Bricker and Nobles Publishing

A Sarah Frost Novel

PROLOGUE

MY NAME IS SARAH FROST. A few months ago, I was just a normal high school senior living with my mom in New York. As difficult as it’s been to accept what happened, it’s only now that I can even begin to face and retell the strange events of last winter.

My father died when I was eight, and my mother suffered from severe absenteeism, at least when it came to being part of my life. Because of the actions of a man I once trusted, I was forced to move across the country to Seattle and live with my aunt, my dad’s younger sister. It “would be good for me,” or so my mom said, but it sounded like an excuse. She didn’t want to have to deal with me and the trouble I brought.

She was right, but what happened was not my fault.

CHAPTER 1

The dream was always the same.

Red and blue lights flashed outside an automatic sliding door as I sat in a hospital waiting room, kicking legs that didn’t yet touch the floor. The lobby was lit with dim yellow light, and it smelled of bleach. My face hurt from eyes that were puffy and swollen from crying, but I couldn’t stop. A few other people were there, but their faces were blurry and indistinct. They wouldn’t look at me, knowing why I was there.

A set of double doors opened to my right, and my mother walked briskly out of a long white hallway. A thin woman of average height with long, dark hair, and in the dream, she appeared younger than she was in real life. She was an impeccable dresser, but tonight she looked ragged, like a beautiful porcelain doll that had been left out in the rain. Glancing around, she spotted me and hurried over, kneeling so that she could look into my eyes. She looked tired, and her makeup, always so precise and perfect, was smeared. Tears welled in her eyes as she opened her mouth, and dread filled me in anticipation of her words.

“A car accident,” Mom said in a disbelieving voice. Then she gripped both my hands and cried out, “Daddy’s gone!” Sobbing, she leaned forward, burying her face in my lap and wrapping her arms around me.

I didn’t wail in the dream, as I had ten years ago when my father had died. Instead, I felt empty. I already knew what came next. My mother would continue crying, and I would be led through those double doors and into a small room where my father lay. He would be unmoving and attached to many different lines and tubes leading to various beeping monitors. I would have the chance to say goodbye to a man who could no longer hear me.

As I steeled my nerves, I noticed that this version of the dream was a little different. I looked away from my mother’s crumpled form, and a man was sitting next to me. He’d never been there the other times.

The man was older, with golden-blond hair streaked with gray falling to his shoulders. He looked at me, and his features blurred like the other people in the lobby, but there was something about him that made my blood run cold. Through the haze, I saw his piercing blue eyes, and they were hungry. I wanted to move away from him, but my mother pinned me there, shaking in her sorrow. The blond man raised a hand and reached toward me as I watched, trapped and unable to scream.

“Please make sure all tray tables are in the upright and locked position,” recited a pleasant voice over the intercom, startling me awake. A stewardess in a black uniform walked through the aisle to make sure our seat belts were fastened, her heels thumping hollowly as she made her way down the plane.

I peeled my cheek off the window and groaned under my breath. My neck was stiff from falling asleep at that angle, and I could feel the echoes of a developing migraine. It had been a long flight, and the last I remembered, we had only been three hours in. Stretching as best I could while trying not to hit the snoozing woman next to me, I attempted to get comfortable again.

After a six-and-a-half-hour flight, we’d finally started our descent. I yawned and looked out the window. The coastline of Seattle was visible in the distance, evergreen trees scattered throughout square urban structures. Even though I had been born there, it wasn’t a place I knew all that well. I didn’t know what the more famous buildings were called, how to get from one place to another without GPS, what people did on weekends, and which restaurants were good. What I remembered was a reel of flashing childhood images—cool, windy beaches, long walks in the rain, warm cups of hot chocolate, camping, and picnics in the park.

Staring down at the mist-strewn landscape made me feel dizzy. I watched as droplets of water raced each other across the window, wondering who the blue-eyed man from my dream had been. It was strange that in all the years I’d had that dream, I’d never seen him before. He frightened me, but he couldn’t have been real. It was just my sleep-deprived brain adding symbolic details to an event that I’d watched a hundred times in my head. What did it mean?

Probably that I’d eaten too much fast food before getting on the plane.

One week ago, my life had been turned upside down in the course of a single evening, and since then, I’d been picking up the pieces of my shattered world. I’d had to leave everyone and everything behind. The man could have been some sort of subconscious manifestation of… what? Staying away from old blond men?

I shook my head and immediately regretted it as a dull thumping began behind my left ear. More sleep first, then thinking. It was only a dream, after all. Best not to read too much into it for now.

The sound from the engines changed as the plane approached the landing strip. My stomach always gave me fits during final descents. Landing was the part I liked least about flying, not that I did a lot of it. I don’t fear heights or anything, but I don’t like the feeling of my organs attempting to escape as gravity pulls me down to earth. Roller coasters aren’t my thing either. Go figure.

I forcibly put the dream out of my thoughts. No matter what happened from this point forward, this was a new start for me. There was the gnawing feeling in the back of my head that I was just running away from my problems and that it was an uncomfortable comparison to what my mom did, but I tried my best to ignore it. Dad had loved Seattle, and it was about time that I stopped avoiding the memory of him, no matter how much it hurt. Even though I didn’t want to be here, for now, it was home. I would have to make the most of it.