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children grow up in a blink of an eye...
    "Still, part of me holds onto the hope that this is a dream. Although technically I suppose it qualifies as a nightmare.  
    "I keep wondering where have I been for all these years? Have I been in some sort of deep mental sleep? Was I dead and am now in the state of mental reincarnation? And who has been here in my place? She seems nothing like me, from what Mother says. She seems... like an idiot. A sweet, dim, idiot.
    "And yet she will win. I can already feel myself slipping away. Memories are starting to slide away from my fingertips, and I'm losing words for things. The writing is on the wall, Katarina. It looks like I won't be able to warn you, at least not in person. I won't be here to protect you. Again.
    "I've made you many other tapes, tapes while I was talking to your grandmother and Margie. I hope you get to hear them. Maybe you already have. My wishes and dreams for you are on those tapes, all the things I wanted to teach you. I won't get a chance to, apparently.
    "But this is the tape I don't trust them to give you. I've had to lock myself in this crappy hotel bathroom in the middle of the night just to record the damn thing. I'll figure out a way to send this to you when they aren't watching me.  
    "Ah, Katarina, I don't know who to trust.
    "There's only one reason I'm telling you this story at all. I have a feeling..."
    There was a stretch of silence on the tape, then her voice came back, stronger.
    "Katarina, they know. They know I've come back. And things ... terrible things are happening. I called four people involved and they've all left. Two I know of are hiding out. One might even be dead.  
    Then you had the accident. If it even was an accident.
    I felt lightheaded as if someone had lifted me too high, too fast. Of course it was an accident, I thought to myself, shifting in my spot on the couch. A flash of pain from my rib took my breath away.  
      "And I'll be gone soon enough, in every way that counts, anyway. There's only one weapon I can give you and it's this tape. It might be the only thing that keeps you safe, keeps you a step ahead. Because they aren't drawing the line anymore. They are shutting every door they can find and I'll be damned if I can figure out why.
    "If you end up having to run, you need to know everything I can tell you because I don't know what part of it will matter. Remember one thing, Katarina. What happened to me—it wasn't an accident.
    "They were trying to kill me. And I think they'll try to kill you—whether you have the answers or not."

Chapter 9
    "Before you were born, I worked part-time in the state records office. It was a dead-end job, but I was just there to make extra money until I got through my doctorate. It was brutal. Imagine filing papers all day, every day. Over and over. I took it because I thought it would be a good experience for the history work I planned on doing. What a joke.  
    "The only part of the job I liked was the occasional research project—although it's a stretch to call it research, really. Most of the other women in the office hated to do any of the special research requests because it involved actually getting their fat asses up and walking downstairs to the basement for the old files. The files they said they were going to computerize but never did.
    "Most of the research was focused around title searches, trying to make sure deeds were accurate and that no one was digging up an old cemetery and all that. It's actually amazing anyone agrees on property lines; the historical files in this state are ridiculously contradictory, especially if you go back fifty or a hundred years. Half the time you'd think someone owned a parcel of land, they'd build a convenience store on it, and you'd find out it belonged to a rancher who never did sell the land. When the place was getting carved up for a new subdivision you'd find out the whole thing was a mess. It took an army of lawyers and a few hastily