© 2009

LEXI TEMPLETON’S HANDS TREMBLED AS SHE READ THE letter. Sitting on the bed in her wedding dress, in what had once been her great-grandmother’s bedroom, her quick mind began to race.

Think. You don’t have much time.

What would Kate Blackwell have done?

At forty-one, Lexi Templeton was still a beautiful woman. Her lustrous blond hair was untouched by gray and her slim, petite figure showed no sign of her recent pregnancy. She’d been determined to get her killer body back before her wedding. She wanted to do justice to her vintage Monique Lhullier gown, a clinging column of the finest ivory-white lace. And she had.

Earlier, the hundred or so wedding guests gathered at Cedar Hill House, the Blackwell family’s legendary Maine estate, had gasped when Lexi Templeton appeared on the lawn arm in arm with her father. Talk about Beauty and the Beast. Peter Templeton, Lexi’s father, once an eminent psychiatrist and one of New York ’s most eligible bachelors, was now an old man. Frail, bent almost double with age and grief, Peter Templeton led his beautiful daughter toward the rose-covered altar.

He thought: I can go now. I can go to join my darling Alexandra. Our little girl is happy at last.

He was right. Lexi Templeton was happy. She knew she looked radiant. She was marrying the man she loved, surrounded by family and friends. Only one person was missing. That person would never witness another of Lexi’s triumphs. He would never delight in another of her failures. His life and Lexi’s had been intertwined since birth, like the tangled roots of a great tree. But now he was gone, never to return. Despite everything that had happened, Lexi missed him.