Chapter 1 - The Dress in the Fire

The first thing I smelled was lace burning.

The second thing I heard was my sister laughing.

I ran through the open doorway and stopped so hard my shoulder hit the frame.

My pink dress was in the charcoal basin.

Not near it.

Not singed by accident.

In it.

“Maddie!”

My eighteen-year-old sister looked over her shoulder like I had interrupted her while she was changing a song.

“What?” she said.

I lunged for the dress.

Heat slammed into my face.

“Claire, don’t be stupid.”

“That was Mom’s.”

“I know.”

Those two words hurt more than the fire.

I grabbed the iron poker and tried to hook the dress out, but half the skirt tore away in glowing pieces.

My hands started shaking.

“You knew?”

Madison shrugged.

“It was hideous anyway.”

My throat closed.

She smiled.

“I did you a favor.”

I stared at her.

For one terrible second, I couldn’t speak.

My mother had made that dress when I was sixteen, three months before cancer took her.

I had never worn it.

I had planned to wear it the next night to the memorial dinner Dad held every year on Mom’s birthday.

Footsteps clicked behind me.

Veronica, my stepmother, entered in a champagne-gold blouse and dark trousers.

She looked at the fire.

Then at Madison.

Then at me.

And she did exactly what she always did.

She walked to Madison and placed a protective hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t make a scene,” she said sharply.

I laughed once, because if I didn’t, I was going to scream.

“She burned my mother’s dress.”

“She’s still a child.”

“She’s eighteen.”

“Claire.”

“No. Not this time.”

The front door slammed somewhere downstairs.

A man’s voice called my name.

Dad.

The color drained from Veronica’s face.

Madison’s smile disappeared.

Three seconds later, my father appeared in the doorway in his midnight-blue suit.

His eyes moved from my tears to the fire.

Then to Madison.

Then to Veronica’s hand on her shoulder.

“What happened?”

Nobody answered.

So I did.

“She burned Mom’s dress.”

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Dad went perfectly still.

And for the first time in eight years, I saw fear in Veronica’s eyes.