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had been traumatic. Just not as traumatic as having both her parents withhold their approval for most of her life. That trauma beat the burned man raving on her birthday to hell and gone.
    â€œIt didn’t blight my life,” she repeated. “It marked it, that’s all.”
    â€œThe hell it didn’t! You were traumatized!” Dad jabbed the whispered words at her. “You’ve never been the same since!”
    A hard point to argue, since she doubted that her father had noticed what she’d been like before. Shy and insignificant, for sure. Easy to overlook. No trouble to speak of. No problems.
    It was afterwards that she’d become a problem to them.
    Her mother had canceled the birthday party, pleading a stomach virus. That had marked the beginning of Edie’s oddessey with child psychiatrists and endless medications, to treat her nightmares, her anxiety, her so-called obsessions. Her utter, hopeless inability to be the daughter her parents wanted her to be.
    She pushed it away, and shook her head. “It’s just a character. An artistic creation. It’s my work, Dad. It’s how I support myself.”
    â€œOh, stop. I’ve lost patience with your playacting at being a starving artist in that miserable hole of an apartment. It’s an insult to me and to your mother’s memory, when you could live in any of a dozen beautiful properties! You could have an allowance, a car—”
    â€œI don’t need an allowance. I’m fine. I already have a car.”
    â€œYou call that thing a car? It’s a death trap! You know how I worry. How your mother worried! Her worry for you shortened her life!”
    Edie winced. “That’s not fair!”
    â€œThat’s the truth!” Her father shoved out his jaw, in that self-righteous way that brooked no argument.
    Not fair. Linda Parrish’s death had not been her fault, but it hurt, to hear it said. To know that he believed it.
    Her mother had died of an unexpected heart attack fourteen months before. No one had known she had a heart condition. She was thin, fit, excruciatingly elegant. She played tennis, golf. She was active on the board of innumerable charities. But one day, at a Parrish Foundation board meeting, she had clutched her chest, and collapsed.
    Edie had known it would happen, ever since her mandatory weekly lunch date with her mother. She’d been nervously doodling on her napkin during the lecture about her clothes, her hair, her attitude, the expression on her face. She’d sketched the sharp line of her mother’s profile on the napkin, felt that inner eye open…and realized that she’d surrounded the portrait with dozens of hearts. Big ones, small ones. And she knew that deadly danger stalked her mother.
    She didn’t know how, what, or when, but something was going to happen. Something that could kill Linda Parrish. She struggled as best she could to translate the symbols her subconscious threw to the surface. The hearts made her think that Mom should go to the doctor, get tests done. On her heart. That was the best she could figure.
    But her revelations had been met with derision and anger. The lunch had ended prematurely, and Edie had been banished in disgrace for forcing her sick delusions on her mother. And in a public place, too.
    Linda Parrish died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, a scant week later. No chance to say good-bye, or part on better terms.
    Edie had been over it in her head millions of times. She should have been smarter, sneakier. Told someone else to call her mother, someone with credibility. She should have begged her mother’s doctor to suggest it. There had to have been a better way.
    Edie pushed away the grief and frustration, and tried again. “OK, never mind the book signing, Dad. I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s just talk about something else, OK?”
    Her father looked down at his wineglass,