The Sound of Glass Read Free Page A

spoke. “Yes, ma’am.”
    Edith nodded, feeling inordinately relieved that they hadn’t come because of the suitcase. Her son called out from the kitchen again, distracting her from the sight of the blinking lights. She knew she needed to say something, to pretend that she cared that Calhoun was dead, to pretend that she felt anything except relief. She thought instead of the feel of her mother’s cold hand in hers, and her father’s voice saying something about her being free from pain. Edith let out a sob, then pressed her knuckles against her mouth.
    The chaplain spoke again. “Can I get you anything? Or can I call someone to come stay with you?”
    She shook her head, blinked back the tears. “No. I’ll be all right. I just need to be alone right now with my son. I’ll be in touch in the morning to see what needs to be done. Thank you, gentlemen.” She closed the door on their surprised faces, her last glimpse that of the chaplain’s knowing eyes.
    The storm outside intensified as she pressed her forehead against the closed door, feeling guilty that instead of thinking of Calhoun dying alone on a darkened road, her thoughts were occupied with the letter under her refrigerator and the woman who’d written it. Edith felt an odd kinship with the unknown woman, the bond of a secret the other woman would never know she’d shared. A secret Edith knew she’d take to her grave.
    Before she turned from the door, a gust of wind pushed at the house, unfastening a shutter on an upper story and slamming thelimbs of the old tree against the roof of the porch. As she began walking slowly back toward the kitchen, she heard the wind chime cry out into the troubled night like a prayer to accompany lost souls to heaven. She shivered despite the humid night, then closed her eyes for a moment, hearing only the sound of glass.



chapter 1
    MERRITT
    BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA
MAY 2014
    F
ires can be stopped in three different ways: exhausting the fuel source, taking away the source, or starving the fire of oxygen.
Whenever Cal was worked up or upset he would repeat small facts he’d learned at the academy like reciting a prayer. It sometimes worked, which is probably why I’d taken up the habit after he was gone.
    My logical and organized curator’s mind wouldn’t allow me to completely push away the thought that my own recitation was some kind of unanswered plea for forgiveness. Because no matter what they told me, Cal’s death wasn’t an accident. I was reminded often that he was a firefighter and walking into burning buildings was what he did, and sometimes a roof collapsed and firemen got trapped. And they were right, of course, because that was how Cal had died. But it didn’t explain why.
    I looked up at the address on the thick white door casing of theold brick building, then back to the letterhead of the law firm Williams, Willig, and White, 702 Bay Street. I stared at the brass numbers, my mind still unwilling to grasp how I’d ended up more than a thousand miles from home.
    I climbed the three steps, holding down my skirt so it wouldn’t expose the ridged scar on the side of my leg. I pulled on a heavy brass doorknob, needing both hands to open the large door, then stepped into a well-appointed reception room that looked like it had once been a foyer to a grand home. Old pine floors, polished to a sheen that didn’t quite obscure the centuries of heel marks and scratches that gave the wood character, creaked beneath my feet as I walked toward a large mahogany reception desk.
    A brass nameplate with the name Donna Difloe introduced the middle-aged woman behind the desk. She looked up at me and smiled as I approached, her rhinestone cat’s-eye glasses beneath a cap of frosted blond hair catching the light from her desk lamp. She smiled at me with brightly painted pink lips, and I wondered whether I’d need to start wearing at least lipstick now that I’d moved down south.
    “May I help you?” she