For Tara Chace, it was the fall that did it, the absurdly long pause that came between missing the handhold and slamming into the ground. Like all falls that are too far, this one lasted long enough for her to realize what had happened, and what, as a result, would inevitably happen next. It was a moment of perfect clarity; not of vision, but of self-awareness, and Chace saw herself then as she had only four other times in her life. She saw herself as the woman she was-frankly, honestly, without self-pity, judgment, or false modesty. Who she was, who she had been, and who she wished to be.

Then she hit the ground, her back impacting first, followed almost immediately by her skull. The first such moment of clarity had occurred when she was only ten years old, the day her mother, Annika Bodmer-Chace, informed Tara that, come the spring, she would be attending a boarding school in Cheltenham, England, and would no longer be living in Switzerland with her mother and father. The conversation-if it could be called such-had occurred in the sitting room of the Geneva house, with Chace seated in a chair so large it had threatened to swallow her, and her mother on her knees before her, speaking gently and sweetly in French, holding both of her child's hands in her own as she imparted the news. When Chace looked past her mother and out the window, she could see snow falling with a sedate grace.

"For your education," her mother told her with the same, bright smile that made men and women alike wonder what other sweet lies and promises it concealed. "You must be educated like a proper lady."

"Like you?" Chace asked.

The smile broke wide, Annika laughing. At thirty-four, she was a near-perfect mirror for the woman Chace would grow to become, the same golden blond hair and sky blue eyes, strong and fine-boned. The only marked difference were in the first creases of age in her flawless skin, lines made by laughter that Chace would never share.