But now, she reached for the rubber band, to remove it for the first time in eighteen years. And just as her fingers touched it, it snapped in two, and she jumped, so startled that the letters fell from her hands, and onto the bed.

She sat motionless, frightened by the way the band had snapped as if on its own, even while she told herself she was being silly. It was nothing. Coincidence.

Without touching the letters that fanned out on the bedding before her, Kira scanned their return addresses. Most of them had come from Scotland . And all of the surnames were MacLellan. She'd never met any of her mother's relatives, had never even heard her mother speak of them.

She didn't know why, but decided it was time to find out. Given that phone call she'd just received, and the constant gut-level curiosity that had dogged her for years, it was time. Her urge to delve into her mother's closely guarded secrets had always been outweighed by the irrational fear of what she might find.

Six million dollars, however, was a powerful motivator. And as much as her practical brain told her it couldn't possibly be for real, her belly told her it was.

Kira picked up one envelope, flipped it over and paused. It was still sealed. Frowning, she checked another, and then another. None of them had been opened.

What had happened to make her mother turn so completely against her own family?

Because of the curse.

She ignored the voice that whispered in her mind. There was no curse. Her mother had been dying, her brain misfiring, her words coming from some irrational place inside her. She'd asked her father. He'd said there were no such things as curses.

Drawing a breath, she chose the envelope she would open. It was from Iris MacLellan, and the postmark date was April, 1981. Before she had even been born. She slid her thumbnail beneath the envelope's fold and sliced it open, and swore a chorus of breathless whispers spilled out with the sheet of vellum.