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at least a little while, she set aside what haunted her.

    The glow of their closeness, their much-needed love-making, was shattered the next morning at the breakfast table. As Ethan ate a bagel that had seen better days, Hannah poured milk into a cereal bowl as their daughter dropped a bomb.
    "I met a lady that knows your mommy," Amber said.
    Hannah felt the blood drain from her face. She steadied herself and looked at Ethan. He, too, sat in stunned silence. Milk splashed on the floor, spraying the dark wood white. Hannah stared at it for a millisecond, then grabbed a paper towel. She thought she was going to vomit.
    "You did?" Ethan asked. His tone was calm, but as a cop he was a pretty good actor when he needed to be. "What do you mean? You know that Mommy's mother is in heaven." He hated the euphemism, but at Amber's age it would be harder to explain that Grandma was in hell, or at least he hoped she was.
    Hannah set the milk carton on the table, unspooled some paper towels, and spoke. "Tell us what happened. Was it at school?"
    Amber knew her parents were upset, and a flicker of fear came over her face. Not because she knew exactly why she should be afraid, but empathy nevertheless set in. Something was wrong and she didn't know what, exactly, she had done. She didn't get in a car with some man with a sack of candy.
    "We just talked. I didn't do anything."
    "Honey," Hannah said. "No one's mad. Sorry. Just interested in learning more about the lady."
    Amber looked satisfied. "Outside. Yesterday. The lady was walking her dog and came over when I was sidewalk-chalking with Maddie. She came over, we petted her dog, and she said she knew Mommy, and Mommy's mother. She said, you and Grandma were 'peas in a pod.' She was nice."
    Hannah's stomach turned once more. She leaped to cruel conclusions, none of which she could voice or needed to voice at that moment. Ethan patted her arm and dismissed what Amber had just said.
    "Must have been a mistake," he said. "Mommy never really knew her mother. Aunt Leanna raised her. You know that, Amber. Right?"
    "Uh-huh," she said, clearly confused.
    Hannah's memory loss wasn't a soap opera case of amnesia, the kind that is brought back with a bump on the head by the evil twin sister. It certainly wasn't the result of Alzheimer's or some other disease that steals the mind of the happy and sad times that make memories worth visiting. It had been a studied effort. One that she had accomplished on her own. Hannah never talked about anything from those days, especially once the nightmare became real. She shuttered the pictures in her mind so handily that when she needed to recall the face of her mother there was nothing there. A shadowy form. A face devoid of features. Not even a voice.
    And now her little girl had forced her hand. She needed to remember.
    "What did the lady look like, honey?"
    "Just a lady. She was old, maybe forty or seventy."
    Amber's ability to pinpoint age needed work.
    "That's a big gap," Hannah said softly. "Did she have gray hair?"
    She shook her head. "It was dark, but it didn't match her face."
    Hannah looked at Amber quizzically; her daughter was untouched by the past and she wanted it to stay that way.
    "Match her face?"
    "I don't know. She had a grandma face, but mom hair."
    Amber slid from the table to scurry for her backpack.
    "Don't even think it," Ethan said.
    Hannah pretended not to be bothered. "She must have heard wrong, because this isn't happening."

    Chapter Six
    Amber had a loose tooth and Hannah was unable to take her eyes off it. She watched her daughter work the tiny tooth with her tongue at the dinner table and wiggle it with her fingertip in the car. It swung like a little white tombstone. When it finally fell and Amber ran to her, Amber held her hand out as if she were presenting the gift of all gifts. Most children think so. Most mothers agree.
    But not Hannah Griffin.
    "Those go under the pillow, honey. Better do it fast. You never know when the