Shattered
Table of Contents
A
LSO BY
K
AREN
R
OBARDS
Pursuit
Guilty
Obsession
Vanished
Superstition
Bait
Beachcomber
Whispers at Midnight
Irresistible
Manna from Heaven
(novella)
To Trust a Stranger
Scandalous
Paradise County
Ghost Moon
The Midnight Hour
The Senator's Wife
Heartbreaker
Hunter's Moon
Walking After Midnight
Maggy's Child
One Summer
Nobody's Angel
This Side of Heaven
Green Eyes
Morning Song
Tiger's Eye
Desire in the Sun
Dark of the Moon
Night Magic
Loving Julia
Wild Orchids
Dark Torment
To Love a Man
Amanda Rose
Forbidden Love
Sea Fire
Island Flame
PUTNAM
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) * Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England * Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) * Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) * Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India * Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) * Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright (c) 2010 by Karen Robards
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robards, Karen.
Shattered / Karen Robards. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-18606-0
1. Young women--Fiction. 2. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)--Fiction. 3. Family secrets--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.O196S'.54--dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
To Doug, Peter, Christopher, and Jack, with love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go to my wonderful editor, Christine Pepe, who has been a great source of support. I also want to thank my hardworking agent, Robert Gottlieb, and his staff. More thanks to Ivan Held, Leslie Gelbman, Kara Welsh, Stephanie Sorensen, and the entire Putnam family. You've been fantastic as always.
PROLOGUE
May 1, 1981
"Mommy,
somebody's watching us from the woods again."
Five-year-old Marisa Garcia grabbed a handful of her mother's pale yellow cardigan sweater as she whispered the warning. The angora knit was fuzzy and soft, and she hung on for dear life, bobbing along behind twenty-nine-year-old Angela Garcia like the tail on a kite as she stared fearfully at the dark shape she was sure she could see hiding in the undergrowth beneath the trees that crowded close to the gravel driveway.
A wind blew through the branches, making them whisper and creak. Marisa looked away, shivering, and tightened her grip on the sweater. There were no lights on in the house yet, no lights visible anywhere because the car headlights were off and they lived out in the country now, with no other houses nearby. Only the moon peeped at them over the swaying treetops, a pale sliver of light that looked as thin as white tissue paper pasted against a dark purple sky.
"There's nobody in the woods, baby." Her mother's tone was of patience stretched thin. Her arms were full of groceries, and she was walking quickly through the grass that was wet from the rain earlier in the day, toward the back door of their small brick house without even bothering to look around at the woods. She thought Marisa was making things up. She always did, because Marisa did make things up. Sometimes.
But not now.
"Yes, there is." But Marisa said it hopelessly, because she already knew nobody was going to listen.
"Marisa's a baby, Marisa's a baby. . . ." That was her brother, Tony, who was almost seven. Swinging the grocery bag he was carrying over his head so that the Cheerios and hamburger buns and bag of potato chips inside threatened to fall out, he danced around, making faces at her.
"
Stop
, Tony." Their mother was grumpy tonight, because they were late getting home. It was already full dark out, which meant it had to be getting pretty close to seven, and her dad got home at seven, and if supper wasn't on the table when he walked in the door, he got mad.
When her dad was mad, he scared her.
Sometimes--she knew it was bad to think it, but sometimes--she didn't really like her dad.
"Here, Marisa, take this." Her mother thrust a grocery bag at her. Her mother didn't like her hanging on to her clothes. Angela was always telling her that, so Marisa knew that her mother's giving her the grocery bag was the signal for Marisa to let go. She did, letting go of the soft knit and taking the bag because her mother wanted her to and she always tried to be good, even if she didn't always succeed.
"I got put in time-out today." Tony said it as though he didn't care. He'd been getting in trouble at school and it worried Mommy. In fact, a lot of things seemed to be worrying Mommy lately. She didn't smile much anymore. Not like she used to.
"Oh, Tony. What did you do?"
Marisa tuned out her mother and Tony and concentrated on carrying her grocery bag, which had the eggs in it, which were important because her mother was trusting her not to drop them. Marisa's other arm was wrapped protectively around Gina, the nearly life-size doll she had gotten for her birthday last week. Gina was so great, a My Best Friend doll that all the girls at home had and she'd been wanting so much but never expected to get because they cost
a lot.
Gina even looked like her, with the same black hair and clothes and everything, and getting her would have made it the best birthday ever, if they hadn't been living
here.
She hated this new house, hated her new school, hated the kids who called her fat even though she wasn't--she was
healthy,
Mommy said--hated that Daddy was living with them all the time now instead of usually being away. But most of all she hated the woods that rose up on either side of the house, looking like big, black chicken-claw hands all winter, and now that the trees had turned green they cast a shadow over the house and yard so that even in the middle of the day it always seemed dark and scary. There were
things
in the woods, creatures with glowing eyes that she could see from her bedroom window at night, and lately there'd been people. She had never actually really
seen
them, not as anything more than dark shadows hiding in among the trees, but she knew they were there. She knew they were mean. She'd tried to tell her mother and brother before, but they wouldn't listen. Now one of the shadow people was back again. She could feel the weight of eyes on her, feel the person's dislike even across the distance that separated them, and she scrunched up her shoulders protectively as she hurried up the back stairs in her mother's wake.
As soon as the door opened, Lucy came bounding out, barking her head off and jumping on them all and then running around in circles because she was so glad to see them. Lucy was their dog. She was big and black and furry--a mutt, Tony said--and they'd had her for as long as Marisa could remember. They'd brought Lucy with them when they'd moved to Kentucky from Virginia last fall. Lucy didn't like Kentucky, either, Marisa knew. They had to keep her locked up in the house all day because this new house didn't have a fence and they didn't have enough money to put one up, and Lucy liked to chase the neighbor's cows. What kind of place had
cows
living practically next door, anyway?
I want to go home,
she thought, as they all, Lucy included, piled into the small, ugly kitchen and the light was turned on and the door was safely shut and locked behind them, closing out the night and the woods.
Home was Virginia, a nice white house with lots of other houses around it and only one big tree in the yard. She missed it so much that whenever she thought about it she felt like crying, so she tried not to. But tonight, because it was dark outside and they were late and her dad was probably going to be mad and there was someone in the woods, she thought about home again.