As the waiter came over to take their orders, she raised her glass. “To all of us,” she said. “To all of us, and to Phantom Lake, and to a perfect summer.” As everyone started to put their glasses to their lips, she added, “And one more thing — to all of you telling me when I’m worrying about nothing and making mountains out of molehills and trying to protect everyone from everything. This summer, I intend to stop worrying and have a great time.”
As everyone clinked their glasses and drank their wine, Merrill decided that maybe the words she’d just uttered in an act of pure bravado weren’t as false as they’d sounded to her. Maybe, after all, everything was going to be okay.
Except that so far no one had been able to tell her why Pinecrest’s owner had disappeared.
Disappeared without a trace.
As she turned her attention to the menu, all the brave words of a moment ago once again rang as hollow as when she’d first uttered them.
Chapter 2
DAN BREWSTER CLICKED off the late news, but instead of rising out of his favorite chair immediately, he sat in the dark for a moment, wondering if there was any way of avoiding the anger he’d felt simmering in his wife from the moment he came home that day. But of course there wasn’t, and she was right — he shouldn’t have taken the house without even consulting her. Still, he wasn’t totally in the wrong, either, since he’d assumed when she forwarded him the e-mail that the house was fine with her. But the house wasn’t the real problem anyway. The real problem was his wife’s fear of practically everything, and she didn’t seem to be getting any better. In fact, she seemed to be getting worse, and he was starting to wonder if she might be turning into the kind of agoraphobic who’d wind up never leaving her house.
Deciding he might as well face the music, he heaved himself out of his chair and moved slowly through the house, turning off the lights and rechecking every door in what had become a habitual response to his wife’s paranoia. Except it’s not paranoia, he silently corrected himself. She just worries too much.