to be marked by a tall segment of rebar, but the snowdrifts were too deep and the rebar and mailboxes were buried.

He sensed but could not see Willow Lake, which lay to the left of the road. Willow Lake was the prettiest in the county, a natural beauty fringed by the Catskills wilderness. At the moment it was invisible behind the curtain of snowfall. Noah’s place was across the road from the lake and slightly uphill. Along the lakefront itself were several old summer cottages, unoccupied in winter.

“General Azkanabi, we need reinforcements,” he said, hearing the imaginary music swell in his ears. “Send me someone without delay!”

In that instant, he noticed … something. A glimmer of red in the snowy shadows. The whistled theme song died between his teeth. He eased off the accelerator and kept his eyes on the crimson glow, eventually making out a matching light. Taillights, which seemed to belong to a car stuck in a snowbank.

He stopped the truck in the middle of the road. The car was still running; he could see a plume of exhaust coming from its unnaturally angled pipe. The taillights poured an eerie red light into the night. One of the headlights was buried in the snowbank. The other illuminated the deer that had been hit.

“Stay, boy,” Noah ordered Rudy. He grabbed his kit, which contained enough tranquilizer to put down the deer. He lit his flashlight, an elastic headlamp.

Switching on his hazard lights, he emerged into the stormy night. The flying snow and howling wind sliced at him like blades of ice. He hurried over to the car, spying a single occupant inside, a woman. She seemed to be fumbling with a cell phone.

She lowered the window. “Thank God you came,” she said, and got out of the car.

She was inadequately dressed for the weather, that was for sure. A high-fashion coat and thin leather boots with tall, skinny heels. No hat. No gloves. Blond hair, blowing wildly in the wind, partially obscured her face.

“You got here so quickly,” she yelled.

He figured she thought he was from roadside assistance or the highway department. No time to explain.

She seemed to share his urgency as she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the front of the car, wobbling a little on her boots. “Please,” she said, her voice strained with distress. “I can’t believe this happened. Do you think it can be saved?”

He aimed the beam of the headlamp at the deer. It wasn’t the doe he’d spotted earlier, but a young buck with a broken antler on one side, three points on the other. Its eyes were glassy and it panted in a way Noah recognized—the panicked breaths of an animal in shock. He saw no blood, but so often, the injuries that killed were internal.

Damn. He hated putting animals down. Hated it.

“Please,” the stranger said again, “you have to save it.”

“Hold this,” he said, handing her a flashlight from his kit to supplement the headlamp. He eased himself down next to the animal, making a soothing sound in his throat. “Easy, fella.” He took off his gloves, stuffed them in a pocket of his parka. The rough coat of the deer warmed his fingers as he palpated its belly, finding no sign of fluid, no abnormal softening or heat. Maybe—

Without warning, the deer scrambled into action, legs flailing for traction in the deep, soft snow. Noah caught a sharp blow to the arm and backed off. The animal lurched to its feet and leaped over a snowbank; Noah instinctively moved in front of the woman to shield her from the hooves as the animal clambered off into the woods.

“I didn’t kill it,” the woman said. “You saved it.”

No, he thought, although it must have looked impressive, what with the deer jumping up as soon as he placed his hands on it. He didn’t say so, but there was still a good chance the buck might collapse somewhere in the forest, and die.

He turned off the headlamp and straightened up. She shone the flashlight into his face, blinding him. When he flinched, she lowered the beam. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Pulling on his gloves, he asked her, “Where are you headed?”

“Twelve forty-seven Lakeshore Road. The Wilson place. Do you know it?”

He squinted, getting his bearings. She had run her car off the road right by his driveway. “Another few hundred yards down toward the lake and you’re there,” he said. “I can give you a lift.”

“Thank you.” Snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, and she blinked them away. He caught a glimpse of her face—startlingly pretty, but pale and strained. “I’ll get my things.” She handed him the flashlight, then fetched a purse and a big tote bag from her car. There was also a roll-aboard, fluttering with tags. In the glow of the dome light, he could see words in some foreign language—’s-Gravenhage? He had no idea what that was. And another with an official-looking seal, like from the State Department or something. Whoa, he thought. International woman of mystery.

She turned off the ignition and the lights. “I don’t suppose there’s anything to be done about the car,” she said.

“Not tonight, anyway.”

“I’ve got a few more bags in the trunk,” she said. “Do you think it’s safe to leave them?”

“Probably not a huge night for thieves.” He led the way to his truck and opened the passenger-side door. “Get in the back,” he ordered Rudy, and the dog leaped into the jump seat behind.

The woman hesitated, clutching the purse to her chest and staring up at him. Even in the dim light from the truck’s cab, he could tell her eyes were blue. And she was no longer regarding him as the Deer Whisperer. Now she was looking at him as though he were an ax murderer.

“You’re looking at me as if I’m an ax murderer.”

“How do I know you’re not one?”

“Noah Shepherd,” he said. “I live right here. This is my driveway.” He gestured. The drive leading up to the house, flanked by pine trees weighted with snow, now lay beneath knee-deep drifts. A glimmer shone from the front window, and the porch light created a misty yellow aura around the front door. The entranceway to the clinic, kennels and stables lay off to the left, the security lights barely visible.

She paused, touched her teeth to her lower lip. “Even ax murderers have to live somewhere.”

“Right. So how do I know you’re not an ax murderer?”

She seemed completely unperturbed by the question. “You don’t,” she said simply, and got in the truck.

As he walked around the front to the driver’s side, Noah wondered if strange forces were at work. He wasn’t given to thinking of such things, but hadn’t he just been wishing for someone? Was the universe listening after all?

Of course, he didn’t know anything about his unexpected passenger. As she’d aptly pointed out, he didn’t even know whether or not she was an ax murderer.

Like that mattered. With those looks, she could be Lizzie Borden and he probably wouldn’t care. She was gorgeous, and she was sitting in his pickup truck. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? A gift horse. Ha-ha.

He hoped the smell of snow-wet dog and birth fluid wouldn’t bother her too much. Don’t blow this, he cautioned himself as he climbed into the driver’s seat. And quit jumping the gun. He didn’t know if she was seeing someone, married, engaged, gay or psychotic. The only thing he knew for sure was—

“Damn,” he said before he could stop himself, “Why didn’t you tell me you were wounded?” Grabbing the flashlight, he shone the beam on her, following a viscous crimson stain up her leg to the ripped knee of her trousers.

She made a sound in her throat, a wheeze of fright so intense that Noah cringed. Then she began to tremble, her breath coming in panicked little gasps. She said something in a foreign language, like a German dialect, maybe. It sounded like a prayer. She looked up at him with wild fear in her eyes, as though he were her worst nightmare.

So much for not blowing it, Noah thought.

“Hey, no need to freak out,” he said, but she was lost somewhere, drowning in panic, and then … nothing. She simply melted against the truck seat, her head tilting to one side.

“Hey,” he said again, louder now. Shit, had the woman passed out? He ripped off his glove and felt her carotid artery for a pulse. She had one, thank God. “Come on, miss,” he urged her, gently cupping her cheek in his hand. “Snap out of it.”

Behind him, Rudy scrambled to and fro, whimpering. He could probably smell her terror and her blood. Then he paused, put back his head and howled.

That’ll teach me, Noah thought. When he asked the stars to send him someone, he should be a little more specific. “Send me a Hooters waitress” was what he should have said, not some crazy-ass stranger who fainted at the sight of her own blood.

As far as Noah could tell, this was a loss of consciousness brought on by injury, fear and anxiety. In animals, it was sometimes a defense mechanism. In humans … he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Regardless, he needed to check her blood pressure, tend to her wound.

He made sure the truck was still in four-wheel drive, then eased it up the driveway. He passed the house and continued to the next building, which was his clinic. The property had once been his family’s dairy, and this building had housed the company offices. When he set up his practice three years ago, he had transformed it into his veterinary clinic.

He got out of the truck and motioned to Rudy. With a yelp, the agile mutt cleared the front seat and bounded away, racing across a snowy field. Clearly he was eager to flee the stranger.

Noah jumped out and ran to the passenger side. “Miss? Can you hear me, miss?”

The woman was still unresponsive. He rechecked her pulse, then awkwardly pulled her from the cab, staggering backward in the knee-deep snow. She wasn’t a large woman, but her deadweight dragged at him as he carried her to the clinic. He shouldered open the door and stepped inside, pausing to disarm the alarm system, which he managed to do without dropping the woman. Then he crossed the dimly lit reception area to an exam room. He lowered her to the stainless steel table, extending it to accommodate her length. It wasn’t designed for humans, but he had no other choice. “Miss,” he said yet again. Damn. He wondered if he should start CPR.

“Come on, come on, come on,” he said, jiggling her with one hand, pulling out an oxygen mask with the other. The cone-shaped mask was designed to fit over a muzzle, but by pressing down hard, he made it work.

Her eyes flew open. Wide awake, she struggled and cried out. Noah backed away, holding his hands palms out. “Yo, calm down, okay?” he practically pleaded, thinking about the horse tranquilizer in his kit. He wondered what she would do if he said, Don’t make me get out the horse tranquilizer … Bad idea. He was at a loss here. Should he touch her? Soothe her? Or throw water in her face? Touch her, definitely.

“Miss …” He put a gentle hand on her wrist, intending to check her pulse.

Big mistake. She jerked away as though he’d burned her, scrambling to a sitting position and regarding him as though he were Jack the Ripper.

“Miss,” he said again, planting himself in front of her so she wouldn’t fall off the table if she passed out again, “you’re going to be all right, I swear. Please, look at me. I can help, but you need to focus.”

Finally, his words seemed to penetrate. He could see the glaze of fear in her eyes begin to soften. She took a deep breath in a visible effort to calm herself.

“Hey,” he said, resisting the urge to take her hand. “Calm down. It’s going to be all right.” He used his most soothing tone, the one he reserved for feral cats and skunks with distemper. “We’re in my clinic. I’m a—I have training.” Best to hold off explaining he was a vet. “I need to check you out, okay? I swear, that’s all I want to do. Please?”

She began to shake, her face as white as the moon. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, thank you. I … I don’t know what came over me.”

No shit, he thought.

“My guess is you experienced a vasovagal syncope,” he said. “In layman’s terms, you fainted from the sight of your own blood. There’s been some physical trauma, so I need to ask you some questions, check your pulse and blood pressure.”

This time, finally, his words seemed to penetrate. He took a risk, touched his fingers to her chin and studied her pupils. Her skin was velvet smooth, but chilled and clammy. He felt her effort to stop trembling, saw the resolution on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still slightly tremulous. “That was unforgivable of me.” She squared her shoulders and tipped up her chin. She seemed to grow in confidence, transforming herself into a different person. The cowering victim disappeared. In her place was a controlled—though clearly shaken—young woman.

“No apology necessary,” he said. “Lots of people freak out when they’re hurt and bleeding.” He shrugged. “Proves you’re only human.”

“What is this place?”

“My clinic,” he said.

“I crashed my car in front of your clinic? That was good planning.” She offered a weak smile.

“Has this happened before?” he asked her. “The syncope—fainting.”

“No. Good heavens, no, never.”

“Before the episode, do you recall experiencing headache, back pain, chest pain, shortness of breath?”

“No. I was right beside you. I felt fine up until … I don’t recall.”

He took off his parka, then remembered his scrubs were stained with blood and fluid from the foaling. He quickly turned away so she wouldn’t see, peeled off his shirt, stuffed it into a hamper for the service, then grabbed a clean lab coat.

His patient was extremely quiet now. He turned to find her staring at his naked torso. Her mouth—a beautiful mouth, even for a crazy lady—formed a perfectly round O of surprise. Her face was still pale though; she was probably still at risk for syncope. And despite his fond wish, it was not over his physique. Something had spooked her, and he hoped it wasn’t him.

“Just need to put on a clean shirt,” he said.

Her gaze flicked away from him and darted around the clinic.

He felt her trust in him draining away. At vet school, they didn’t teach you not to take your shirt off in front of a patient, because as a general rule, the patient didn’t care.

“Sorry,” he muttered to her, and quickly slung a stethoscope around his neck, hoping that might reassure her. “I swear, I just want to help.”

“And I appreciate it,” she said, bracing her hands on the waist-high stainless steel table, the array of supplies and instruments on the counter. “I won’t go into a panic again. That was … it wasn’t like me. And this is all very … Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Noah instantly flashed on Susan Sarandon in her bra and panties. I wish.

He used a foot pump to lower the table. “You’re still bleeding—no, don’t look.” He didn’t want another fainting episode. “I really need to check out that leg.” He scrubbed his hands at the sink, then plucked a pair of latex-free gloves from a dispenser, eyeing her leg as he drew them on. “I might need to cut your trousers off,” he said, then couldn’t suppress a grin.

“Is something funny?” she asked.

“It’s just that I’ve never said that to a patient before. Have a seat on the table, okay? And scoot back so your leg’s stretched out.”

To his surprise, she obliged, propping herself on her hands as she looked around the exam room, focusing on canine growth charts and a calendar from a veterinary drug company. “You’re not a real doctor, are you?”

“That’s pretty much my favorite question,” he said. “See, if I were a real doctor, I’d only know the anatomy and pathology of one species, not six. I’d only have one specialty instead of nine.”

“I guess you must get that a lot.”

“Just enough to annoy me.” He took a step back, holding his gloved hands up. “Listen, I’m fine with not doing this.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like you to go for it.”

So much for playing hard to get. “I’ll need to check you out, see where else you’re injured.”

“It’s just my knee.”

“You might have an internal injury.”

“And you can tell this.”

“You’re exhibiting signs of shock. I need to examine your chest and belly for bruising and palpate your abdomen.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?” She stiffened, folding her arms tightly. “I’ll pass. I didn’t hit myself on anything. I don’t hurt anywhere. It’s just the knee.”

He wasn’t about to push her. The situation was already bizarre enough. “I could call EMS, but on a night like tonight, I’d hate to call them for anything less than a life-threatening emergency,” he said.

“This isn’t life threatening,” the woman said. “Believe me, I know the difference.”

“Okay. Just the knee for the time being. But if you feel anything—double vision, dizziness, anything—you need to let me know.” He checked her blood pressure. It was in the normal range, a good sign. An internal bleed caused the pressure to drop. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s have a look at that knee.”

She lay back and covered her eyes with her forearm. “You’ll understand if I don’t watch.”

“I noticed you’re not fond of blood.” He selected a pair of bandage cutters and started at the hem of the dark wool trousers, cutting upward. The thin, expensive-looking leather of her boot was drenched in blood. He kept cutting upward, hoping he didn’t have to go so far that he’d look like a complete perv. The cut was arc shaped; she must have sliced it on something under the dashboard. “You’ve got a gash here, just above the knee.” The laceration probably hurt like hell. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it appeared to be a bleeder. “You need sutures,” he said.

“Can you do it?”

“I’m no plastic surgeon. Whatever I do is bound to leave a scar.”

“Then can you stop the bleeding and I’ll find a surgeon in the morning?”

“It can’t wait that long. The risk of infection is too high. The maximum any doc would allow is seven hours. Roads’ll still be closed in the morning.”

“Then stitch it up, and I’ll live with the scar.”

For a woman this good-looking, it was an unexpected remark. “All right. I can numb the area … it’ll probably need a dozen stitches. If I make them really small, it’ll minimize the scarring.” He considered offering her a tranquilizer to calm her down, but wasn’t sure of the dosage. She probably weighed about the same as a Rottweiler, so 80 mg should do it. Then again, maybe not. He’d stick with a local anesthetic.

“I’ll hold still for the novocaine,” she said.

“It’s lidocaine, one percent.” And he hoped it didn’t take much to numb the area. It was strange, having a patient that didn’t need restraining. He injected the local and she didn’t flinch.

“That’ll go numb in a couple of minutes,” he said.

“I’m counting on it.” She took her forearm away from her eyes, turned her head and stared at the counter. “If I’m really good, do I get one of those biscuits from the jar?”

“You can have as many as you want,” he said, making a slit in the sterile wrap of a suture tray. “They give you minty-fresh breath and whiter teeth.”

“We can all use that,” she murmured.

He changed gloves and got busy with the cleansing and suturing. Many animals had skin that was more delicate than humans. He chose 3-0 nylon with a skin-cutting needle, standard equine external suture material.

He put on a pair of magnifying glasses and angled a task light at the site, working with as much delicate precision as he could to avoid a zipperlike scar on her pale, delicate skin. He felt her starting to tremble again and wondered if he should be making small talk to ease her nerves a little and, please God, make her hold still. With his regular patients, a few sympathetic clucks usually did the trick.

“I didn’t get your name,” he said.

“It’s Sophie. Sophie Bellamy.”

“Any relation to the Bellamys that have the resort up at the north end of the lake?”

“Sort of. I was married to Greg Bellamy. We’re divorced now.”

But she still used the guy’s name, Noah observed.

“I’ve got two kids here in Avalon,” she continued.

That probably explained the name, then. What it didn’t explain was why the kids didn’t live with her. Noah reminded himself that it was none of his business. People were complicated, with a mind-boggling array of emotions and issues. Nothing was simple with this species. He found working with animals to be much more straightforward. Dealing with humans was like crossing a minefield. You never knew when something might blow up in your face.

Small talk, he thought. Distract her with small talk. “So are you here for a visit? Or just getting back from a trip?”

She paused, as though considering what to say, which was odd, since it was not a challenging question. She said, “I landed at JFK this afternoon. There were no commuter flights to Kingston-Ulster Airport because of the weather, so I rented a car and drove up. I suppose I could’ve taken the train, but I was just so anxious to get here.”

Landed at JFK from where? He didn’t ask, expecting her to fill him in. When she didn’t, he focused on his task. Human skin was remarkably similar to canine or equine, he noted. “And you’re staying with the Wilsons across the road?” he prompted.

“Not exactly. I’m using their house. It’s a summer place. Alberta—Bertie—Wilson and I have known each other since law school.”

“Oh.” His hands stilled. “You’re a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“A real lawyer?”

“Okay, I deserved that,” she said.

“You couldn’t have told me this before I stitched you up with equine sutures?”

“Would you have treated me any differently?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I might not have treated you at all. Or I might have asked you to sign a treatment waiver.”

“That’s never stopped a good lawyer.” She quickly added, “But you don’t have a thing to worry about. You rescued me and made the bleeding stop. The last thing in the world I’d do is sue you.”

“Good to know.” Noah removed the surgical draping from her leg and gave the wound a final washing with povidone iodine topical solution. “Although you should probably take a look. It’s not real pretty.”

She braced her hands behind her and sat up. The stitching formed a thin black curve in her pale flesh, now painted amber with the disinfectant. “You stopped the bleeding,” she said again.

“It appears so.” He laid a gauze patch over the wound. “I have to bandage this. You’ll need to be careful, not mess with the stitches or let them pull. If you were one of my usual patients, I’d fit you with a lamp-shade collar to keep you from chewing at the bandage.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“You need to keep this area dry if possible.”

“I think I can handle that.” She held still while he finished bandaging her. He checked her blood pressure a second time. He studied the meter. “No change,” he said. “That’s good.”

“Thank you. Really, I can’t thank you enough.”

He held both her hands as she gingerly let herself down off the table. She swayed a little, and he slipped his arm around her. “Easy now,” he said. “You’re going to need to keep that leg elevated as much as possible tonight.”

“All right.”

The shock of holding her in his arms struck him. His chin brushed over her silky hair. She smelled like crisp winter wind, and she felt both soft and light.

She seemed equally startled by his touch, and a small shudder went through her. Fear? Relief? He couldn’t tell. Then, very gently, she extracted herself from his arms. He led the way to the reception area. Mildred’s workstation was as meticulously neat as his assistant herself was. Noah’s desk was cluttered with journals and reference books, toys and little figurines, cards from patients’ owners. There was a small bulletin board entirely devoted to notes from kids and photos of them with their pets. Noah was a complete sucker for kids.

“Thank you again,” she said. “You need to let me know what I owe you.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I never kid. You performed a professional service. You’re entitled to charge for that.”

“Right.” Spoken like a true lawyer. If he’d performed the same procedure on a Doberman, he would’ve charged a few hundred bucks. “It’s on the house. You should be seen by a doctor as soon as possible.”

“Well. You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty,” she said. “My hero.”

He still detected a subtle vibrato of fear in her voice, so he suspected she was just trying to show him some bravado—or irony. “No one’s ever called me that before.”

“I bet some of your patients would if they could talk.” She looked away, and he was glad to see a bit of color in her face. And damn, she was one good-looking woman. “Anyway. I should get down to the cottage now—”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“But—”

“The roads are worse than ever. I know there’s a driveway down to the Wilsons’, but it’s buried under feet of snow. The place is probably freezing. Tonight, you’re staying here.”

She looked around the clinic. “So you’re going to put me in a crate in the back?”

“Right next to Mrs. Levinson’s Manx cat.” He gestured at the Naugahyde bench in the waiting area. “Have a seat and put your leg up. I need to check on my patients, and then we’ll go over to the house. It’s not the Ritz, but I’ll give you something to eat and a place to sleep. I’ve got tons of room.”

“I’ve already troubled you far too much—”

“Then a little more won’t matter.”

“But—”

“Seriously, it’s no trouble.” He went in the back, where dim bluish night-lights illuminated the area. Toby the cat was alert but seemed content in her crate. She had plenty of water. Brutus, the beagle, was sound asleep and snoring loudly. The other cat, Clementine, sat methodically grooming itself.

Noah detached its nearly empty water bottle. “Did you see her, Clem?” he whispered. “Can you believe my luck? I won the girl-stuck-in-the-ditch lottery.”

The cat blinked at him, then lifted a forepaw and started grooming it.

“Yeah, high fives to you, too,” Noah said. Sure, an accident had brought Sophie to him. But maybe fate had a hand in it, too. The most gorgeous woman in the galaxy, a woman who called him “my hero,” was going to be moving in across the road from him.

All right, so he was probably reading too much into a chance encounter. But what the hey. Han Solo wouldn’t hesitate to make the most of the situation. She was beautiful and had made a point of telling him she was single. And she had kids. Noah loved kids. He’d always wanted a houseful. His last girlfriend had left him over the issue of wanting kids. Now here was a woman who already had some.

He washed up at the sink, reminding himself not to get ahead of himself, something he had a habit of doing. Fate had dropped a golden opportunity in his hands. Now it was up to him to see what this might become.

Noah was pretty sure he’d never met anyone like Sophie Bellamy. He wondered who she really was, besides some guy’s ex-wife. He wondered where she had come from and what had driven her here in the dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, and if the desperation he glimpsed in her eyes was something that should worry him.

Part Two

One month earlier

Epiphany

An epiphany is a sudden realization, insight or rebirth, often brought on by a life-altering event.

Originally from the Greek for “appearance” or “manifestation,” Epiphany is a Christian feast, also know as Twelfth Day, as it is the twelfth day after Christmas. Traditionally, this coincides with the visit of the Magi. The day is marked by feasting and celebration.

Gougères

Gougères are airy French cheese puffs that originated in France, and are traditionally served this time of year with champagne dry, not brut.

1 cup water

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup flour

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups coarsely grated Gruyère cheese

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the water, butter and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to moderate. Add flour all at once and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture pulls away from side of pan.

Transfer mixture—known as pâte à choux—to a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat in the eggs, one at a time. If the batter is too stiff, add another egg.

Stir the Gruyère into the pâte à choux and drop by tablespoons, about one inch apart, on the baking sheet. Bake for about twenty-five minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Two

The Peace Palace

The Hague, Holland

6 January – Epiphany

The shiny black limousine glided to a stop in front of the carved-stone Gothic building, its blocky silhouette cutting into the false glow of yellow fog lights. A hard rain peppered the roof of the Citroën with the tinny sound of birdshot.

Behind the bulletproof glass windows of the passenger compartment, Sophie Bellamy performed one final check of her hair and makeup and snapped her compact shut. She tucked her evening bag into a cubby in the armrest. With security so tight at the palace these days, it was just simpler to enter the building with nothing but her prescreened credential card and the clothes on her back.

When she’d first started attending functions at the Peace Palace, she used to feel naked without an evening bag. Now she’d grown used to spending a formal evening without lipstick or comb, a set of keys or a mobile phone. Such things were forbidden in the interest of security.

Tonight, cautious measures were warranted. The recent decision rendered by the International Criminal Court on war crimes, a case that had consumed two years of her life, was controversial and apt to incite violence.

The limo took its place in a line behind a few others and waited its turn. Sophie used to be consumed by excitement when she attended ceremonial events, but now they had become routine. It was amazing how accustomed to this she had grown. Drivers and security agents, a couture wardrobe and smiling dignitaries, translations whispered into an earpiece—all were commonplace to her these days.

Guests were being shuttled to the outer guard gate under black umbrellas, their corrugated shadows reflecting silver-black on the cut-stone surface of the Paleisplein. She’d been told to expect media coverage of the event, but she only saw one windowless news van, its bedraggled crew setting up the requisite thirty meters from the building. Despite the historic significance of tonight’s event, despite the fact that Queen Beatrix herself would be in attendance, the occasion would go unnoticed by the world at large. In America, people were too busy watching the latest Internet video to tune in to the fact that the geography of Africa had just changed, thanks, in large part, to Sophie herself.

Her phone vibrated—a photo and text message from her son, Max: white sand beach and turquoise sea with the caption “St Croix awesome. Dad & Nina getting ready 2 tie the knot. Xoxo!”

Sophie stared at the words from her twelve-year-old. She’d known today was the day, though she’d been trying not to think about it. Her ex was on a tropical island, about to marry the woman who had stepped into the shoes Sophie had left vacant. She gently closed the phone and held it against her chest, trying to quiet the feelings churning inside her and gnawing a hole in her heart. Not possible. Not even tonight.

André, her driver, turned on the hazard lights to signal that he was about to exit the vehicle. He adjusted the flat cap of his uniform. His shoulders lifted as he took a deep breath. A native of Senegal, André had never been a fan of the weather in Northern Europe, particularly in January.

A sudden squeal of tires and a sound like a gunshot erupted. Without a single beat of hesitation, Sophie dropped to the floorboards, at the same time grabbing for the car phone. In the front seat, André did the same. Then came a honking horn and a voice over the loudspeaker, giving the all-clear in Dutch, French and English.

André lowered the shield between the driver and passenger compartment. “C’est rien,” he said. “A car backfired, that is all. Merde. Always some reason to be on edge.”

For the past week, the city had been on special alert due to gang violence, and foreign service drivers were often targets for robbery, since they tended to park for hours in public places, sleeping in their cars.

Sophie reached for the compact mirror to check herself again. She’d undergone hours of crisis training and she dealt with some of the most dangerous people in the world, yet she never really feared for her own safety. There were so many security measures in place that the risk was extremely low.

André held up a gloved hand to ask her wordlessly if she was ready. She abandoned vanity and nodded, clutching the laminated carte d’identité in her hand. The passenger door opened and a dark umbrella bloomed overhead, held by a liveried palace attendant.

“On y va, alors,” she said to André. Here we go.

“Assurément, madame,” he said in his lilting French-African accent. “J’attends.”

Of course he would be waiting, she thought. He always did. And thank God for that. She was going to be high as a kite by the end of the evening, on champagne and a soaring sense of accomplishment, with no one to babble her news to. André was a good listener. During the short drive tonight from Sophie’s residence to the palace, she had confessed to him how much she missed her children.

She would have loved to have Max and her daughter Daisy by her side tonight, to bear witness to the honors that would be bestowed upon her. But they were an ocean away, with their father who on this very day was getting married. Married. Perhaps at this very moment, her ex-husband was getting remarried.

The knowledge sat like a stone in her shoe. The dull truth of it stole some of the glitter from the evening.

Stop it, she admonished herself. This is your night.

She emerged from the car. Her foot slipped on the wet cobblestones and, for a nightmarish second, she nearly went down. A strong arm caught her around the waist, propping her up. “André,” she said a little breathlessly, “you just averted a disaster.”

“Rien du tout, madame,” he replied, hovering close. The light glimmered over his solemn, kindly face.

It occurred to her that this was the closest she’d come to being held in a man’s arms in … far too long. She shut down the entirely inappropriate thought, steadied her footing and stepped away from him. The cold drilled into her. Her long cashmere coat wasn’t enough, not tonight. There were predictions of snow. It would be a rare occurrence for The Hague, but already, the rain was hardening to sleet. Under the broad umbrella, she hurried past the guardhouse to the first checkpoint. A walkway circled the eternal peace flame monument, shielded from the weather by a hammered metal hood. It was another twenty meters to the portico, which had been fitted with an awning and red carpet for the occasion. Once she was safely under the shelter of the arched awning, her attendant murmured, “Bonsoir, madame. Et bienvenue.” Most of the personnel spoke in French which, along with English, was the common language of the international courts.

“Merci.”

The attendant with the umbrella ducked back out into the rain to collect the next guest.

The line to the main entrance moved slowly, as there was a cloakroom to pass through, and another security checkpoint. Sophie didn’t know any of the people in line, but she recognized many of them—black-clad dignitaries and their families, Africans in ceremonial garb, diplomats from all over the globe. They had come to pay homage to a new day for Umoja, the nation the court had just liberated from a warlord financed by a corrupt diamond syndicate operating outside the law.

There was an American family ahead of her. The uniformed husband had the effortless good posture of a career military man. The wife and teenage daughters surrounded him like satellite nations. Sophie vaguely recognized the husband, an attaché from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. She didn’t greet them, not wanting to interrupt what appeared to be a delightful family outing.

The attaché’s wife pressed close to him as though shielding herself from the cold. She was plump and easy in her confidence; like Sophie, she wore plain gold earrings unadorned by gemstones. To wear stones, especially diamonds, to an event like this would be the height of insensitivity.

The American family looked safe and secure in their little world of four. In that moment, Sophie missed her own children so much it felt like a stab wound.

A searingly cold wind swept across the plaza, stinging her eyes. She blinked fast, not wanting her mascara to run. She lifted the collar of her coat and turned her back to the wind. At a side entrance to the palace was a caterer’s van. Haagsche Voedsel Dienst, S.A. Good, thought Sophie. The best caterer in town. They must be running late, though. The white-coated waiters were rushing about with a frantic air, shoving heavy carts into a service entrance to the building and speaking in agitated fashion to one another.

Sophie was shivering when she reached the cloakroom. There were few places that felt as cold as The Hague did during a winter storm. The city lay below sea level, built on land reclaimed from the frigid North Sea, walled off by dikes. During a storm, it felt as though nature was trying to wrest back its own. The wind sliced like a knife, cutting to the bone. In The Hague there was a saying: If I can stand up in it, I can go out in it.

Reluctantly, she peeled off her butter-soft deerskin gloves and surrendered her long cashmere coat, handing them over to an attendant and making a note of the numbered card: 47. She slipped it into the pocket of her dress. As she smoothed the front of her outfit and turned toward the entranceway, she noticed the attaché’s wife watching her, a hint of both envy and admiration in her eyes.

Sophie had spent half the day getting ready. She was wearing a couture gown and shoes that cost more than a piece of furniture. The gown fit her beautifully. She’d been a distance swimmer in college and still competed at the master’s level, an endeavor that kept her in shape. Her every blond hair was in place, pulled sleekly back into a chignon. Bijou, her stylist, claimed she looked exactly like a latter-day Grace Kelly. An actress, which was appropriate. A big part of this job had to do with image and theatrics. Smoke and mirrors.

She smiled at the attaché’s wife and felt a twinge of irony. Don’t envy me, she wanted to say. You have your family with you. What more could you want?

After walking through a metal detector, she proceeded unaccompanied down an open, colonnaded walkway toward the grand ballroom. She waited amid a milling crowd in the doorway for her turn to be announced.

Standing on tiptoe, she craned her neck to see. So much of her work took place in the glass-and-steel high-rise of the International Criminal Court that she often forgot the romantic ideals that had driven her career to this point. But here in the ornate palace, built by Andrew Carnegie with no regard for expense, she remembered that this was a job most people only dreamed of. She was Cinderella, but without the prince.

The majordomo, resplendent in palace livery, bent toward her to study her identity card. He was wired with an interpreter’s mike, a tiny coil into his ear. “Have you an escort, madame?”

“No,” Sophie said. “I’m by myself.” In this job, who had time for a prince?

“Madame Sophie Lindstrom Bellamy,” he proclaimed in ringing tones, “au Canada et aux États-Unis.”

From Canada and the United States—she had dual citizenship, thanks to her Canadian mother and American father. Although the U.S. wasn’t a member of the ICC, the rest of the world concurred with the need for a vehicle to prosecute war criminals, so it was as a Canadian citizen that Sophie served the court. Fixing a camera-ready smile on her lips, she entered the ballroom, brilliant with golden light beaming from chandeliers and wall sconces, the air ringing with greetings from other guests. Despite the warm welcome, she understood that she would face tonight the way she had faced nearly all the greatest moments of her life—alone.

She chased away the thought with a flute of champagne served by a tall, awkward waiter. She was not about to spoil this with regrets and second thoughts. After all, it wasn’t every night you got to meet an actual queen and accept a medal of freedom from a grateful nation.

The Hague was a royal city, the seat of the Dutch government, and Queen Beatrix was tireless when it came to performing her official duties. Britain’s royals might have their scandals, but the Oranje-Nassau family of Holland had a monarch who was as hardworking as any salaried official. Security agents in street clothes discreetly patrolled the periphery of the room, their restless eyes scanning the crowd. It was an international, festive group. There was a woman in a head scarf, her tiered dress a bright flare of color, and another in a kimono, several men in colorful dashikis, as well as the Westerners in their tailored suits and evening gowns. For these few moments Sophie felt vibrant and alive, letting herself forget what was happening with her family. In their crisp, starched school uniforms, smiles displaying the gaps of lost teeth, a children’s choir performed with contagious joy, their bright voices filling the cavernous Gothic hall. The music was a mix of cultural offerings—traditional songs for Epiphany, such as “Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant” and “Ça Bergers,” as well as native dance songs and the throaty humming of a ceremonial chant.

The choir launched into “Impuka Nekati,” an action chant dramatizing the chase of a cat and mouse. They were still able to sing, these orphans of war. Sophie wished she could take every single one home with her. She recognized some of them from earlier in the week when a group of them had come to deliver flowers to the prosecution team.

Her fight to stop transnational crimes against children took all her time and attention, and the ones who paid the price for that were her own kids. How many of Max and Daisy’s recitals and performances had she missed because of work? Had her son and daughter ever sung with their faces filled with joy, or had they scanned the audience, their eyes dimming when they failed to spot their mom? Dear Lord, how she wished they could be here to see the results of their sacrifice. Maybe then, they would understand. Maybe they’d forgive her.

There was a girl, all knobby legs and big white teeth, who sang as though singing was the same as breathing for her—necessary to sustain life. When the song ended, Sophie sought out the show-stealing girl. “Your singing is beautiful,” she said.

Oh, that smile. “Thank you, madame,” said the girl. She bashfully added, “My name is Fatou. I come from the village of Kuumba.”

She didn’t have to explain further. The militia’s attack on that village had rivaled the worst of wartime atrocities. Remembering the reports of Kuumba, Sophie felt a new surge of rage at the men who committed their inhuman acts upon children like Fatou.

Imagining what those velvety brown eyes had seen, what this child had endured, made Sophie wonder how Fatou was still standing, how she could face the world. How she could open her mouth and sing.

“I’m so happy you’re here now,” Sophie said, “and that you’re safe.”

“Yes, madame. Thank you, madame.” She smiled again.

And that smile reflected all the reasons Sophie did what she did, living far from her family and working more hours than a day actually had, or so it seemed, sometimes.

Just then, a murmur rippled through the crowd. The girl looked apprehensive, but Sophie overheard someone whispering. There was a rumor of snow.

“Come,” Sophie said, taking Fatou by the hand. “Look out the window.” She led the way to a tall Gothic window and pushed aside the velvet drapes. “Look,” she said again.

Fatou cupped her hands around her eyes and leaned forward. The snow was coming down in thick flakes now, turning the palace gardens into a winter wonderland, bathed in a glow from the sodium vapor lights. “I have never seen such a thing before. It is magic, madame,” Fatou said.

Outside, on a small cobble-paved driveway, shadows flickered across the fast-whitening ground. Sophie leaned in for a closer look, noting that the courtyard was deserted and peaceful. She wished Max and Daisy could see this, the splendor and the gravitas of this night. She was glad, at least, that the friendly girl beside her was sharing the moment. She turned to her with a smile.

Fatou didn’t notice but kept looking out the window, seemingly mesmerized by the snowfall.

Three

Once everyone had marveled over the snow, the performance resumed. Sophie went to a long serving table to peruse the offerings. Like the music, the food would represent the community of nations gathered here tonight. A tray of buttery gougères, cheese pastries baked to a light golden-brown, made her mouth water, but she resisted the temptation to sample them. She couldn’t allow herself to eat anything. She needed to look her best for tonight’s presentation. Pastry crumbs or faded lip color would never do.

To her surprise, the culinary display, usually so meticulous, appeared haphazard tonight, the food and flowers artlessly displayed. The head waiter, a big-boned blond man, snapped his fingers and issued an order into the mouthpiece of his headset. As he reached to replenish the chilled prawns, he managed to break an ice sculpture, and Sophie was certain she heard him swear under his breath. Enjoy your evening, she thought as she took a flute of champagne from the end table. You won’t be back. Here at the most powerful court in the world, the catering had to be impeccable. One false move and the caterer was toast.

She made her way to a group of people gathered around Momoh Sanni Momoh, Premier of Umoja, resplendent in his robe of saffron silk and tall, intricately wound headdress. While waiting to greet him, she encountered a colleague, Bibi Lateef. A native of Umoja, Mme Lateef was decked out tonight in native garb, a startling contrast to her usual somber court robes.

“You are staring, madame,” she said to Sophie, offering a smile as bright and wide as the moon. Victory and joy danced in her eyes.

They embraced, and Sophie stepped back to regard her friend. “I’m dazzled. This is a good look for you.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Mme Lateef said, “because I will no longer be needing the robes.”

Sophie beamed with pride. Her colleague was as accomplished and educated as any of the jurists of the court, and she would be given a major role in the new government. “You have a new title, then? Can you share?”

“How do you like ‘Minister of Social Welfare’?” Mme Lateef said.

Sophie took her hand. Bibi Lateef had lost family members in the fighting; her struggle had been personal. Returning to her native land was bound to be bittersweet. “It sounds perfect for you,” Sophie said. “Congratulations. I’ll miss you, though. No one wanted to see the conclusion of this case more than I, but I’ll miss working with you.”

“There is much work to be done. Displaced families and children orphaned by war will be my most urgent concerns. You must promise to visit.”

“Of course.” Sophie had been to Umoja several times. It was a land of heartbreaking beauty, even in the wake of war. The fighting and encroachment by mining had decimated its cities, but there were vast regions that lay untouched—high red plains and mountain rain forests, and the river-fed regions where towns were already recovering.

“I will hold you to that promise,” said Mme Lateef. The genuine gratitude in her eyes touched Sophie’s heart. “I’m grateful to have known you.”

“It’s been an honor to serve the cause of justice, truly,” she said, watching her colleague’s face even as she stepped away to speak with the children in their native tongue. This was what Sophie lived for, this moment when she was absolutely certain that what she did mattered. That it was worth all the pain and sacrifices she’d made. But always the question remained—would her own children agree?

As she hung back, still waiting to greet the premier, a man with a press badge appeared. “Brooks Fordham, New York Times. Please, tell us what tonight is about.”

Sophie offered a restrained smile. “Mr. Fordham, if you really want the story, it would take hours to tell.”

“I really want the story. Why don’t you give me the digest version. And please, call me Brooks.”

Sophie knew his type—spoiled, ambitious, overeducated, handsome, and he knew it. But she obliged, summarizing the situation that had brought them to this night. Umoja had been a nation enslaved, oppressed by a semi-legal syndicate of European diamond merchants and their African collaborators, led by a notorious war criminal named General Timi Abacha. For two decades, the nation had been run by a ruthless militia funded by the blood diamond trade. In time, the atrocities became so severe that finally the world took notice.

Then came the photograph, the one that finally put Umoja on the map and in the public consciousness. The picture showed a young native boy, missing a hand and an ear, glaring at the camera with eyes that had lost all innocence. He had been ripped from his family, forced to work and punished by mutilation, all because he was small enough to fit into a mine shaft. The photograph made the front page of newspapers and journals and galvanized the world community to take action. A team of international investigators verified incidents of slavery and abuse, of child conscription and rape. The case was built with meticulous care, imperiling many of the key players. “Accidents” befell those who questioned the wrong people or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sophie knew the tale by heart, perhaps better than anyone in the room. In preparing for the case, she had sunk herself deep into the red clay earth of the landlocked nation. On a map, it was shaped like a pitcher, its spout tipping down into the top of South Africa.

And that, of course, was what made it such a rich prize. In its borderlands were some of the most prolific diamond mines in the world, yielding up rough stones of exceptional quality. For untold generations, the native tribes had defended themselves from European colonists and rival tribes. Finally, ten years before, a rogue tribe, armed and financed by diamond interests, took over the nation in a bloody coup.

Its people suffered tortures beyond imagining—rape, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Little boys were conscripted as soldiers; young girls were used and discarded, or forced to bear the children of their rapists. In preparing the case against the dictator and warlord, Sophie and her team had interviewed victims of every possible crime. There were so many stories of unspeakable brutality that some members of the staff had resigned, traumatized. Others turned numb as a defense, desensitized by an overload of horror.

Every time Sophie heard of a boy, no older than her own son, brainwashed and forced into drug addiction, and turned into a killing machine, she bled a little. When she heard of a young woman, a teenager perhaps her daughter’s age, raped within an inch of her life, she bled a little more. Every story ripped at her heart, and very early on in the case it became personal.

Protests and calls for international sanctions were insufficient. Calculating as coldly as the diamond lords who called all the shots, she set about building a case against the regime, ousting the government and restoring the natives to power.

The process had taken two years. Sophie had worked herself into exhaustion. She’d lost her marriage and now lived an ocean away from her children. But tonight she reminded herself that the battle had been won. Tonight was about recognizing those who had restored a nation to its rightful keepers. No longer did villagers flee before armies of thugs. No longer were people forced to work in the mines, suffering abuse and starvation until they died at the hands of the inhuman jackals who had stolen their country.

She felt Brooks watching her. She tried not to look at him because she was afraid he would distract her. Though they’d only just met, she sensed he had the sort of easy charm and witty insouciance that would bring a smile to her face. Emerging from the emotional pain of divorce, she was discovering she had a great liking for men. And as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she felt a blush creep upward through her cheeks.

Sophie served as assistant deputy counsel for the prosecution. When illness struck two of her superiors, she found herself directly addressing the fifteen judges of the International Criminal Court. It was said that her relentless and passionate arguments were key to attaining a conviction. After that, UN troops moved in, ousted the corrupt government and restored the exiled premier to his rightful place.

“Anyway,” she concluded, addressing Brooks, “that’s the digest version, and I can already see your eyes glazing over.”

“Jet lag,” he said, taking out a hand-size notepad and wooden pencil. “Phone number?” He flashed her a grin.

She gave him her second assistant’s mobile number. That was close enough.

He wrote it down and added some notes, then gave her his own number. “Don’t you want to write it down?” he asked.

“I already have it,” she said. It was a gift of hers. She had a near-photographic memory for phone numbers. She could remember the number of the arbitrator who had handled her divorce more than a year before. The number of her son’s hockey coach, whom she’d never met in person. The number of Greg’s new wife, Nina, though Sophie would never call it. She looked up at Brooks and repeated his phone number back to him.

“A woman of many talents,” he said. “Really, it’s an incredible story—”

“That will be reduced to a one-inch blurb under ‘Around the Globe’ and buried on page 19-A,” she finished for him.

“I’ll try for more space,” he said. “Another question.”

“Go ahead.” She folded her arms in front of her.

“Is it true you gained access to the syndicate’s banking records by using the same methods as the Nigerian banking scam?”

Sophie felt her mouth twitch with a smile. “We finally found a use for e-mail spam. The investigative team did the technical work, but it did amount to duping the syndicate’s chief treasurer. It’s not the oldest trick in the book, but close. And it made them look incredibly foolish.”

In the tradition of the Nigerian banking spammers whose scam was so notorious it was known as a 419, they had targeted the dictator’s top treasury official, Mr. Femi Gidado. He was known to be an ambitious, greedy man whose high-risk investments had brought high returns to the regime.

Having learned this about him, Sophie’s team had sent him a “phishing” e-mail, posing as an innocent government official in charge of a staggering fortune. They had “begged his worthy indulgence” on a “matter of utmost financial urgency,” promising a sum of $3.5 million if he would simply provide his banking information to be used in a simple, clandestine transaction.

After a relatively short exchange of e-mail information, Sophie and her staff found themselves in possession of the regime’s fortune. Since it was obtained through illegal means, they couldn’t use the money at all—but the insanely simple ploy gave them leverage. They offered the dishonest treasurer a choice. He could serve as the key witness in the case against the dictator, or his participation in the banking scam would be revealed to his superiors. Since the punishment for betrayal was excruciating torture followed by a beheading, he chose to throw in his lot with the Umojan people. His cooperation had proved to be the undoing of the regime.

“What became of General Timi Abacha? And the head of the diamond syndicate, Serge Henger?”

Great. He would ask her that. “They’re still at large. But since everything was seized, they have no staff or assets. It’s only a matter of time before they are hunted down.” She paused, then added, “And I hope you’ll include that in your article.”

“Are you kidding? We should make a video to run on the paper’s Web site. You’re great, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you worried about retaliation? Attacks? Before the army was disbanded, they were one of the most heavily armed militias in the region. It’s said a number of them have gone into hiding right here in The Netherlands.”

“Cowards who are motivated by greed will always be with us. I’m not going to live in fear because of them.”

He wrote that down—a good sound byte. “You’re very young to hold this position,” he remarked.

“Age has nothing to do with it,” Sophie told him. “It’s dedication and experience, and I have plenty of that.” She knew he could discover her age with a few clicks on his BlackBerry; it was a matter of public record, as were her blood type, passport numbers, rank in class at her law school and the fact that she’d set collegiate records in distance swimming. She decided to end his suspense. “Thirty-nine,” she said. “Divorced. Two kids who live in Avalon, New York.” Summed up like that, so nice and neat, she sounded like a professional, career-minded international lawyer. The nonchalance of her “They live in Avalon, New York” comment did not begin to cover the agony of her shattered family in the aftermath of divorce. And she wasn’t about to go there with him, though she lived with the pain of it every day. She was a mother without kids to raise. Her mothering was carried out by phone, e-mail, text message and IMs. But the things that happened in her absence were legion. She might find that Daisy had turned into a brunette or Max had started drum lessons … She might find that her ex-husband was getting married. That Max was still begging for a dog, and that Daisy was about to start college. Sophie was forever torn between her simultaneous yearning to be involved in their lives and her abject fear that she’d make more of a mess of her kids than she already had.

Brooks was asking her something, and she realized she hadn’t been listening at all. “You have a whole room full of dignitaries here,” she told him, gesturing at the milling guests. “Why me?”

“Because you make good copy,” he told her bluntly. “I write about you, and I’ve got half a chance of getting it placed somewhere other than in the footnotes.”

“And I should help you because …”

“Look,” he said, “this is a big deal, what’s happening here—a sovereign nation was saved from being erased off the map. But we both know John Q. Public doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that. He’s too busy texting his vote for American Idol to worry about the state of some third-world country he’s never heard of.”

“Don’t think writing about me is going to change that.”

“It will if you do something outrageous that’ll play well on YouTube.”

“What, like drive across Europe wearing Depends? I can see you’re completely tuned into the solemnity of the occasion,” she said.

“Seriously,” he said, “how does a nice girl like you wind up toppling warlords and dictators?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“When people think of world court personnel, they think of seventy-year-old guys in musty robes. Not …” He gave her a meaningful look.

She forced herself not to respond. One of the strictest rules of this job was to increase public perception of the court’s mission. “First of all, you could clarify the trial was through the International Criminal Court, which was created only six years ago, so it’s not some venerable, old institution. And honestly, the only reason I served as a prosecutor is that the lead counsel and his deputy got sick right before the first hearing.” Willem De Groot was an older man who shared her passion for a just cause. Hooked up to a dialysis machine, he had guided her and his staff through the case, week after week.

“So it was a matter of luck meeting opportunity,” Brooks said.

“Bad luck meeting necessity,” she clarified. “I’d give anything if he could be here tonight.”

“You really don’t want to be the star of this, do you? What a waste of looks and talent.”

“You seem preoccupied with my looks.”

“It’s the dress. You had to have known it would affect men this way, even without jewelry. I assume you’re making a statement.”

“I’m opposed to diamonds for obvious reasons. And so many other stones are questionable that it’s simpler to wear none. But pearls! They’re produced by oysters and hunted by happy divers, right? I should take to wearing pearls.”

“You could wear pearls in the video,” he said.

Sophie was about two sips of champagne away from ditching this guy. “You’re obnoxious, Mr. Fordham. And I’m leaving. Everything is about to start.”

“One final question and I’ll leave you alone,” he added.

“Go ahead.”

“Will you let me take you to dinner tomorrow night?”

“That doesn’t sound like leaving me alone.”

“But does it sound … like a plan?”

She hesitated. He probably had a degree from an Ivy League school, a pedigree back to the Mayflower and a brazen sense of entitlement. Still, going to dinner with him meant not eating alone. “I’ll have my assistant call you to arrange things.”

“It’s a dinner date, not an international summit.”

“My assistants are excellent at arranging things,” she assured him. A date with this man might be a diversion. Her romantic past was … undistinguished. Perhaps that was the word for it. Forgettable teenage gropings in high school had given way to slightly more sophisticated dating in college—frat parties and raves. And then there was Greg. They’d married before they even knew who they were. It was like grafting together two incompatible trees—tolerable at first but eventually the differences could not be ignored. Had she loved him? Everyone loved Greg. He was the adorable, charming, indulged youngest of the four Bellamy siblings. How could anyone not love him? This sense that she should love him had sustained the marriage over sixteen years, long enough for her to be absolutely certain the love was gone. Afterward she had walked around shell-shocked for several months.

Only last fall had she dared to stick her toe into the dating pool. The first time a man had asked her out, she had regarded him as if he’d spoken in a dead language. Go out? On a date? What a novel idea.

Thus began the dating phase, which was infinitely preferable to the postdivorce shell-shocked phase. Her first prospect was a diplomatic protection agent who was more interested in showing off his 007 trappings—an alert device hidden in his lapel, a cigarette pack that could dispense cyanide gas—than in discovering who Sophie actually was. Despite her disenchantment, she’d tried to move seamlessly into the sleeping-around phase during which a newly divorced woman indulged her every fantasy. Women who slept around always seemed as though they were having such fun. Yet Sophie found it disappointing and stressful and quickly retreated to the benign safety of casual dating. She told herself she would stay open to the possibility that one day one of the attachés or diplomats or Georgian nationals she was dating would unexpectedly inflame her passions. So far, it hadn’t happened.

She regarded Brooks and wondered if he might be the one to make her drop her natural reserve. To make her remember what it felt like to be held in someone’s arms. Not tonight, she thought.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, and headed for the dais.

She looked around for a place to set down her champagne flute, and approached a passing waiter. He didn’t seem to see her.

“Pardon,” she said.

The man jumped, and a glass fell from his tray, shattering on the marble floor. In the immediate area, people fell silent and turned to stare. At the periphery of the room, the security agents tensed, prepared to take action.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie murmured. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s nothing, madame,” he murmured, his accent very thick. She was about to ask him where he was from when she caught the look in his eyes. It was a glittering, burning fury all out of proportion with a broken glass.

Sophie lifted her eyebrows, wordlessly conveying a warning, the way she might to a key witness. He moved slightly, and the light fell on his face, illuminating ebony skin highlighted by twin rows of shiny scars, a pattern of ritual scarring that looked vaguely familiar to her. He was Umojan, she surmised. Employing him was a nice touch by the caterer, and it explained his inexperience.

The waiter started to move away.

“Pardon me,” Sophie said to him.

He turned back, seeming more agitated than ever.

You’re a waiter, she thought, get over yourself. She held out the champagne glass. “Can you please take this? They’re about to begin.”

He all but snatched it from her and stalked away. Touchy fellow, she thought. We just liberated your country. You ought to be happier about that. She dismissed the incident from her mind. Focus, Sophie, she told herself. You’re about to meet a queen.

Four

The group on the raised dais at the end of the ballroom consisted of three of the justices from the International Criminal Court, another from the Court of Justice, a liaison from the United Nations and the queen of the Netherlands herself, whose bloodlines went back through seventeen generations of Dutch royalty. Sophie joined the rest of the prosecution team on a lower tier, where the event producer’s assistant had instructed them to wait. This group included Sophie’s best friend and colleague, Tariq Abdul-Hakeem. Like her, he was an assistant deputy to the ICC and they’d worked together on the case. She’d known Tariq from their intern days in London, years ago, and he was one of her favorite people in the world. He was also one of the most attractive, with the kind of looks found in high-fashion spreads—creamy skin and intense eyes, and features that appeared to have been shaped by an idealistic sculptor. He was a gifted linguist and had the most delicious English accent. While working together, they’d become more than colleagues. He was one of the few people in the world she’d opened up to, telling him about the situation with Greg and her children.

“Are you all right, Petal?” Tariq whispered to her.

“Of course, I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Quite possibly, you’re somewhat bouleversée by the fact that your ex-husband is getting married today.”

She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, even though she knew Tariq would not be fooled. “So he’s getting married. We knew it was coming. He’s a guy. It’s what they do. They remarry.” She gave a small, soft laugh. “Somebody’s got to finish raising them.” Despite her sarcasm, she remembered Max’s text message with a twinge, along with the perennial unanswerable question—was this career worth the price she’d paid?

“Such a generous opinion of the male sex,” Tariq said. “After tonight’s ceremony, I’m taking you out and getting you so drunk you’ll forget your own name.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“Isn’t that what you Yanks do, go out and get—what’s the term?—shitfaced?”

She sniffed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t even drink.”

“But I buy drinks. I’ll take you to Club Sillies after this.”

Sophie knew she would go, and she’d be the envy of every woman there, at the hottest nightclub in The Hague, a place frequented by the European elite. Tariq never failed to turn heads; he was elegant, with a subtle layer of sadness in his regard. The sadness was real, but few people knew the reason for it. Oxford-educated, one of the top jurists in the free world, he dedicated his every waking moment to the law. Yet as a gay man, and a Saudi, he struggled every day; in his native country, same-sex relations carried a penalty of death.

“Anyway,” she said, “thank you for the offer. I really should get home afterward. I have work—”

“Yes, Allah forbid that you should have anything resembling a life.”

“I have a life.”

“You have work—at court, and at the office, and in the field—and then you have sleep. Oh, yes. You also have that entirely dreadful sport you do.”

“It’s not dreadful. Distance swimming is good for me.” She was always in training for some kind of extreme race or another. She never placed first. Ever. But she always finished. Every time.

For Tariq, whose only athletic activity was a dash for the elevator, her sport seemed madly dangerous.

“Paddling about in a wet suit in freezing waters is mad. You need to have some fun, Petal. You need a life beyond work. And don’t think I don’t know why you refuse to unbend a little. Because if you were actually to have fun and enjoy something, that would interfere with your penance.”

“You don’t know the first thing about doing penance.”

“Guilt is not the exclusive domain of Christians,” he pointed out. “You feel guilty about your kids, so you refuse to allow yourself to enjoy anything. Simple as that. And clearly it doesn’t do a bit of good. Whether you’re in court prosecuting terrorists or riding a bicycle along Hogeweg during tourist season doesn’t matter.”

“True. I’m still separated from my kids.”

“Here is what you’re giving your kids—a mother who cares enough about the world to make it a better place for them. Do you really think they’d rather have you driving carpool to soccer practice and the mall?”

“Sometimes, yes.” She knew it was unproductive, but couldn’t help wondering if things would have turned out differently for Daisy if she had been more present.

“My dear mum was there every day, and look at me. A quivering mess.”

“A well-adjusted person.”

“An outcast. A heretic.” He spoke jokingly, but she sensed his underlying pain, different from her own yet somehow familiar.

“Stop,” she said in an undertone. She and Tariq were both career-focused. Trying to escape the person he really was, he had made this court his life. “It’s all I have,” he’d told her many times in the past. “Fortunately, it’s all I want.”

Sophie couldn’t say the same, so she said nothing. She saw the premier and queen moving toward them, and cleared her throat to warn Tariq. The queen of the Netherlands looked like everyone’s favorite aunt, displaying an abundance of personal charm twinkling in her eyes as she went about her duties, treating each person as though, in that moment, they were the most important person in the world.

“Thank you very much for your service,” she murmured as the line of dignitaries passed.

I’m a dignitary, thought Sophie. What do you know, I’m a dignitary.

When she was presented, she responded with a poise she’d been practicing for days, dipping slightly into a curtsy, addressing the queen as Uwe Majesteit. It was all very solemn and ritualized, no surprises. No one would ever know that deep down, her Inner Girl was exulting. She was meeting a queen, a real live queen.

Queen Beatrix was a lawyer like Sophie. Maybe the two of them would have talked, compared shoe-shopping experiences, swapped gossip like girlfriends.

She imagined the conversation. “Have you seen the new George Clooney movie? I like your earrings. Which museum did they come from? What’s it like having an airport named after you? And tell me about your family. How do you make it work?”

Yes, that was the burning question. The thing Sophie wanted to ask other working women. Here they were watching the rebirth of a nation, and she was fixated on domestic troubles. All she wanted to know was how Beatrix managed to run a country and still keep her marriage intact, her family together.

Some things, said a quiet inner voice, you sacrifice.

The queen was a widow now, her children grown. Sophie wondered if she had regrets, if she wished she’d done something differently, spent more time with them, had more parent-teacher conferences, restricted their TV, read them more good-night stories.

Color guards presented the flags of the UN and the court of the Netherlands and finally, with grave ceremony, the flag of Umoja, planting it like a tree behind the dais. The newly appointed ambassador, Mr. Bensouda, took his place at the microphone. Behind him stood six attendants, each holding a ceremonial medal of honor. By the end of the night, one of them would belong to Sophie.

“Mesdames et messieurs,” the ambassador said, “bienvenue, les visiteurs distingues….” He launched into the saga of his country.

The medals were bestowed and praises sung. Her black dress perfectly showed off the token of thanks from a grateful people. Interesting notion for a line of clothing, she thought, her mind wandering. Garments for dignitaries, with hidden credential pockets and necklines fashioned to display medals to advantage. Then she realized what she was doing—trying to detach herself from this huge moment. She couldn’t help it. Something was missing from her life and she could not pretend otherwise. How could she have a triumph like this without her family to witness it? The thought brought about a flash of resentment toward Greg. This was a big day for him, as well, though she wished she could stop dwelling on that. Still, it wasn’t every day the man who had once been your husband married someone else.

A podium and microphone transformed normal people into long-winded bombasts, and Sophie was trapped on stage with the crowd of dignitaries. Tonight, she’d foolishly, recklessly had two and a half glasses of champagne. As a result, she listened to speeches about the historic event in a state of supreme discomfort, with a bladder so full that her back teeth were floating.

No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave the dais. She couldn’t wait another moment. She had to decide which was the bigger diplomatic faux pas—leaving the dais before she was dismissed, or wetting herself in front of the queen.

Sophie made her move. She took a step back, slipping behind the line of people as she followed the black snakes of electrical cables that connected the lighting and sound. At the back of the dais, she stepped down and slipped out through a side door to an empty corridor.

She rounded a corner and encountered a pair of men in dark clothing, their shoulders dampened by melting snow. They stiffened and whirled on her, and Sophie froze, holding her hands with the palms facing out. Security agents, she thought. They were suspicious of everything. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m trying to find the lavatory.”

She followed signs to the ladies’ room. Passing through the antechamber, she smiled briefly at the attendant, a sleepy-looking older woman reading a copy of a Dutch gossip magazine.

Sophie used the restroom, then went to a sink to freshen up. From one of the stalls came the unmistakable sound of someone being sick. Lovely. What idiot would get drunk at an event like this? Sophie wondered. She had no evening bag, so she had to pat her hair with a damp hand and dab at her makeup with a tissue.

A girl came out of the stall. It was Fatou, the girl who had sung so beautifully earlier. Despite her dark skin, she looked pallid, yet her eyes were clear, not bleary from drinking or drugs. She stood at one of the sinks, hands braced on the countertop, her hair falling forward. She turned on the water and rinsed her face and mouth but somehow looked even worse when she finished.

“You seem ill,” Sophie said to her in French. “Should I try to get some help for you?”

“No thank you, madame,” Fatou replied. “I’m not ill.” She touched her stomach.

Sophie wasn’t sure what to say to that. The girl was clearly too young to be starting a family, yet there was something about her that Sophie recognized. A tiny gleam of excitement mingling with desperation. Sophie recognized it because she had been there, too, and so had her own daughter, Daisy, for that matter. “You’re expecting a baby,” she said quietly.

Fatou stared at the floor.

“Do you have someone to look after you?” Sophie asked.

She nodded. “I am a student intern. I live with a family in Lilles. I suppose, under the circumstances, that is fortunate. But my hosts are not going to be happy about this.”

“They will be. Not right away, but … perhaps eventually.” Sophie spoke from experience. At the same time, she felt a welling of sadness and regret. She hadn’t been there for Daisy, the way her own mother hadn’t been there for her.

Fatou stepped back and straightened her dress, a traditional garment made beautiful by the girl’s youth.

“Better?” Sophie asked.

“For now.”

Sophie placed two euros on the attendant’s tip plate and stepped out into the colonnaded hallway. Through a window in the high-ceilinged corridor, she caught a glimpse of fat white snowflakes coming down fast and thick, illuminated by the floodlights outside. Soon, the courtyard and gardens would be a panorama of winter white.

“What does it feel like?” Fatou asked softly over her shoulder.

“The snow?” Sophie made a snap decision. A very un-Sophie-like decision. She took Fatou by the hand and tugged her toward the exit to the courtyard. “Come. You can find out now.”

Sophie was aware that it was risky to disappear even for a few minutes from a professional event. But she was feeling strange and reckless tonight. The case that had consumed her was officially over. Her children were half a world away in the sunny Caribbean, watching their father remarry. Never had she felt so disconnected yet also aware of how fleeting and tenuous some things were, such as snowfall in coastal Holland. A greeting from a queen. An anthem sung by war orphans. Or the youth of a girl who was pregnant before she was done with childhood herself.

The arched doorway, shadowed by a pair of brooding security cameras, framed a world transformed. Fatou gasped and said something in her native tongue. Then she balked under the dagged canvas awning. Sophie stepped out into the fast-falling snow, turning her face up to feel the soft flakes on her cheeks.

“See, it’s harmless,” she said. “Much more pleasant than rain.”

Fatou joined her in the stone-paved courtyard. Her face lit up with pure wonder, reflecting the glow of the sodium vapor floodlights. She laughed in amazement at the sensation of snow. It now covered everything in a pristine layer of white. “It is, madame,” she said. “It is a wondrous thing.”

Sophie took a mental snapshot of the girl with her face tilted up to the sky, laughing as snowflakes caught in her eyelashes. The moment with Fatou was a reminder that there was beauty and joy in the world, even in the most unlikely of places. She pointed out the individual snowflakes landing on a low garden wall, each one a tiny miracle of perfection.

“They look like the smallest of flowers,” Fatou said.

“Yes.” Sophie took her hand again. Both she and the girl were freezing by now. “We should go back inside.”

She heard something then, a footfall and a breathy voice, and turned to see a hulking shadow coming toward her. “Go inside,” she said more urgently to Fatou. “Quickly. I’ll join you in a moment.”

Sophie recognized the set of his shoulders, silhouetted by the exterior lights. André? She frowned at him. Staggering, he lurched around the side of the building, his dark footprints marking a sinuous path behind him. She wondered what had gotten into him. André was an observant Muslim. He didn’t drink. Sophie hurried forward.

“André,” she said, “qu’est-ce qui ce passe? What happened?”

“Madame,” he mumbled, and sank to his knees, right there in the snow. Then he toppled sideways, resembling a bear felled by a hunter.

At some moment, between the time he spoke and the time his head hit the ground, Sophie’s confusion turned to ice-cold clarity. No, she thought, even though she knew the denial was in vain. Oh, no.

She landed on her knees beside André, scarcely feeling the bite of the cold through her dress and her stockings. “Please, oh, please be all right.”

Yet even as the words left her mouth, Sophie knew it was already too late. She had never seen a person die before, yet when it happened, she recognized the event on some horrible gut level. He emitted an eerie rattle; then there was a shutting down. A slackening. A release. She clung to a moment of disbelief. She had just spoken with her driver, a man who was dedicated to keeping her safe. Now some violence had been done to him.

The hot, meaty odor of blood was so strong she couldn’t believe she hadn’t smelled it earlier.

He was wounded in the chest, the gut. Probably more places than that. She couldn’t tell whether they were stab or gunshot wounds. She had never seen such a thing up close. As she knelt next to him, feeling the amazing speed with which the heat left his body, she felt as though her own blood had stopped circulating and she simply dropped to the ground. He lay so still, his bulky form limned by the yellowish lights.

Sophie looked around the area, finding it eerily deserted. She screamed for help, her voice echoing through the courtyard. She was edging toward panic as she tried to pat his torn and bloody overcoat back into its proper place. “Please,” she said, over and over again, with no idea what she was pleading for. “Please.” She pressed herself down on top of him, pressed her face to his as though she could somehow infuse her own life back into him. This was André, her friend, a gentle giant who had never done anything but good in the world, who was dedicated to Sophie, devoted to keeping her safe, wherever she went.

Keeping her safe.

Her rational mind pushed past the terrible sense of loss. André had come to find her. Not to seek help or to bid her a sentimental farewell. That wouldn’t be like him. No, he had forced himself to survive his wounds long enough to find Sophie for only one reason she could imagine—to warn her.

Five

Sophie had occasionally wondered how she would react in a crisis. Would she be helpless? She didn’t know. She did not disappoint herself by flying into hysterics or folding herself into a whimpering fetal position. Instead, she froze inside, her emotions barricaded behind a stone-cold facade. She felt as if a thick layer of ice insulated her from all feeling. It had to be that way. If she allowed herself to feel one single thing, she would fall apart. She would be lost.

She heard a sound behind her and jumped up, terror surging through her. “Fatou. You startled me. I told you to go inside.” In spite of herself, she was glad for the girl’s presence.

Fatou wore an expression of quiet resignation. Apparently none of this was new to her, or even shocking.

“I am very sorry, madame,” the girl said. “Did you know him?”

“He was my driver.” He was more than that, a man whose loyalty and dedication she possessed but was never quite sure she deserved. She knew he had emigrated to Holland with nothing and now lived alone in a flat on the outskirts of the Statenkwartier district, though she had never visited him there. Now she wished she had. These were matters she would grieve in private, when she allowed herself to thaw out and feel something.

She grabbed Fatou by the hand and drew her to the shadows of the palace. It was still snowing, the thick wet flakes already settling on André’s unmoving form. “We’ll find a security agent,” she said, leading the way back into the building. They hesitated in the hallway and stood for a moment, listening. The light trill of singing drifted from the grand hall. Her first impulse was to burst in and sound an alarm, to babble that someone had murdered her driver. Then a feeling, like a breath of cold air on the back of her neck, made her hesitate.

She felt certain the murder of André was not an isolated incident. She looked around, saw no one. “We mustn’t go back in there,” she whispered. “We’ll go to the security office.” There were cameras everywhere, though they’d done André no good at all. She knocked at the door. Getting no response, she pushed at it, expecting to find it locked. But the door opened.

Sophie hesitated. There was this thing that happened to her sometimes, a cold clutch of awareness in the center of her stomach. It told her when someone was lying, when something didn’t add up—like now. The lights were off, the room illuminated by the bluish haze of monitors and electronic equipment. There were three men inside; at first she thought they might be passed out, drunk. Then she noticed a faint odor of bitter almond.

“Gas,” she hissed at Fatou. “Stay outside.”

Sophie held her breath. She could probably hold it longer than anyone she knew, thanks to her years of swim training. The men wore the uniforms of the Diplomatic Protection Group. She went to the nearest victim, who lay on the floor, and touched his shoulder, finding his body disconcertingly stiff and resistant. She tried not to look at his face—still-wet blood streaming from his nose—as she found the tiny alert device on his lapel and depressed the button, praying it worked as it was supposed to, instantly alerting the team in the ballroom downstairs, as well as deploying an antiterrorist squad from their remote headquarters in Rotterdam. She had no idea how long it would take for help to arrive, though.

The array of monitors, still glowing dully, showed nothing amiss anywhere in the building. The reception was still going on. She caught sight of a security agent in his dark suit in the ballroom. He showed no outward sign of having received the alert, yet to Sophie he seemed to move with a briskness of purpose that was reassuring. His hand rested on the front button of his suit coat, and he was murmuring into his mouthpiece.

She ducked out of the room, nearly bursting from holding her breath. Shutting the door behind her, she told Fatou, “I think it worked. They’ll evacuate everyone and—” Fatou was looking not at her, but at a point somewhere past her shoulder.

“Ne bougez pas,” said a low voice in a thick accent, “ou je tire.”

The words made no sense to Sophie for approximately two beats of her heart. Then something was shoved against the underside of her jaw. Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.

A second man appeared behind Fatou, and Sophie realized he’d been there, in the shadows, all along. Dressed as a security agent, he had a big, bony Dutchman’s face and a pistol of some sort with its barrel pressed up under the girl’s jaw.

“Oh, please, no, she’s only a child. Don’t harm her,” Sophie said.

A third man, an African also disguised as an agent, stepped forward, kicking open the door to the security office, crossing the room to crank open the windows. So she’d been right about the gas.

It was too soon to feel afraid. Too surreal to grasp the idea that with one squeeze of a stranger’s finger, she would be gone. She said nothing, though her heart pounded so loudly she was certain it could be heard. Two thoughts filled her mind—Max and Daisy. Her children. She might never see them again. In her mind, she reviewed the last time she had seen them, talked to them. Her phone conversation yesterday with Max. Had she spoken with kindness, respect, love? Or had she been in a rush? Had she been demanding? Daisy always accused her of being demanding. Maybe exacting was the word. She was too exacting.

“Merde,” said one of the men—the French African—leaning on the counter to study an image of the main hall. The security agents at the ceremony were taking action, their weapons drawn as they gave orders to evacuate. “The alert went through.” As he spoke, he straightened up and turned and, with a curious grace, smacked Sophie across the face with the back of his hand.

She had never been touched with violence before, and the shock of the attack preceded the pain. Then it felt like the time she’d been hit in the face with a field hockey ball. She saw a flash of white followed by multiple images, the monitor screens floating in front of her. The blow jostled her against the man with the gun. She shut her eyes, terrified he’d panic and pull the trigger.

“Stop,” ordered one of the other men. “An alert’s been sounded. We may need her.”

For what? Sophie wondered. She caught a whiff of something emanating from the man holding the gun on her. It was the sweat of fear. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she somehow recognized the reek of terror, sharp and bitter, more dangerous than cold determination. Perhaps he would obey orders, perhaps not. She could be gone in an instant.

Just like that.

She made herself focus on the monitors. The agents in the room were already in control of the situation, with the white-coated waiters on the floor and the room being swiftly evacuated. Thank God, thought Sophie. Thank—

“Vite,” said the Frenchman. “Bring the girl, also.”

Sophie was all but thrown down the stairs, then dragged along the corridor to the service bay. A crowd of agents moved toward them. Sophie flinched at the dull gleam of a gun. The men held Sophie and Fatou in front of them like shields.

“Drop your weapons or the women die,” shouted the Frenchman as they forced their way into the ballroom.

Four of the security agents instantly complied. A fifth hesitated, made a move toward the Frenchman. The hiss of a silenced shot quivered through the room, and Fatou crumpled to the floor. No, Sophie thought. Please, God, she’s only a child.

A woman screamed, and the fifth agent dropped his gun and raised his hands.

Many of the guests had been evacuated to safety, probably due to the alert sent by Sophie. The queen and prime minister were nowhere in sight. Those who remained were now herded to the center of the room and made to lie facedown on the floor. Sophie nearly cried out when she spied Tariq, his black eyes on fire as he caught her gaze. Instinct told her not to focus on anyone in particular lest she single him out. She noticed the reporter, Brooks Fordham, staring dully at her, and prayed he would stay silent. Also remaining was the military attaché, his arms around his family, his angular face alert with bitter rage. And vigilance.

Some of the children remained in the room. They should have been the first evacuated, yet four of them lay on the floor. Everyone was eerily silent, even the little ones. They were from a war-torn place. They had probably endured worse than this.

The Frenchman quickly took control of the situation, issuing orders to the men in the catering jackets. They jumped up, seized the agents’ weapons and, just like that, the tables were turned. The men dressed as caterers brought out guns they’d smuggled in on serving carts, concealed by crisp white linen tablecloths. And the massacre took place in silence. Sophie knew that no matter how long she lived, she would always remember the eerie, unexpected silence of these moments as the five agents were executed with swift and chilling dispatch. Instead of mayhem, the killings proceeded in orderly fashion, which was somehow even more horrifying.

For the first time, Sophie got a look at her captor’s face. He was African and young, his cheeks boyishly rounded, his eyes feverish, probably with narcotics. She could only pray an anti-terrorist squad was now racing through the city, en route to the palace.

Sophie looked at Fatou on the floor, motionless, bleeding. The girl made a sound, a whisper for help. Sophie took a step toward her but a barked order froze her in her tracks.

Only for a moment, though.

“This is absurd,” Sophie declared. “This is the Peace Palace. We don’t leave children to die on the floor here.” She dropped to her knees beside the fallen girl. Fatou was bleeding, but she was conscious, blinking, and moaning in pain.

“Stop,” said the Frenchman. “Do not touch her. Get away.”

Sophie ignored him. She found that it was possible to ignore everything, including the fact that a murderer had a gun pointed at her. She kept her focus, pressing a wad of linen napkins to the wound. Somehow, the close-range shot had failed to kill her. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to.

“Get away now,” the man ordered.

Sophie didn’t look up. Something possessed her. Not courage or some high sense of compassion or outrage. Instead it was the absolute conviction that she could not abide one more killing. Even if they shot her.

They didn’t shoot her, but the African boy pulled her away from Fatou. The men issued orders for everyone to stay on the floor. Some of the others were closing doors, locking them from within. We’re hostages, she thought. We’ve been taken hostage. The big Frenchman and the blond man who had been serving champagne earlier got into an argument over whether to stay and negotiate or flee with a human shield.

Sophie had undergone mandatory violence-prevention training, and the class had addressed hostage taking. Like everything else in her field of work, there was an acronym. The trouble was, she couldn’t remember it. E-I-S … something. E-evaluate the situation. That was easy. The situation was bad. Extremely bad. I-isolate. As in, isolate the perpetrator. After that, she drew a blank.

She did recall learning that while it was politically popular to declare you didn’t bargain with terrorists or extremists, it was also extremely risky. In a hostage situation, one of the key strategies was to buy time, and another was to foster divisiveness among the hostage takers. They were already doing this on their own, which she took as a good sign. She alone was still standing, with the fearful, dangerous boy holding her. Brooks Fordham appeared to be on the verge of saying something. The moment he glanced her way, she gave the barest shake of her head. No.

One of the caterers noticed the reporter looking around the room, and delivered a kick to the head with emotionless dispatch. Brooks made no sound as he fell still. Tariq exhorted the thugs in Arabic, earning the same response, his beautiful face shattered by the toe of a large boot. Sophie felt dizzy with the urge to throw up.

At the same time, she felt a crushing, overwhelming sense of futility. She and dozens of others had given everything they had to restoring peace and justice, but ultimately, people were still being bullied and killed. André lay dead in the courtyard. Staring numbly at Fatou, Sophie realized she’d been fooling herself thinking she was making a difference in the world. Greed and evil were tireless enemies. The larger truth was that nothing—no amount of sacrifice or diplomacy—could stop the killing and rid the world of people like this.

She guessed that the French-speaking African was a cohort of General Timi Abacha who, with the diamond merchant Serge Henger, had fled the prosecution of the ICC. So, although the media would probably see these men as terrorists, fanatically devoted to a cause, Sophie knew better. This wasn’t about anyone’s ideals or sense of justice. It was not even about revenge. It was about money. Not a belief system or family or patriotism. Their “cause” was simple greed. The action of the court and the enforcement of UN troops had deprived them of their fortune, and they wanted it back.

In a way, this made the situation simple. A transaction.

“Taking children hostage is only going to make you hated and hunted by the world. You don’t want the world to hate you,” she said. Her jaw ached from the blow she’d taken, making it hard to speak. “You just want what was taken from you.”

“We are clear on what we want.” The blond Dutchman checked the chamber of the pistol he’d taken from a security agent.

“Then be clear on how to get it,” Sophie stated. Was this her speaking up? Negotiating with terrorists? “You’re not stupid. You’ve gotten this far. You can leave now without incident.”

The man stared at her. Then his eyes glittered and he smiled at her, his mouth curving like a cold slice of moon. “And Madame Bellamy, we are familiar with you.”

Dear Lord. They knew who she was. They probably knew she was a member of the prosecution team. She felt the color drop from her face, though she struggled to show no reaction. “As familiar as you are with the Kuumba Mine case,” he added, “and with the process of setting up accounting in a country with no laws of extradition.” Faintly, from a distance, the two-toned sound of sirens drifted into the room. Their predicament flashed through her mind like lightning. If they stayed here, there would be a standoff—until it deteriorated into a shoot-out.

“None of this will matter,” she told him, “if you allow yourselves to be trapped here.”

The ring of a cell phone sounded, causing Sophie’s captor to tense, reminding her that she was a trigger-squeeze between life and death. One of the men she had noticed earlier—the name Karl stitched on his catering livery—rifled through the jacket of a fallen security agent and took out a mobile phone. He glanced at the Dutchman, then answered. She strained to hear, but he was speaking Dutch in a low, rapid voice.

“You don’t need a group of hostages,” she said to the men with her. “In fact, you should go now, while you still can. If you try to stay here and bargain for your fortune, you’ll fail.” She looked from one man to the other. “These things always end badly.”

The next rapid exchange took place in the Umojan dialect. Sophie was nominally familiar with it but she couldn’t catch what was being said. The African gave an order and the men dressed as caterers made for the door. The Dutchman went to the attaché, handed him a mobile phone. The shiny-eyed boy with Sophie kept hold of her upper arm, yanking her forward.

She balked, tried to pull away, but the boy held her fast. The African turned to her. “Madame, you must come with me.”

She looked up into his face and saw no humanity there. Only cold determination. It dawned on Sophie that she made the ideal hostage. She was easily outmatched, unarmed, defenseless. Yet she spoke multiple languages and was known in diplomatic circles, thus adding to her value as a bargaining chip.

She briefly considered putting up a fight here and now. She could feel the attaché urging her, and knew he would take action. She also knew that would get him killed.

Seconds later, she found herself in a haze of numbness, being shoved into one of the catering vans. I’m so sorry, she thought, wishing there was a way to beam the silent message to her children. She was in the hands of murderers. She had all but guaranteed she would be taken from her children. They would survive. Despite her faults as a mother, she knew they were smart and sturdy—survivors. Perhaps she hadn’t been much of a mother, but at least she’d given them that.

It was still snowing outside. She was crammed into the front seat of the van with the Dutchman and the African boy. Her legs were awkwardly canted to one side of the stick shift. Her captors didn’t bother restraining her, no doubt—and correctly—deeming her no physical threat.

Four more conspirators crowded into the back, protesting in French and Dutch. The entire operation had gone awry, Sophie gathered, because she had alerted security. From their agitated talk, she gleaned that their plan had been to barricade themselves in the building, demanding the restoration of their impounded fortune and their safe transit to Africa. “We leave with nothing, nothing,” groused a reedy voice.

“You leave with your life,” the driver snapped. “That is something.”

“And a life insurance policy,” said someone else.

To her horror, Sophie felt a touch at the nape of her neck. It made her skin crawl. She drew her shoulders up and leaned forward to draw away, eliciting nervous laughter from some of the men. She tried not to think about what they were capable of, but her mind filled with images of torture, rape and murder. She had spent two years building a case of such crimes, but until this very moment, they had been merely legal concepts. Now they were very, very real.

The Dutchman drove, taking corners too fast in the snow and heading for the port with the confidence of someone familiar with the city. The vehicle sped down the roadway that ran alongside the Verversingskanaal that flowed into the Voorhaven, a lock-controlled waterway of the North Sea.

A bridge rose in a high arc over the locks station. Snow flew at the windshield. The tires slipped and spun on the slick roadway. The bridge was entirely deserted of traffic, aglow with amber lights on tall poles, which turned the covering of snow to pure gold.

From the rear of the van, someone said, “There’s a helicopter. We’re being followed.”

“Not to worry,” said the Dutchman, accelerating past 130 kilometers per hour. “I left instructions.”

Sophie realized then what the man’s exchange with the attaché had been about. They had promised to kill their hostage if their needs were not met. She also realized that, at some point, they would kill her anyway. Why give them that chance, then? She had lived her life trying to do everything right, yet things so often turned out wrong anyway.

Her hands seemed to belong to someone else as she moved with a speed and strength she didn’t know she possessed. She grabbed for the steering wheel and dragged it into a sharp turn.

The Dutchman cursed and tried to wrestle back control of the van. But it was too late. The bridge was too slippery, the guardrail too flimsy to stop the van from hurdling over the side of the bridge and plunging into the ink-black water.

Part Three

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Three Kings Day

Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, is the culmination of a month of celebration on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, a place famed for its sugar, molasses and rum. Wedding fruit cake is so dense and richly flavored that it must be served in small pieces as a memento of the event.

Wedding Fruit Cake

Place five pounds of mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins, dates, figs, prunes) in a very large bowl, and cover it with about three cups of Cruzan rum. Set this aside to macerate for two days or up to a week.

To make the cake, you will need the macerated fruit, plus:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 pound brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup molasses

1/2 pound butter at room temperature

6 eggs

Beat the butter in a large bowl and add the sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in flour and baking powder and then stir in the fruit mixture.

Pour into two or three well-greased 13”x9” baking pans. Bake in a 350°F oven for about one hour.

Six

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

6 January – Epiphany

Max Bellamy couldn’t stand weddings. In his family, weddings seemed to crop up on a regular basis, like flu season. Since he was just a kid, he wasn’t allowed to check off “regrets” on the invitation reply card and stay home. But boy, did he regret having to sit through a wedding.

Sometimes they even made him participate. Twice, when he was really little, he’d been a ring bearer. At age four, he’d thought it was cool until he realized they wanted him to dress up and stay clean and stand still through a ceremony that wouldn’t end.

At twelve, he was way too old for such an indignity, but his family managed to find a new one. Last summer, he’d been upgraded to usher for his cousin Olivia, who married Connor Davis at Camp Kioga on Willow Lake. That was when he knew for sure all weddings were pretty much the same. Same level of discomfort, in starched clothes and shoes that pinched, same droning ceremony and sappy songs, different couple at the altar.

His take on weddings—they were long and boring and everyone talked about love and promises, and it was pretty much all a load of crap, as far as he was concerned.

Today the discomfort came from a different source. Since the ceremony was on the beach, everybody got to wear beach clothes. They looked like a reunion of Hawaiian punch guys, as far as Max was concerned. Which was a lot more comfortable than tuxedos and tight shoes, but that didn’t mean he was having a great time.

How could he, when the groom was his dad?

Okay, so Max liked Nina Romano. A lot. She was going to do fine as a stepmother. He wanted her to marry his dad. He wanted them to be married. But he didn’t want to have to sit through all the endless vows and recitations. He didn’t want to have to listen to his dad say stuff like “I offer you my heart” to anyone.

That kind of stuff just skeezed him out. He wished they had sneaked off somewhere to do it instead of involving families. There were like a gazillion Romanos milling around. Nina had eight brothers and sisters, and most of them had kids, so between the Romanos and the Bellamys, this had turned into some huge deal.

Cheerful, Italian-American strangers had been coming up to him all week, thumping him on the back and acting like his best friend. They weren’t all strangers. Two of them—who by the end of the day would be stepcousins—were in his grade at Avalon Middle School. Angelica Romano was in his prealgebra class and Ricky Pastorini was on his hockey team. Ricky’s mom was Nina’s sister, Maria. She was the team mother. Although he was Max’s age, Ricky was already shaving and his voice had changed. Big deal, thought Max.

He tried not to grind his teeth in disgust as another lame song was sung about two hearts beating as one, while most of the women cried. It was just too sweet. He was going to slip into a diabetic coma if they didn’t end this soon.

He cast a restless eye through the gathering on the beach. Everyone was seated in white folding chairs, their feet in flip-flops, sifting through the white-sugar sand. Max’s hand stole into the pocket of his cargo shorts. He palmed his phone, checked the screen. His mom hadn’t texted him back after he sent her the picture earlier. He’d tried to put a positive spin on it, because his mom was all about trying to act like everything was fine, all the time, even when you had to sit through your own father’s wedding. Max’s message had been that St. Croix was awesome.

He couldn’t exactly say the same for today’s ceremony. It seemed as though everybody but him was really into it, though. He stuck the phone away, endured another reading. Finally the ceremony was winding down. There was a moment—a split second, really—when Max’s dad looked so happy that Max caught himself smiling in spite of himself.

During the kissing, he stared at the ground—enough’s enough—and at last, it was over. The ensemble played a reggae rendition of “What a Wonderful World” as Dad and Nina came down the aisle formed by the rows of chairs.

All the wedding guests filed out behind them to the pavilion with the banquet and dance floor. As they made their way to the feast, Max found himself surrounded by Romanos. Nina sure had a big family. The sun had just begun to set, turning everything in sight a livid sunburned pink.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen, seeing an international number he didn’t recognize. “I think this might be my mom,” he said.

Nina’s sister, Maria—the bossy one—gave a sniff. “Unbelievable. On today, of all days.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard her, and flipped open the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Max.” It was his mom. She sounded … different. Her voice was thin. “Max, I know this probably isn’t the best timing—”

“It’s all right.” He stepped aside and moved to the shade of a large tree where it was quiet. “I’m glad you called, Mom,” he said.

“Are you, Max?” She sounded so tired, more tired than he’d ever heard her. He wondered what time it was, over in Holland. The middle of the night. “I’m glad, too,” she said.

Daisy Bellamy loved weddings. She always had, ever since she was little and got to be the flower girl in her aunt Helen’s wedding. She still remembered the lacy dress, the flowers twining through her hair, the shiny patent-leather Mary Janes, the feeling that she had a critically important role to play.

Taking a break from her dad’s wedding festivities, she sat on the balcony of her hotel room, looking down at the pavilion that had been set up on the beach for the reception. Sunset painted the sky every color of the rainbow. In a few minutes, she’d take out her camera to get some candid shots of the party.

All her life, she had fantasized about the day it would be her turn to be the bride. She had actually planned the entire event, right down to the seed pearls on her gown. She could perfectly picture every moment of her special day, from the delivery of the flowers—daisies, what else?—to the roaring send-off, to the Parisian honeymoon.

The only detail she couldn’t picture was the face of the groom.

At nineteen, she still couldn’t help dreaming about her own wedding, but there was a difference now. It was only a dream, not an eventuality. That option had been taken off the table last August.

She glanced down at the infant nursing at her breast and knew that the fantasy wedding simply wasn’t going to happen. Unless Prince Charming was willing to take on Daisy and Charlie both.

Logan O’Donnell, the baby’s father, kept trying to convince her that he was the one. There was one problem with that. Logan wasn’t Prince Charming. Oh, he looked like a prince, which was what had landed Daisy in trouble in the first place. But now that reality had hit Daisy like a brick to the head, she knew it took a lot more than looks to make a prince.

She lifted Charlie against her and draped a cloth over her shoulder to catch the spit-up, which was his custom after every meal. Thanks to Charlie, she had missed the very tail end of the wedding. He’d been great right up until the final reading. She’d promised her dad and Nina that she wouldn’t let him interrupt and, true to her word, she’d whisked him away at the first squawk.

Now she rubbed the baby’s back, standing up and swaying back and forth on the balcony. “We don’t need a prince, do we?” she whispered in his ear. “We just need to fantasize about something different. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I mean, I know you’re really little, but I wonder if you’d mind staying with a babysitter for a few hours a week while I take a photography course at the college.”

He rewarded her with a gentle belch.

Daisy smiled. “That’s right, I got in. My portfolio was approved for the class, and it all starts in a few weeks. I’m going to feel totally guilty about leaving you, though. Mom left Max and me a lot when we were little. She had to, because of her work. I wonder if she felt like this, too. Just totally guilty—”

“Hey, Daisy!” Standing two stories below, Sonnet Romano waved at her. “Come on down. They’re about to cut the cake.”

“Don’t let them start without me,” Daisy called.

“You want some help?”

“That’s okay. We’ll be right there.”

Nina’s daughter Sonnet was the first friend Daisy had made in Avalon, New York, where they’d moved after Daisy’s parents divorced. She was the first person Daisy had told, after her dad, about being pregnant. Now Sonnet and Daisy were stepsisters. She hoped that didn’t mean the end of a beautiful friendship.

“You hear that?” Daisy said to Charlie as she put her camera into the ever-present diaper bag. “Cake! I love cake.” One of the best things about breastfeeding was that you could eat anything you wanted—cake, peanut butter, cookie dough, you name it—and you didn’t gain weight, because it took a lot of calories to be a milk factory.

She buckled the baby into his carrier and headed out the door. The hotel had open-air hallways and stairwells, and a warm breeze flowed through, carrying the scent of exotic flowers. Here in the tropics, winter seemed a million miles away.

At the bottom of the stairs, she headed toward the reception, but stopped when she saw Max running toward her.

She took one look at her brother’s face and knew something was wrong. Well, whatever it was, they weren’t going to bug Dad about it. Not today, of all days.

Part Four

Three weeks later

Decision

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

—Andrew Carnegie, founding contributor of the Peace Palace

Seven

The Hague, Holland

Three weeks later

While waiting for Tariq in the courtyard of the Peace Palace, Sophie turned in a slow circle, waiting for the flashbacks to hit like a bolt from the sky. She’d been told by her post-trauma treatment team to expect unsettling reminders of the ordeal she’d suffered here. But nothing happened, not even when she thought about André staggering toward her, bleeding into the snow. She felt a wave of grief, but no panic, no insanity. The sky remained its usual brooding gray. The neo-Gothic walls of the palace, stained by age and pollution, looked the same as they always had, coldly beautiful and impenetrable.

This was not the first time she’d come here in the past few weeks. She’d been brought here several times, as her doctors wanted to be sure the location did not trigger any sort of trauma-induced reaction. On the contrary, she felt nothing but the usual bone-deep dampness of a typical winter day.

The screen of her PDA displayed a text message from Max sent the day before. Dad taking us skiing at Saddle Mt 2day. Wish U were here xoxo. She checked her watch, which was always set at her children’s time zone, and deemed it too early to phone the States. There would be time to call after her meeting today to tell them her plans.

A moment later, Tariq joined her, his Burberry greatcoat swirling fashionably in the wind. Like Sophie, he was shadowed by security agents, whose constant presence was a given these days.

“You look remarkably calm,” said Tariq.

They set off together to a meeting at the supreme chamber. Sophie eyed him with a slight frown. “Why do you say ‘remarkably calm’? Why not just calm?”

“No one would blame you for not wanting to set foot in this place. After what happened to you—”

“I swear, if I hear that phrase one more time … And what about you? It happened to you, too.”

He waved away her comment. “I’ve survived worse than a bloodied nose. Besides, being unconscious is my preferred way of enduring an attack.” He paused in the colonnaded hallway and touched her arm. “I wish you’d been spared as I was.”

Three weeks had passed since the incident. That was how the events on the night of Epiphany had come to be known—the incident. Or, The Incident. The Epiphany Incident, referred to in somber tones by foreign correspondents. The London Times had called it the Twelfth Night Massacre. But there was no term that could encompass the terror and powerlessness of that night until it became a code word—The Incident.

She had walked away from death that night, soaked to the skin but feeling nothing. Hypothermia created such symptoms, the doctors later told her. The body went numb to protect itself from damage. So, in a way, had her mind. Her memory of the ordeal was fragmented. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she relived the ordeal in terrifying bursts. There was the weightlessness of her free fall as the van hurtled through the night. The impact when it hit the water thundered up through the vehicle, jarring her teeth so that she bit her tongue, snapping her head back. The air was filled with screams and howls that sounded almost animallike. Water flooded the van from front to back, and she felt herself swept backward; her captors hadn’t bothered to fasten her seat belt.

The investigative team speculated that she’d exited via a broken window, as evidenced by the pattern of scratches on her arms and legs. She’d survived thanks to a combination of luck and skill at swimming. She had a vague recollection of swimming—icy water, aiming at a dull flicker of light shimmering on the surface above her, battling her way free of the vortex created by the sinking van. Oil-tainted seawater rushed into her nose and mouth, causing her to choke while she clung to an iron loop set into the cut-stone side of the canal.

Another gap of memory. Somehow, she hoisted herself out amid wailing sirens and the pulsating roar of a helicopter’s rotor blades beating the air and churning up the water. Emergency vehicles swarmed the bridge, but no one seemed to notice her. It was as though she were invisible. Maybe she was. She remembered thinking maybe this was death, and no one could see her as she wandered among squad cars and emergency vehicles. One great mercy of working for such a powerful organization was the strict control of information. Only a few people knew Sophie had been taken; fewer still were aware of her mode of escape. And no one knew she had caused the van to go off the bridge. No one, except the terrorists who had been pulled alive from the Voorhaven. And they weren’t talking.

To avoid retaliation, her name was kept out of accounts released to the public.

“I was spared,” she told Tariq, her tone edged by an unreasoning anger. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Sorry,” Tariq said. “Honestly, Petal, I want to know you’re all right.”

Sophie’s decisive action in the van had effectively ended The Incident. Three of her captors had drowned. Three others, like Sophie, had survived—just barely—and were recovering under heavy guard in the hospital.

People looked at her and marveled that she’d escaped “unscathed.” She bore no outward sign of her ordeal.

She’d suffered only minor scratches, contusions and a touch of hypothermia. The treatment team at Bronovo Hospital had warned her that she was at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder, though tests revealed that her psyche appeared to have survived, as well. Certainly she didn’t consider herself a casualty of the event. Casualties were André, her driver. And the security agents who had been murdered. And, it had to be said, the men in the van. Fatou had lost the baby and now faced a third surgery, and Brooks Fordham was still recovering from a coma. Sophie had walked away, dripping wet, a survivor. And, she was soon to discover, a stranger to herself. She was willing to let everyone believe nothing about her had changed. She certainly was not comfortable allowing people to look into her heart and mind. Still, it left her feeling adrift. Misunderstood.

Immediately following the incident, she had called her children in St. Croix and her parents in Seattle, on the off chance that the news would somehow creep into the American or Canadian media. No danger of that, as it turned out. She’d told her family simply that there had been a “security situation” at the Peace Palace but she was fine and in no danger. The incident was no big secret, but she didn’t want to worry her family. She hadn’t cried on the phone. She’d felt displaced from herself, as though she were watching her own actions.

As she told the two psychiatrists who had treated her, “If I let this be a big deal, it won’t leave room for the things that are important.” Through hours and hours of intensive therapy, she had come to realize exactly what those things were.

She had not spoken of what had happened during the ordeal, not even to the medical and psychological team that had cared for her during the aftermath. Dr. Maarten had tried to persuade her that exploring every moment in exhaustive detail was the key to defeating the demons.

“You don’t understand,” she had told him. “There are no demons. They went away the moment I survived.”

“Are you sure?” He clearly thought she was either lying or fooling herself.

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve studied every item on your post-trauma assessment lists. I’m not suffering from any such symptoms, and I don’t plan to in the future.”

Now she glanced over at Tariq. He knew as well as she did what was going to happen here today. They had offered her an appointment most jurists only dreamed about and today she was expected to give her answer.

She was used to the bodyguards by now. In a very short time, she’d become accustomed to the safety precautions. It all felt very surreal. Did she want this to be her normal life, to be crushed by scrutiny, to walk among armed strangers who were utterly focused on her safety?

“Off we go, then,” Tariq muttered.

“Off to see the wizard,” she said.

The double doors of the lead justice’s office opened, and she and Tariq went inside. There was a heartbeat of panic—not because of The Incident but because of something much deeper-reaching than that. Willem De Groot, Esquire, sat at a carved Gothic desk in front of an array of stained-glass windows. Illuminated from behind by jewel-toned light, he looked imposing, otherworldly and intimidating. The wizard.

Actually, he looked like Sophie’s father. Yet unlike Sophie’s father, the redoubtable Ragnar Lindstrom, a partner in a Seattle firm, Judge De Groot displayed an array of family photos in his office. There were shots of him with children and grandchildren of all ages, incongruous amid the ponderous legal tomes. Yet at the moment, he was all business. He wanted to see her strive and achieve. He wanted greatness for her.

His version of greatness.

She and Tariq stood together across from him. De Groot’s assistants were stationed discreetly to one side, silently pressing the keys of their mobile devices.

“Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “And for the honor of this offer.”

“It’s an offer we didn’t make lightly,” Willem De Groot said. “A seat on the Permanent Court of Arbitration is not a reward for your actions. It’s an acknowledgment of your potential as a jurist.” He steepled his fingers. “This vacancy comes at an opportune time. I’m pleased to be able to offer you the position.”

Sophie nodded, even as she felt a chill of skepticism in her bones. This promotion was the ultimate prize. As a jurist of the PCA, she would be on track to one day become a justice of the World Court. That marked the pinnacle of any career in international law, the Olympic gold medal of achievements. She would earn not just the accolades but maybe even a place in history. Her influence would come to bear on great matters of the day.

There was a ring of triumph in her ears. She had reached the apex of her career, and it was higher than she’d ever dreamed. From this seat, she could change the world. She could help whole populations of people. Her policies and decisions would become a part of history.

Sophie could feel Tariq beside her, practically growing taller out of sheer pride. This was not just her achievement, and they both knew that. With her elevation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, her staff and associates would all advance, like train cars hooked to the same engine. This appointment would change not only her life and her career, but also the careers of everyone she worked with. De Groot was speaking to Tariq now, explaining his role as deputy.

Her spirit flared up like a fire splashed with accelerant. Yet, just as quickly, the feeling was doused by the cold damper of memory. She had been taken hostage. She’d seen people murdered, inches from her. She’d held a bleeding child in her arms. She’d caused people to plunge to their death.

That was her reality. She’d worked long and hard with the treatment team whose mission had been to heal her spirit, even though she swore her spirit didn’t need healing. Still, the counselors persisted. They worked every day to show her that although she could never escape or outrun what had happened to her, she could live her life with purpose and deliberation, not in spite of what had happened but, perhaps, because of it.

“Thank you,” she said to De Groot. “I’m honored.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, made steady eye contact with the chief jurist. “But I can’t.”

The words dropped like cold stones into the office, echoing off the neo-Gothic walls. I can’t.

Those two words had been banished by Sophie’s father from her vocabulary, long ago. She’d been raised to embrace the concept of “I can.”

I can bring down a corrupt dictator. (But only if I move an ocean away from my children and work eighteen-hour days.)

I can escape when captured by terrorists. (But only if I force myself to do something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.)

I can be the youngest jurist ever appointed to the PCA. (But only if I turn myself into a robot, starting now.)

That was what her parents failed to see, that for every “I can” statement proclaiming her invincibility, there was a huge and terrible hidden sacrifice.

Sophie felt utterly calm and focused. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said, then reiterated her statement. “I won’t be accepting the post.” She heard Tariq pull in a breath and didn’t let herself look at him, knowing he’d be staring at her, aghast, as though she had sprouted antlers.

The old Sophie would have leaped at this chance, the brass ring of judgeships. Now the new Sophie, the one who had been melted down and remade during the hostage ordeal, knew that the prestige and excitement of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was no longer her calling.

In the aftermath of the intensive treatment and counseling she had received, she felt like a different person. Perhaps the goal of all the interventions she had undergone was to bring her back to her normal, ordinary life. If so, Sophie’s treatment had failed. Instead, The Incident and fallout had proved to her that a life lived without family was meaningless.

Judge De Groot was old and unflappable. Unlike Tariq, he was matter-of-fact when Sophie explained about her family. “If you walk away from this opportunity, it won’t be here when you come back. I cannot hold it open for you.”

“I understand that, Your Honor,” Sophie said.

“Your children are your children. They will always be there. This appointment will not. I am certain your family would support a decision to stay and work on behalf of world justice.”

Would they? she wondered. Had she ever given them a choice? “I’m sure that’s true, but I’m moving back to the United States,” she said. There. Spoken aloud, it was simple and direct. She had to go back to her children.

She allowed herself a quick glance at Tariq, who looked as though his head was about to explode. She didn’t let herself veer from a decision made in those moments when the van had hit the water. If she survived this, she would go home to her children. It had been a powerful, clear moment. Her psychiatric intervention team had encouraged her to focus on the present moment, a strategy encouraged to prevent post-trauma symptoms. “Their job was to get me ready to come back to work. But the plan backfired.”

Then she faced the man who had been her mentor for the past year. “What happened at the Peace Palace changed my focus,” she explained. “I thought I knew what I should be doing with my life, but that night forced me to examine my priorities.” Her gaze wandered to De Groot’s display of photos. “I’m ashamed to say it took a brush with death to show me the things that matter most. And with all due respect, it’s not this mission, not in my case, anyway. It’s not prestige. It’s not even saving people from the cruelties of the world. That’s a job, and in my job, I am replaceable. In my life, my family, I’m not. I have a family I don’t see nearly enough of. I have a lot to answer for. I need to do that, starting now.”

The recriminations, when they came, were from Tariq. “You’re mad,” he accused as she bustled around her apartment, filling up pieces of luggage and moving boxes. “You’ve gone utterly bonkers. I’m begging you, Sophie. Don’t throw this away.”

“I’m not. I’m giving it to you. They’ll offer you the position and you’ll be brilliant.”

“This is your prize for the taking,” he insisted. “Your children have grown beyond needing a mum at home all day.” He waved a hand, dismissing her retort before she made it. “I’m only stating the obvious, Petal. Max is half grown, and Daisy has a baby of her own to raise.”

“They need me more than ever,” she insisted. “The fact that they’re older only means I have even less time. And then there’s Charlie. A baby, Tariq. I can’t imagine what I was thinking, not being there for Daisy and Charlie.”

“You were there for the birth, and Daisy will be fine. I’m certain she’s her mother’s daughter. You were a young mum yourself. You coped beautifully.”

Sophie had done nothing of the sort, although she was the only one who seemed to know that. She’d lived her life on the surface, going through the motions of a successful education and career. There was a whole rich world of possibilities beneath that surface, something she hadn’t realized until she’d nearly lost it all.

She taped a label on a plastic shipping box. Her personal possessions took up remarkably little space. The apartment had come furnished, so all she really had was her wardrobe, a few books, framed pictures of her kids. Looking around, she suddenly felt less sure of herself. This was a different sort of fear from being taken hostage. What if she failed? What if it was too late?

She took the portrait down from a shelf and studied their faces. “When Greg and I divorced, I begged them to live here with me,” she said. “I wish we could have made that work.”

“They scarcely gave it a chance,” Tariq reminded her.

She remembered the two miserable weeks, her kids in a high-rise looking out over the Dutch flatlands, where the rain never quite stopped altogether. The sun hadn’t come out, not once. “I saw no reason to prolong the inevitable,” she said. “Nor did I want to sacrifice even more of their happiness so I could have this career. They wanted to go with their father. It was really a no-brainer. On the one hand there was me, rushing off to court in a foreign country. And then there was Greg, who decided to go all Andy-of-Mayberry—”

“Andy of who?”

“One of America’s biggest TV icons. He’s a single dad, actually, on an old classic show. He lives in a small American town and takes his kid fishing and has this idyllic, picture-perfect life in a town where autumn leaves always seem to be falling and it never, ever rains. No wonder Max and Daisy wanted to stay with their dad.” She carefully and methodically folded a sweater, lining up the seams of the sleeves just so.

“What about what you wanted?” Tariq challenged her.

“Right after the divorce, I was so confused I didn’t even know what I wanted. You remember what a mess I was. The divorce made me question everything about myself, especially my parenting. I didn’t exactly have the world’s best role models, you’ll recall. I finally have a clear idea of what I want, and that’s what this is about. I’m giving myself a second chance to do better.” She folded three more sweaters. Where she was going, she would need them.

“But why there? Why that town in the wilderness?”

“My kids are there. I also need to deal with the fact that my ex is living happily ever after with a woman who is my polar opposite.”

He gave a fatalistic shrug. “It happens.”

“You’re a big help.”

“You don’t want my help. You want to go prostrate yourself on an altar of shame and flagellate yourself until you’re bloody. And, by the way, I know a few blokes who would pay to see such a thing.”

“Don’t be obnoxious.” She finished filling a section of her garment bag. “You’re going to get your dream job because I’m leaving,” she told him.

“I’d rather have you,” he said simply, opening his arms.

“You’re not obnoxious,” she said as he closed her into a hug. “You’re the best. You’re the one person I’m going to miss, desperately.”

“I know.”

She pressed her cheek to the soft Scottish cashmere of his sweater. “I’m scared,” she whispered, thinking about what awaited her in Avalon—the failed marriage to Greg and her inadequate mothering.

“I don’t blame you, Petal.” He stroked her hair in a soothing gesture. “I’d be scared of a small town in America, too. I keep thinking about plaid hunting jackets and open-bed lorries on gigantic tires.”

She pulled back, gently slapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

But it might be, she conceded. She was no expert, having always lived in big, bustling cities—Seattle, Boston, Tokyo, New York, The Hague. She had no idea how she would manage in a town like Avalon. But she had to get back to her family. She felt a keen sense of mission about it, the way she used to feel about an important case. She needed to reclaim the things she had lost to her career. She needed to find a new direction for her life.

“I haven’t said anything to them yet. Just that I’m fine and I’ll be coming home. They don’t know I’m staying.”

“You are mad. Certifiable.” Tariq started to pitch in, folding trousers and stacking them precisely in the oversize Louis Vuitton bag.

“If I tell them I’m moving to Avalon, they’ll think something’s wrong.”

“Something is wrong. You’ve lost your mind.”

“No, listen, I do have a plan. Some friends of mine from New York—the Wilsons—have a lake house they only use in the summer. They’ve offered it to me for the entire winter. So I have a place to live.”

“In Mayberry.”

“Avalon, but that’s the idea.”

“And do … what, exactly? You need to reconnect with your kids. I get that. Is that a full-time occupation?”

She zipped her jewelry into a side pocket of her case. The small pouch of tasteful baubles made her remember the conversation with Brooks Fordham that night about her refusal to own anything produced by exploitation of labor. “I don’t know,” she said to Tariq. “I’ve never done it before.”

“And why would you even want this?” he asked her without a hint of irony.

“Because I’ve never had it,” she replied. “Because being part of a community has never happened to me and I think it’s about time. Because underneath this legal robot you see, I have a heart.”

She and Tariq went to the tiny nook of the main room, which served as her study. This, too, was devoid of personal items except her laptop and a corkboard to which she’d pinned a few items. “My rogues’ gallery,” she told Tariq. “And it’s all yours now.”

The faces of the warlords had been her motivation for the past two years. The plan was to prosecute each one in turn at the International Criminal Court. The people on her corkboard represented the very worst of humankind—men who practiced child conscription, sexual torture, slavery. She took down each picture in turn, making a small ceremony of handing them to Tariq.

“That’s it, then,” she said, slipping the laptop into its case. “You’re going to do great things.”

“And you’re walking away from doing great things.”

She shook her head. “I walked away from my marriage and family. I can’t ever go back to the marriage, but my family still needs me.” She thought they did, anyway. She hoped. They had certainly taught themselves to get along without her. Maybe the truth was that she needed them.

“I’ve never seen you run away from anything,” Tariq said. “This isn’t like you.”

“Oh, it’s exactly like me. When it comes to my professional life, to cases involving genocidal murderers, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been like a dog with a bone since I was in high school. But in my personal life, I’ve done exactly the opposite. Here’s the thing. You can’t run from yourself. It only took twenty years and a few hours with a team of terrorists for me to figure that out.”

She took a deep breath, looked around the apartment with her things packed in boxes. The place was as impersonal and anonymous as a hotel room.

She was off, then, to make things right with her family. It was insane, going to a place where the Bellamy family had been entrenched for generations, where her ex-husband was living happily ever after with his new wife. Yet this was the place her children lived, and she intended to be their full-time mother. She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t too late.

Part Five

February

A cheer for the snow—the drifting snow;

Smoother and purer than Beauty’s brow;

The creature of thought scarce likes to tread

On the delicate carpet so richly spread.

—Eliza Cook, English poet

Morning Muffins from the Sky River Bakery

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup ground flax seed

3/4 cup oat bran

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

3/4 cup milk

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups peeled and shredded carrots

2 apples, peeled and shredded

1/2 cup raisins or currants

1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix flour, flax seed, bran, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine the milk, eggs, vanilla and oil. Add to the dry ingredients. Fold in the carrots, apples, raisins and nuts. Fill prepared muffin cups two-thirds full with batter.

Bake for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Eight

Sophie woke up hugging a warm teddy bear in a strange bed. Hovering in the zone between full alert and dreams, she lay very still, waiting for the customary nightmares to fade. She’d learned that they would, eventually. But she wondered if she would ever stop seeing the faces of the dead or feeling the desperation and panic that had seized her in the moments before the accident.

Yet this morning, the memories seemed curiously distant. Simply lying adrift felt so good that she held still, hugged the teddy bear closer and kept her eyes shut, prolonging a completely unjustified sensation of well-being.

When it came to jet lag, she was a champ at dealing with it. Besides, with her frequent trips back to the States, she had enough miles for an upgrade every time. She’d schooled herself to sleep with the self-discipline of a yoga master. But it was never a restful sleep. Therefore, feeling warm, comfortable and rested was simply wrong.

Finally, like drips of water through a slow leak, little awarenesses pried her awake.

Landing at JFK, making the drive upstate through ever-thickening snowfall. A deer leaping out of nowhere, the swinging glare of her headlights as she swerved to avoid hitting it. Then came the terrible thud and a bone-jarring jolt as she came to rest in the ditch. And then … someone had arrived. She remembered looking up and seeing him outside her window, a man …

Encountering a large, strange man, when she was alone, stuck in a snowbank in the middle of nowhere, should have set off alarm bells. However, she experienced nothing of the sort. After his imposing height and big shoulders, the first things she’d noticed about him were his kindly eyes and boyish grin. She and Dr. Maarten had talked about this in her therapy sessions, the gut sense of danger that she must learn to distinguish normal caution from trauma-induced anxiety. When she’d looked at the stranger, standing in the snow, the only thing she felt in her gut was a wave of sturdy trust.

He’d rescued her. He had somehow healed the fallen deer. He’d sewn up her wound. He was heart-thumpingly, shatteringly attractive in an unexpected way. Big and broad, like a working-class hero or farmer, a far cry from the sort of men she knew.

And now, having succumbed to the multiple fatigues of jet lag, exhaustion and injury, she lay in a comfy bed in a guest room of his house.

The teddy bear yawned and stretched.

Sophie gave a gasp and scrambled out of bed, clutching the blankets to her chest. There was a heated tug of pain in her knee, but she ignored it and stared at the small, furry thing on the bed.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered on a breath of panic. “Oh, my God.”

She was ordinarily more articulate than this, but all she could do was stare. Then she opened the drapes to reveal the cold white glare of the winter morning, and stated the obvious. “You’re a puppy. I slept with a puppy.”

It stared at her, alert and seemingly unperturbed by her erratic behavior. Its tiny spike of a tail quivered, and it let out a series of yips, sounding like a windup toy at FAO Schwarz.

Sophie didn’t do puppies. She’d never had a dog, growing up, and raising her children in Manhattan had made it completely impractical.

The pup went to the edge of the bed and gazed fearfully at the floor, then worriedly at Sophie.

“Just jump,” she said. “It’s not that far.”

It skittered back and forth, gave a nervous whimper.

“You managed to climb up, so you should be able to find a way down.”

The dog responded with a pitiful whine.

“Oh,” Sophie said, feeling a curious flood of sentiment. She reached out with her hand, and the puppy sniffed it delicately, gave her a lick of approval with its tiny pink tongue, then yipped at her. Awkwardly, she scooped the little thing up, holding it at arm’s length. The puppy squirmed and she nearly dropped it, so she quickly gathered it against her chest. Its coat was a yellow fluff of down—half dog, half Easter chick. It had a milky-new smell, and it wriggled somewhat frantically, trying to lick her face. Then, like a newborn, it snuggled against her shoulder.

“So this is a puppy,” she whispered, brushing her lips over its velveteen ear. “How did I live so long without a puppy?”

Like all kids, Max and Daisy had of course begged her for a dog. Their friends all had dogs, they pointed out with age-old kid logic. She fired back that their friends all had dog walkers or stay-at-home moms. She explained that it would be cruel to the dog. Left alone during the day, its outside would consist of controlled visits to the postage-stamp-size park where you were required to pick up its poop. Did either Max or Daisy feel like walking around behind a dog in the rain, picking up its poop? That effectively shut down the arguments.

“Max and Daisy,” she said aloud, setting down the puppy and snatching up her phone. Her thumb was hovering over the keypad when she noticed the time—6:47 a.m. Too early to call. Setting aside the phone, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the back of the door.

“Lovely,” she muttered. “I’m channeling Blanche Dubois.” It was a combination of her negligee and the fact that she had just rolled out of bed. After a night of hard sleep, even the Dior negligee looked cheap. And skimpy. Sophie’s salon-pampered hair was rumpled, her eyes still blurred with sleep. She had long favored skimpy nightgowns, a secret, decadent indulgence.

It wasn’t as if she bought them to impress a man. She and Greg had been in college when they met. College boys tended to like anything with boobs, so she didn’t need lingerie—a team T-shirt would do. She loved the luxurious feel of lace and silks, though. The lingerie was the last bastion of femininity and youth. Giving in to flannel granny gowns would be an admission of defeat.

She refused to become a flannel granny.

But good heavens. It was cold this morning. Shivering, she looked around the room. This was an older house with tall ceilings and braided rugs on wood floors. She was in an old-fashioned bedroom with fading quilts on the bed, a marble-topped washstand, chintz curtains on the windows. Everything here had a sense of permanence, yet there was an ineffable air of neglect, as well. The faint cedary smell of the bed linens suggested that this room didn’t get much use.

She had a luxurious cashmere robe, but it was in her other bag, still in the trunk of the rental car. So were her slippers. She examined her boots, finding one of them stained with dried blood. She wiped it as best she could with some damp tissues. Then she zipped on her high-heeled boots, which made a bold statement combined with her skimpy nightgown. Just give me a whip and a chain, she thought, and I’ll be the dominatrix you’ve always dreamed of. She tugged a soft, hand-crocheted throw from a rocking chair and drew it around her.

The puppy let out a yip and peed on the floor.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Sophie regarded the dark wetness spreading on the braided throw rug in the doorway. Now she remembered why she didn’t do puppies. She loosely rolled up the throw rug. Holding it gingerly, she made her way downstairs, passing faded cabbage-rose wallpaper and a leaded-glass window at the landing. The puppy loyally followed, jumping from step to step down the stairs and nearly crash-landing at the bottom. It seemed completely unhurt, though, and stayed focused on Sophie, as though imprinted like a duck. She couldn’t help smiling, despite the rug. The accident was her fault, really. The dog was a baby. Its bladder was tiny. She should have taken it out immediately to do its business.