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The living room was big and square, opening onto a kitchen complete with a full-size range and refrigerator, and—could it be possible? A dishwasher! Annie’s heart beat a little faster in appreciation. The appliances were outdated, but appeared to be in working order, and the homemade white wooden cabinets seemed adequate.
    A note was tacked to the refrigerator door with a magnet. Annie crossed the room and took it down. Thought you might be hungry, it said. There’s a casserole in the fridge. Heat at 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Sorry we missed you. Cheers! Yvonne Boudreau.
    Yvonne Boudreau and her husband Mike were decent people, what her mother had always referred to as salt of the earth. They’d left for Florida yesterday, and although Annie had spoken on the telephone with both of them after they’d inkedthe deal for the Twilight, she’d never met them face-to-face. She had a feeling she would have liked them.
    “They left us lunch,” she said.
    Sophie had already disappeared from view. Her voice floated through a door off the living room. “Who left us what?”
    “The Boudreaus. They left us a casserole. Wasn’t that nice of them?”
    “Whatever.” Annie could hear her daughter opening and closing doors. “Geez,” Sophie said, “this bedroom gives new meaning to the word ugly.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Um…Mom?”
    “What?” Annie opened the refrigerator to check out the macaroni-and-beef casserole and the six-pack of Pepsi that Yvonne Boudreau had left for them. The fridge was immaculate, as was the rest of the living space.
    “There’s only one bedroom.” Sophie emerged looking scandalized. “This whole place is just two rooms and a bath. Where the hell are we supposed to sleep?”
    Annie closed the refrigerator door. “You, my dear, will sleep in the bedroom. I’ll bunk on the couch. And watch your language.”
    “We don’t have a couch.” With a disparaging glance around the room, Sophie added, “Or a bed, for that matter.”
    “Oh, ye of little faith. We will. There’s a secondhand furniture store in town. I bet if we’re really nice to them, they’ll deliver.”
    Her daughter didn’t look convinced. Instead, she raised her chin and said, “Are we really staying this time?”
    It was a valid question. They’d moved around so much. Every time Sophie had started to settle into a new home, started to make new friends, Annie had dragged her away yet again.
    But you couldn’t spend the rest of your life running. Sooneror later, you had to stop. The odds against their being found in this out-of-the-way little town were astronomical. They had new names, new birth certificates, new social security numbers. Annie had a new driver’s license, courtesy of the state of Nevada. Sophie had spent long enough in the Las Vegas school system to accumulate a brief academic history which Annie prayed would satisfy the Serenity school department. Neither of them had ever been to Maine before. They had no friends or relatives here, nothing to point a pursuer in this direction, and they were far enough from home so it was highly unlikely that anyone from Mississippi would accidentally stumble over them.
    Annie had chosen Serenity because it was off the beaten path. There were no sites of historical significance in the area, no campgrounds, no ski areas or beaches. Nothing to draw tourists. Just a quiet, insular little town that had been built on a nineteenth-century economy and was now struggling to survive in a vastly different twenty-first century.
    For the first time since she’d begun running, she felt almost safe. Almost. “We’re really staying this time,” she said.
    Sophie stepped away from the bedroom doorway and into her mother’s arms. They shared a hard, emotional embrace, made more poignant because these days, physical contact between them was a rarity. Fiercely, Annie said, “This is where we start a new life. We’re safe here. You trust me, don’t you,