Prologue

I still dream about it, sometimes. The old house in desperate need of love, and the fields beyond it, and the flowers that grew there so plentifully. The ones she laced through her hair.

I dream about her, too.

The lightness of her laughter. The scent of her perfume. The tender, trembling touch of her fingers linking with mine. I dream of the times I spent waiting for the sound of her breathing to tell me she’d drifted into sleep.

Sleep is the only place she haunts me, anymore.

Chapter One

I was the only person who debarked at the train station, and I was beyond grateful for that. The woman who’d decided to take me under her wing during the hours of my journey from Brooklyn to my destination in Hollow Valley, Colorado, had been kind and well-meaning, but she’d droned on and on when all I wanted to do was look out the window and watch the world pass by. That train ride was the first time I’d been sent off on my own, the longest distance I’d ever been from my home, and all I wanted was to drink in every dirty country road, every mountain in the distance, every cityscape, every small town I could glimpse. When at last she’d fallen asleep, I even stared out the windows into the darkness, watching for the glints of far-off stars.

Still, I couldn’t hold back a shiver at the whisper of chill breeze that tickled the back...