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thick filigree chain halfway filled with a mismatched assortment of charms that bore little resemblance to one another. They reminded me of the angel charm Mr. Morton had given me and I sat up to examine the necklace more closely, clenching my eyes shut for a moment to stop the spinning. I dangled the charms in my hand, studying them and wondering why most of the chain had been left empty. I fingered the figures like a blind woman uncoding Braille, trying to read the stories behind them until I reached the last one.
    I looked down into my palm and saw a tiny gold baby carriage, its spokes delicately molded, and wondered what all of these charms meant. The sand flies continued their invisible attack as I stared down at this buried treasure, biting me without mercy and as persistent as old grief.
    The necklace slipped through my fingers and into my lap and I inexplicably began to cry. I wasn’t sure if my tears were for the old woman whose stories remained untold, or for the girl I had once been who had believed herself invincible but who had grown into a woman who no longer believed in anything at all.

CHAPTER 4

    Lillian Harrington-Ross sat at the window in her sitting room and stared at the letter in her age-spotted hands, deliberately overlooking the fingers that resembled more the knotted trunks of live oaks than the graceful fingers of a woman who’d once taken so much pride in her hands.
    The sound of hooves beating on dried, packed earth drew her attention out the window to the lunge ring, where her grandson,Tucker, had brought the recently rescued cherry bay gelding, the vivid scar bisecting the horse’s flank appearing like a caution sign. Tucker held the lunge whip out, expertly guiding the reluctant gelding around the ring, coaxing secrets from the animal’s unknown past.
    Lillian rarely opened her blinds, preferring the darkness, but she’d wanted to watch her grandson and the new horse to surreptitiously study them both to see if either one of them showed any sign of healing. She sat back in her chair and looked out at her grandson through half-closed eyes, seeing another man in the shimmering heat, another man who’d known how to speak to horses and who’d had no tolerance for broken things. She let her eyelids shut completely, feeling the tremor in her old hands, imagining that it had been the power of a horse felt through the pull of the reins. But that had all been so very long ago. And she wondered again how she had let something so precious exit her life so easily. Like the moment a parent realizes their child is too big to be carried yet not remembering how long it had been since the last time.
    Dum vita est, spes est. The letter shook in her hands as the words danced in front of her eyes. Where there is life, there is hope. Was it really possible to have once been so young as to believe in hope? And in friendships that were meant to last a lifetime? But it was more than the passage of years that had made her a cynical old woman; grief and loss could poison more than just time.
    Peering again through her bifocals at the letter, Lillian read it for the third time.
    Dear Mrs. Harrington-Ross,
    I’m not sure if you received my previous three letters. In case you haven’t, I’m Piper Mills, the granddaughter of Annabelle O’Hare Mercer. I have recently discovered pages from a scrapbook that belonged to her along with a photo of my grandmother, you and a girl named Josephine among other things.
    You may or may not be aware that my grandmother passed away last month after having battled with Alzheimer’s for many years. Her scrapbook has left me with many questions and I’m eager to speak with you to help me answer as many as I can.
    I can be reached at the number below and would be happy to either speak with you over the phone or set up an appointment to meet with you at Asphodel Meadows.
    I’ve never met you although I lived with my grandparents for many years. I’m left to assume that any