www.dianechamberlain.co.uk

      For John

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      For helping me think outside the box, dig a little deeper and cope with life’s adventures this past year, I’m grateful to John Pagliuca, Emilie Richards and Patricia McLinn.

      Many people shared their memories of Chapel Hill and Charlottesville with me. Thank you, Caroline and John Marold, Matt Barnett, Sara Mendes, Kerry Cole, Chris Morris and Carole Ramser. You Charlottesville folks made me hungry for a “grillswith!”

      My friends at ASA came through with information on everything from infant seats to waitress uniforms.

      Adelle D. Stavis, Esq. was my legal eagle.

      Brittany Walls and Kate Kaprosy helped me understand CeeCee’s trials and tribulations as a new mother. Thanks for the laughs, you two!

      Over lunch at the Silver Diner (where we hoped no one was listening in on our grisly conversation), Marti Porter gave me the clinical information and insight necessary to write the harrowing scene in the cabin between CeeCee and Genevieve.

      My assistant, Mari Sango Jordan, helped with research and other tasks too numerous to mention, while her daughter, Myya, entertained my dogs so I could get some work done.

      And a special thank-you to my editor, Miranda Stecyk, for being so sensible, smart and supportive.

       Corinne

       Diane Chamberlain

       Chapter One

       Raleigh, North Carolina

      SHE COULDN’T CONCENTRATE ON MAKING LOVE. NO matter how tenderly or passionately or intimately Ken touched her, her mind was miles away. It was a little after five on Tuesday afternoon, the time they protected from meetings or dinner with friends or anything else that might interfere with their getting together, and usually Corinne relished the lovemaking with her fiancé. Today, though, she wanted to fast-forward to the pillow talk. She had so much to say.

      Ken rolled off her with a sigh, and she saw him smile in the late-afternoon light as he rested his hand on her stomach. Did that mean something? Smiling with his hand on her belly? She hoped so but didn’t dare ask him. Not yet. Ken loved the afterglow—the slow untangling of their limbs and the gradual return to reality—so she would have to be patient. She stroked her fingers through his thick, ash-blond hair as she waited for his breathing to settle down. Their baby was going to beautiful, no doubt about it.

      “Mmm,” Ken purred as he nuzzled her shoulder. Thin bands of light slipped into the room through the blinds, leaving luminous stripes on the sheet over his legs. “I love you, Cor.”

      “I love you, too.” She wrapped her arm around him, trying to sense if he was alert enough to listen to her. “I did something amazing today,” she began. “Two somethings, actually.”

      “What did you do?” He sounded interested, if not quite awake.

      “First, I took the 540 to work.”

      His head darted up from his pillow. “You did?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “How was it?”

      “Excellent.” She’d had sweaty palms the whole time, but she’d managed. For the past few years, she’d taught fourth grade in a school eight miles from their house, and she’d never once had the courage to take the expressway to get there. She’d stuck to the tiny back roads, curling her way through residential neighborhoods, dodging cars as they backed out of driveways. “It took me about ten minutes to get to work,” she said. “It usually takes me forty.”

      “I’m proud of you,” he said. “I know how hard that must have been to do.”

      “And then I did another amazing thing,” she said.

      “I haven’t forgotten. Two things, you said. What other amazing thing did you do?”

      “I went on the field trip to the museum with my class, instead of staying at school like I’d planned.”

      “Now you’re scaring me,” he teased. “Are you on some new drug or something?”

      “Am I remarkable or what?” she asked.

      “You are definitely the most remarkable woman I know.” He leaned over to kiss her. “You’re my brave, beautiful, red-haired girl.”

      She’d walked inside the museum as though she did it every day of the week, and she bet no one knew that her heart was pounding and her throat felt as though it was tightening around her windpipe. She guarded her phobias carefully. She could never let any of her students’ parents—or worse, her fellow teachers—know.

      “Maybe you’re trying to do too much too fast,” Ken said.

      She shook her head. “I’m on a roll,” she said. “Tomorrow, I plan to step into the elevator at the doctor’s office. Just step into it,” she added hastily. “I’ll take the stairs. But stepping into it will be a first step. So to speak. Then maybe next week, I’ll take it up a floor.” She shuddered at the thought of the elevator doors closing behind her, locking her in a cubicle not much bigger than a coffin.

      “Pretty soon you won’t need me anymore.”

      “I’m always going to need you.” She wondered how serious he was with that statement. It was true that she needed Ken in ways most people didn’t need a partner. He was the driver anytime they traveled more than a few miles from home. He was her rescuer when she’d have a panic attack in the supermarket, standing in the middle of an aisle with a full cart of groceries. He was the one holding on to her arm as he guided her through the mall or the Concert Hall or wherever they happened to be when her heart started pounding. “I would just like to not need you that way. And I have to do this, Ken. I want that job.”

      She’d been offered a position that would start the following September, training teachers in Wake County to use a reading curriculum in which she’d become expert. That meant driving. A lot of driving. There would be six-lane highways to travel and bridges to cross and elevators she would have no choice but to ride. September was nearly a year away, and she was determined to have her fears mastered by then.

      “Kenny.” She pulled closer to him, nervous about the topic she was about to broach. “There’s something else we really need to talk about.”

      His muscles tightened ever so slightly beneath her hands.

      “The