CHAPTER ONE

      JOLTED AWAKE, ERIN lay utterly still, her heart pounding. What—But the shuddering sense of horror answered an unfinished question. Which nightmare had it been? The crash itself? What she’d seen as she was extracted from all that was left of the van? The faces of parents? The empty seats in her classroom?

      She stared at the ceiling, unable to make herself move. She could stay in bed all day. Never get up. No one would notice; no one would care. She had no place to be, not anymore.

      Voices played in her head, as they so often did.

      You’re so lucky. Yep, that was her—lucky.

      God must have saved you for a reason. Because He’d condemned her to purgatory?

      You still have the chance to do something extraordinary.

      Make your life count. That one had come with an encouraging squeeze of her hand.

      Who’d told her she owed it to the dead to be happy? She couldn’t remember. Probably hadn’t been able to look that person in the face.

      Nope, of course she wasn’t to blame. She was only the driver. The one all those girls had trusted to get them safely where they were going. They’d trusted her in other ways, too. As an assistant professor of history, lecturing from the front of her classroom, she maintained an invisible distance. But with her team, it was different. She knew every girl—her strengths, her vulnerabilities, her fears, her dreams.

      There’d be no more dreams. Just her own nightmares.

      The ceiling, she slowly realized, needed painting as much as the walls. What had probably once been white had yellowed, like pages in an old book, even showing the brown spots a book dealer would call “foxing.”

      Eventually she rolled her head enough on the ancient, flat-as-a-pancake feather pillow to see the clock—7:26. She’d slept for maybe three hours.

      Erin both craved sleep and dreaded it. The oblivion called to her, but the nightmares always took her back to the worst moments.

      The screams, metal and human. She would never forget.

      Be happy? Really?

      Unfortunately, she was alive, which meant she had to pee. Aching, moving as slowly as an old woman, she pushed herself to a sitting position, swung her feet over the edge of the mattress and looked for her slippers. The wood floors were chilly. Plus, she kept thinking she’d get a splinter. Those floors needed stripping, sanding and refinishing as much as the interior of the house needed painting. The exterior, too—but it would have to be scraped and pressure-washed first.

      Sometimes she wondered if Nanna just hadn’t seen the deterioration. Maybe her vision had been going. She’d lived here most of her life, and in recent years, she hadn’t gone out much. If Erin’s dad was still alive, he would have seen to the maintenance, but Erin had been too far away to be aware of how badly Nanna needed someone.

      “I’m sorry, Nanna,” she whispered.

      Thank you, Nanna, for leaving me this house. She had no idea what she would’ve done if she hadn’t had this refuge waiting for her. Familiar, filled with memories and an occasional moment of comfort that felt like the touch of a small, arthritic hand.

      Once recovered from her injuries, she’d returned to her classes, sticking it out until February, when she and her department head realized at about the same time that she couldn’t stay on at the college. She’d been at Nanna’s house now for...almost three weeks? Made meaningless by grief, the days ran together.

      In the bedroom again to pull a sweatshirt over her sleep tee, Erin said aloud, “I’ll start today, Nanna, even if it’s only one project. I promise.”

      There was no answer, of course, and yet Nanna felt more alive to her than—Nope. Not going there. Couldn’t go there, not if she was going to be able to choke down a piece of toast and actually accomplish something like pulling a few weeds.

      And she did manage, although she had trouble believing she’d lived for no reason but to save her grandmother’s hundred-year-old house from being bulldozed so some new structure could be built in its place.

      Over my dead body, she thought, and wished she could laugh.

      * * *

      A MONTH LATER...well, she was taking better care of herself, which was something, and had painted the parlor, the library and the downstairs hall, as well as the small bathroom tucked under the stairs. She’d stripped the fireplace surround, sanded until her hand and arm ached, and finally stained it and applied a Varathane finish. It looked really good, if she did say so herself. Too bad the molding and floors still looked so bad.

      But in early April, spring could no longer be denied, and today she was going to assess the tools her grandmother had owned, and what needed to be done to get the yard in