parents about their refusal to let her go off to college, that she wasn’t suited for the job anyway? Isn’t that why she’d given up so easily?
A journalist couldn’t be afraid to stir things up, and she hadn’t even liked being at odds with her own parents. She was better suited to remain behind the scenes, tucked safely behind her desk in the circulation department where nobody expected her to drag information from reluctant sources.
She frowned, because she had to find a way to do exactly that if she had a prayer of discovering how Skippy Rhett fit into her life. There had to be some way to convince Karen to tell her what she knew about her brother’s death.
The road veered to the right, and Cara focused on negotiating the curve. When she hit the straightaway, her thoughts returned to Karen Rhett’s baffling hostility. She set her lips as a possibility occurred to her. It was so painful she felt a little stab in the region of her heart.
If Gray DeBerg were close enough to Karen to send her flowers, maybe he was influential enough to convince her not to answer any of Cara’s questions.
But if he were so close to Karen, what had he been doing kissing Cara on the beach? The question prompted an instant memory of Gray’s hungry mouth on hers, his body hard against hers. There was no question that he had wanted her, so why had he sent Karen flowers the next day? Guilt, perhaps? Karen shook her head, trying to shake her thoughts of Gray. She was in Secret Sound to find the answer to a far more important question.
Why had she seen little Skippy Rhett die again?
The question seemed absurd in the bright light of day, when the sun was shining gloriously overhead and turning her world golden.
It would be easy for Cara to convince herself the boy, as well as the eagle in her dreams, were figments of her imagination and that Secret Sound was no more familiar to her than a hundred other towns in a hundred different places.
Then she looked at the road, and knew everything she had just told herself was a lie. The route she was taking back to the hotel bisected a different, older residential neighborhood than the one Cara had driven to the newspaper.
This time, the slope of the road and the scenery were jarringly familiar. A portion of Cara's brain remembered the barrel-tile roofs on some of the older homes and the profusion of football fields, their goal posts erected on what were soccer fields in the summer.
The road gradually broadened from two lanes to four, unsurprising considering that increased traffic had forced lots of towns to widen their roadways. Except Cara didn't merely suspect that was what had happened in Secret Sound. She knew.
Her lungs felt starved for air, and Cara tried to calm herself, taking the long, deep breaths that the proponents of the relaxation exercises suggested.
There had to be a reason for the things that were happening to her, and the most logical was that she had been in Secret Sound before.
She reached for the cell phone she'd tossed on the passenger seat with shaking hands, noticing her battery was nearly dead. What’s more, she was fairly certain she’d forgotten her charger. She hit speed dial for the phone number of the only living person who could confirm this wasn’t her first time in Secret Sound, hoping the battery lasted the length of the conversation.
"Hello," a creaky, familiar voice answered after the phone had rung six times.
"Aunt Clarice? It's me, Cara."
"My lord, child. Is everything all right? You're not supposed to call until later in the week. I told you this trip to Miami wasn't a—"
"Good idea," Cara finished for her, deciding not to worry her aunt further by sharing her troubles. She'd already been repeatedly subjected to her aunt's opinion of a woman traveling alone to a strange state, an opinion that, strangely, she had agreed with even as she’d set out on the trip. "Please don’t worry about me, Aunt Clarice. Everything’s
A journalist couldn’t be afraid to stir things up, and she hadn’t even liked being at odds with her own parents. She was better suited to remain behind the scenes, tucked safely behind her desk in the circulation department where nobody expected her to drag information from reluctant sources.
She frowned, because she had to find a way to do exactly that if she had a prayer of discovering how Skippy Rhett fit into her life. There had to be some way to convince Karen to tell her what she knew about her brother’s death.
The road veered to the right, and Cara focused on negotiating the curve. When she hit the straightaway, her thoughts returned to Karen Rhett’s baffling hostility. She set her lips as a possibility occurred to her. It was so painful she felt a little stab in the region of her heart.
If Gray DeBerg were close enough to Karen to send her flowers, maybe he was influential enough to convince her not to answer any of Cara’s questions.
But if he were so close to Karen, what had he been doing kissing Cara on the beach? The question prompted an instant memory of Gray’s hungry mouth on hers, his body hard against hers. There was no question that he had wanted her, so why had he sent Karen flowers the next day? Guilt, perhaps? Karen shook her head, trying to shake her thoughts of Gray. She was in Secret Sound to find the answer to a far more important question.
Why had she seen little Skippy Rhett die again?
The question seemed absurd in the bright light of day, when the sun was shining gloriously overhead and turning her world golden.
It would be easy for Cara to convince herself the boy, as well as the eagle in her dreams, were figments of her imagination and that Secret Sound was no more familiar to her than a hundred other towns in a hundred different places.
Then she looked at the road, and knew everything she had just told herself was a lie. The route she was taking back to the hotel bisected a different, older residential neighborhood than the one Cara had driven to the newspaper.
This time, the slope of the road and the scenery were jarringly familiar. A portion of Cara's brain remembered the barrel-tile roofs on some of the older homes and the profusion of football fields, their goal posts erected on what were soccer fields in the summer.
The road gradually broadened from two lanes to four, unsurprising considering that increased traffic had forced lots of towns to widen their roadways. Except Cara didn't merely suspect that was what had happened in Secret Sound. She knew.
Her lungs felt starved for air, and Cara tried to calm herself, taking the long, deep breaths that the proponents of the relaxation exercises suggested.
There had to be a reason for the things that were happening to her, and the most logical was that she had been in Secret Sound before.
She reached for the cell phone she'd tossed on the passenger seat with shaking hands, noticing her battery was nearly dead. What’s more, she was fairly certain she’d forgotten her charger. She hit speed dial for the phone number of the only living person who could confirm this wasn’t her first time in Secret Sound, hoping the battery lasted the length of the conversation.
"Hello," a creaky, familiar voice answered after the phone had rung six times.
"Aunt Clarice? It's me, Cara."
"My lord, child. Is everything all right? You're not supposed to call until later in the week. I told you this trip to Miami wasn't a—"
"Good idea," Cara finished for her, deciding not to worry her aunt further by sharing her troubles. She'd already been repeatedly subjected to her aunt's opinion of a woman traveling alone to a strange state, an opinion that, strangely, she had agreed with even as she’d set out on the trip. "Please don’t worry about me, Aunt Clarice. Everything’s
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