Chapter One

      Elizabeth Giardino had died on February 14. For three hundred and sixty-four days, Anne Gardener had avoided thinking about that terrible day, but on the anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, she allowed herself a few minutes of mourning. She stood in her classroom at the end of the day, surrounded by the hearts-and-lace decorations her students had made, and let the memories wash over her: Elizabeth, never Betsy or Beth, her hair streaked with brilliant purple, leaning dangerously far over the balcony of her father’s penthouse in Manhattan, waving to the paparazzi who clicked off shot after shot from the apartment below. Elizabeth, in a ten-thousand-dollar designer gown and impossibly high heels, sipping five-hundred-dollar champagne and dancing into the wee hours at a St. Tropez nightclub while a trio of morose men in black suits looked on. Elizabeth, blood staining the breast of her white dress, screaming as those same men dragged her away.

      Anne closed her eyes, shutting out the last image. She’d gain nothing by remembering those moments. The past was the past and couldn’t be undone.

      Yet she couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness. She looked out the window, at the picture-postcard view of snow-capped mountains against a turquoise sky. Rogers, Colorado, might have been on another planet, for all it resembled New York City. Those lofty peaks did have a mesmerizing effect, anchoring you to the earth in a way. Part of her would like to stay here forever, too, but she doubted she would. In a year, or two at most, she’d have to move on. She couldn’t afford to put down roots.

      She drew a deep breath, collecting herself, then gathered up her purse and tote bag, and shrugged into her coat. She locked the door of her classroom and walked to the parking lot, her low-heeled boots clicking on the scuffed linoleum, echoing in the empty hallway.

      Her parking space was close to the side entrance, directly under a security light that glowed most mornings when she arrived. But there was no need for the light today, though the shadows were beginning to lengthen as the February sun slid down toward its nightly hiding place behind the mountains.

      The sudden descent to darkness had made her uneasy when she’d first arrived here. Now she accepted it as part of the environment, along with stunning bright sun that shone despite bitter cold, or the sudden snowstorms that buried the town in two feet of whiteness as soft and dry as powdered sugar.

      She drove carefully through town, checking her rearview mirror often. People waved and she returned their greetings. That, too, had unsettled her at first, how people she’d never met greeted her as an old friend within a few days of her arrival. She’d never lived in a small town before, and had to get used to the idea that of course everyone knew the new elementary schoolteacher.

      Dealing with the men had been the biggest challenge at first. More men than women lived in these mountains, she’d been told, and the arrival of an attractive young woman who was clearly unattached drew them like elk to a salt lick. Elizabeth would have been in heaven—the men were ski instructors, mountain climbers, cowboys, miners—all young and fit, rugged and handsome, straight out of a beer commercial or a romance novel. But Anne rebuffed them all, as politely as she could. She wasn’t interested in dating anyone. Period.

      A rumor had started that her heart had been broken in New York and this was why she’d come west. The sympathetic looks directed her way after this story circulated were almost worse than the men’s relentless pursuit.

      Things had calmed down after a few months. People had accepted that the new teacher was “standoffish,” but that didn’t stop them from being friendly and kind and concerned, though she suspected some of this was merely a front for their nosiness. People wanted to know her story and she had none to tell them.

      She stopped at the only grocery in town to buy a frozen dinner and the makings of a salad, then drove the back way home. She tried to vary her route every few days, which wasn’t easy. There were only so many ways to reach the small house in a quiet subdivision three miles from town.

      The house, painted pale green with buff