In those days photography had been my passion, my way of escaping from the endless rounds of dirty diapers and runny noses and tears. At home, as soon as the children were bedded down, I’d fled to my darkroom, working into the early hours printing and tinting photos. The quiet darkness was an addiction. As sleepy as I often was during the day, I came alive in those night hours.

I had been taking photos in Stratford to work on, to enlarge and color when we got home.

After that day by the river, I never took another. Growing up I had never daydreamed about having a family, of being surrounded by children. I’d read endlessly, imagined myself in exotic places, even saw myself as an archeologist. So when I met Colin . . . I loved the children, they were mine, but they were part of the scenery of my life.

When I lost one of them due to my preoccupation, I vowed never to let anything distract me again. Not even photography. Especially not photography.

“You thought falling asleep sounded better?” Colin felt menacing beside me, as if he might grab my shoulders and shake me.

I knew then that I should have told him about the note first, that we should not be having this conversation in front of everyone. “I—yes . And after I kept saying it a part of me started believing it. When I finally admitted the truth and told someone else, she pointed out that if I was standing right by the water, I should have heard a splash or seen Caitlin fall in. And I was, right by the edge of the river. I–”

“But the police must have investigated all that?” Patience couldn’t keep out of it any longer.

“Of course they did.” Colin boomed. “They interviewed everyone who’d had been in the park that day. We even hired a private detective. Who found nothing.”

Through the miasma of wine and coffee I tried to remember what had been in the detective’s report. Surely, for all the money we borrowed from Colin’s parents to pay him, he had turned up something. “But the police never found her. They said that was unusual for that part of the river.”

“But not impossible.” Colin held up a professorial hand, a gesture he would use to silence a classroom. Everyone looked at him, waiting. He addressed the girls first. “I’m sorry you had to learn this from someone in a drunken stupor. It’s something that happened long ago. We didn’t want you to grow up thinking something terrible would happen to you too. We didn’t want it to overshadow your childhoods. It was the worst thing that ever happened to us. But your mother has conflated another day when she was taking pictures with the day it actually happened. All I can say is, memory is notoriously unreliable.”

I was so furious that I couldn’t think of which calumny to address first. I was not in a drunken stupor. I was not mixing up the days. But I needed to explain why I was bringing it up now. “What I was doing that day isn’t the point.” I reached in my Mexican jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “This is the point.”

A rustling, a squeaking of chairs, as everyone craned to look.

It was a square white envelope, the size of a small greeting card, addressed to “The Fitzhughs.” On the front were stamp images of Queen Elizabeth in red and green and a postmark I could not read. I pulled out the white paper inside, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the table so that the people closest to me could see. In large black letters it read: YOUR DAUGHTER DID NOT DROWN.

When Colin and the girls had seen it I passed it to Pat who scanned it and gave it back so I could show it to Ben. “This came in the mail Monday,” I said. “I can’t tell what part of England it’s from.”

Colin picked up the envelope and studied it. Again, everyone seemed to be waiting for his official pronouncement. “A mean trick,” he said finally. “Someone’s idea of a bad joke.”

A bad joke? “But why now?” I argued, shocked. “Almost twenty years later? Who would know anything about it now?”

“Maybe they ran a story in the local Stratford papers,” Ben said. “Maybe the detective who investigated it is retiring or something.”

“And that would make somebody track us all the way over here to taunt us, a mention in a retirement story? I don’t buy that. It wasn’t even a criminal investigation, they just thought she’d drowned. No policeman would be remembered for it.”

“Maybe that’s what the story was about then, people drowning in the river.” Ben brightened as if he had solved the problem. I told myself he wasn’t trying to be cruel, that he just liked to fix things.

“They’d hardly go to the trouble of finding Delhi and Colin’s address in another country. That’s ridiculous,” Patience said. “It sounds like whoever wrote it knows something definite.”

“Can’t we have the handwriting analyzed?” Jane interrupted. “Or have it dusted for fingerprints?”

Colin sighed, playing with a small glass salt shaker that had been left on the table. “That note is hardly a criminal matter. They wouldn’t go to the trouble. Besides, the real point is if Caitlin did somehow survive, it’s too late now. Too much time has passed. It’s like an adoption, it’s final.”

“No!” It came out of me as a wail.

Patience gasped. “It is not like an adoption. If your daughter didn’t drown, then she was kidnapped! She has every right to know her real family.”

“Patsy,”—Colin lapsed into her old nickname–“it’s not that simple. You can’t assume a kidnapping. If she didn’t drown, she probably wandered off and someone found her.”

“Daddy, what are you talking about?” Jane grasped his forearm. She was flushed, probably with cabernet, and furious. As close as they were, she often lost her temper with Colin. “People don’t keep lost children. They find a policeman and get them back to their parents! It’s not like a stray kitten that you decide to take in.”

“No, Daddy’s right,” Hannah looked up from where she had been tormenting a cuticle. “How would you feel if someone contacted us and claimed after nineteen years that I had been stolen and was part of their family? That everything I’d thought was true was a lie and they wanted me to come live with them. Anyway, I don’t want a twin. I’m fine just as I am.”

Colin pushed back from the table. “I think it’s time for us to go.”

“But we haven’t had our walk,” Ben protested. “We have to take our beach walk!”

Poor Ben. If he’d been on the Titanic, he would have been demanding his nightly whiskey as the ship went down.

“Yes, go on your walk. I have to show Delhi something of our mother’s that I found. We’ll catch up.”

I knew we wouldn’t.

“Can I see?” Jane asked eagerly.

Patience and I exchanged a look.

“Sure,” I told her.

O’Clair got up, put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, glanced at Virginia’s cute face and naked shoulder sticking out from under the cover, and went outside. It was seven twenty-five, big orange sun coming up over the ocean, clear sky; looked like another perfect day. O’Clair had moved to Florida from Detroit three months earlier, bought an eighteen-unit motel on the beach called Pirate’s Cove; it had a friendly pirate on the sign surrounded by neon lights.

The Motel was at the corner of Briny Avenue and SE Fifth Street in Pompano Beach. Four-story condo to the north and public beach access immediately south, and next to that, a massive empty lot that a developer was going to build a twenty-five-story apartment building on.

The idea of living through two years of heavy construction had O’Clair concerned, but what could he do about it?

He’d brought a paper grocery bag with ihm and walked around the pool, picking up empties, a dozen or so lite beer cans left by a group of kids from Boston University who’d been staying at the motel the past three days. There were nine of them, three girls and six guys. They’d caravanned down from snowy Massachusetts a week after Christmas.

He fished a few more beer cans out of the pool with the skimmer, picked up cigarette butts that had been stamped out on the concrete patio and threw them in the bag with the empties. O’Clair straightened the lounge chairs in even rows, adjusted the back rests so they were all at the same angle, and noticed one of the chairs was missing. He scanned the pool area, didn’t see it, glanced over the short brick wall that separated the motel from the beach and there it was, twenty yards from where he was standing.

O’Clair kicked off his sandals, opened the gate and walked down three steps to the beach. As he got closer, he could see a girl asleep, stretched out on the lounge chair, one leg straight, the other slightly bent at the knee, arms at her sides. She was a knockout, long blonde hair, thin and stacked, wearing a white T-shirt and denim capris, early twenties. He didn’t recognize her, but figure she was with the group from Boston. She looked so peaceful he didn’t want to wake her. “You should go to your room,” O’Clair said, looking down at her.

The girl didn’t respond. He touched her shoulder, shook her gently. Either she was a heavy sleeper or something was wrong. He touched her neck, felt for a pulse, there wasn’t one. Her skin was cold, body starting to stiffen, definitely in the early stages of rigor. He looked at the sand around the lounge chair, surprised it was smooth, no footprints. Glanced toward the water at the joggers and walkers moving by. O’Clair went back up to the patio, wiped the sand off his feet, and slipped his sandals on.

Virginia was standing behind the registration counter, yawning, eyes not quite open all the way, holding a mug of coffee.

“What do you want for breakfast?”

“There’s a dead girl on the beach.” O’Clair said, picking up the phone and dialing 911.

Virginia’s face went from a half smile, thinking he was kidding, to deadpan, seeing he wasn’t. “What happened?”

The cruiser was white with gold and green stripes that ran along the side, light bar flashing. O’Clair watched it pull up in front, taking up three parking spaces. Two young-looking cops in tan uniforms got out and squared the caps on their heads. O’Clair went outside, met them and introduced himself.

“You the one found the body?” Officer Diaz, the dark-skinned cop said.

O’Clair nodded.

“You know her?” Diaz pulled the brim lower over his eyes to block the morning sun, the top of a crisp white T-shirt visible under the uniform.

“At first I thought she was with the group from BU. Now I don’t think so.”

“What’s BU?” the big, pale one, Officer Bush said, showing his weightlifter’s arms, uniform shirt bulging over his gut.

“Boston University. Nine kids staying with us, units seventeen and eighteen.” O’Clair didn’t know the sleeping arrangements and didn’t care. They were paying $720 a night for two rooms, staying for five days.

An EMS van pulled up and parked facing the police cruiser. Two paramedics got out, opened the rear door, slid the gurney out, and O’Clair led them through the breezeway, past the pool, to the beach. The paramedics set the gurney next to the lounge chair, examined the girl and pronounced her dead.

Officer Bush said, “What time did you find her?”

“Around twenty to eight.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I looked at my watch,” O’Clair said, like it was a big mystery.

Diaz grinned, showing straight white teeth, reminding O’Clair of Erik Estrada, his tan polyester uniform glinting in the morning sun. “Did you touch the body?”

“Her neck, felt for a pulse.” O’Clair saw Virginia wander down, standing at the seawall with her cup of coffee, watching them. Officer Bush went back to the cruiser and got stakes and tape, then set up a perimeter around the dead girl, protecting the crime scene. The paramedics picked up the gurney and left, leaving the body for the evidence tech.

Diaz took a spiral-bound notebook out of his shirt pocket, wrote something and looked up at O’Clair. “Ever see her before? Maybe lying in the sun, walking the beach?”

“I don’t think so,” O’Clair said. “Someone like that I would remember.”

Diaz said, “You see anyone else?”

“College kids out by the pool.” He almost said drinking beer, but caught himself, he doubted they were twenty-one and didn’t want to get them in trouble.

“What time was that?”

“Around eleven o’clock.”

“Then what happened?

“I went to bed.”

Diaz said, “Anything else you remember? Any noises?”

“No.”

The evidence tech arrived carrying a tool box, set it on the sand a few feet from the lounge chair, opened it, took out a camera, and shot the crime scene from various angles. Diaz searched the surrounding area for evidence and Bush questioned the morning joggers and walkers wandering up toward the scene. O’Clair watched from the patio, learning against the seawall. Virginia had gone back to the office.

A guy in a tan, lightweight suit walked by O’Clair and went down the steps to the beach. He had to be with homicide. The evidence tech, wearing white rubber gloves, was swabbing the dead girl’s fingernails. He glanced at the guy in the suit.

“What do you got?”

“Fatal.”

“I figured that unless you were doing her nails.”

“Not much here,” the evidence tech said, “couple hairs, maybe a latent, and something you’re not going to believe.” He whispered something to the suit that O’Clair couldn’t hear.

“Jesus, I’ve seen a lot, but I haven’t seen that.” The homicide investigator shook his head. “Where’s the blood?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“How’d she die?”

“You want a guess? That’s about all I can give you right now. She was asphyxiated, been gone about four hours.”

“Who found her?”

The evidence tech turned and pointed at O’Clair above them on the patio. The detective came up the steps and stood facing him.

“I’m Holland, Pompano Beach Homicide.” He has a goatee and a crooked nose, early thirties. “What’s your name, sir?”

“O’Clair.”

“I understand you found her.”

“That’s right.”

“You down here for a vacation, or what?”

“I own the place, bought it three months ago.”

“Where you from, Cleveland, Buffalo, someplace like that?”

“Detroit,” O’Clair said.

“Even worse,” Holland said, breaking into a grin. Just kidding. I got nothing against the Motor City.”

“Well that’s a relief,” O’Clair said.

Holland wore his shield on his belt and a holstered Glock on his right hip.

“You married?”

“Living with a girl named Virgnia, helps me run the place.”

“The hot number in the office?”

O’Clair fixed a hard stare on him.

“How’d you arrange that?”

“I must have some hidden talents.”

“You must,” Holland said. “Tell me what you saw this morning.”

“Same thing you did—dead girl on a lounge chair,” O’Clair said. “Know who she is?”

“No ID. No idea. Have to check with missing persons. Was the chair left on the beach?”

“It shouldn’t have been. The lounge chairs are supposed to be kept in the pool enclosure. It’s one of our rules here at Pirate’s Cove.”

“Your guests break the rules very often?”

“Oh, you know how it is. Get in the Jacuzzi with a beer, without taking a shower, and you’ve broken two right there.” O’Clair paused, playing it straight. “The rules are from the previous owner, guy named Moran. I keep them posted ‘cause I think they’re funny. Someone sat down and wrote them in all seriousness.”

“What do you think happened? This girl was walking by and got tired, saw your place, went up, got a lounge chair, brought it to the beach, lay down, and died in her sleep?”

“I’d ask the medical examiner.”

The evidence tech was taking off the rubber gloves, closing the top of the tool box.

Holland said, “What else did you see?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” O’Clair said. “It’s not what I saw, it’s what I didn’t see.”

“Okay. What didn’t you see?”

“There were no footprints in the sand. Like she was beamed there.”

“So the wind erased them,” Holland said.

“You really believe that?”

“It’s the only plausible explanation I can think of.”

“What else didn’t you see?”

“No obvious cause of death. No evidence of a struggle. In fact, no evidence at all.” O’Clair looked at Holland, caught something in his expression.

“You sound like you know the trade,” Holland said.

“What’s you do before you became an innkeeper?”

“Worked in homicide in Detroit.”

Holland grinned. “I had a feeling. Then you must’ve seen her eyes were missing right? Bulbs removed, empty sockets.”

“But no blood,” O’Clair said. “So it was done somewhere else. Find the primary crime scene, you’ll find the evidence.”

“You weren’t going to say anything?”

“It’s not my case,” O’Clair said. “I figured somebody was going to notice sooner or later, it wasn’t you or the evidence tech it would’ve been the ME.”

“Why do you think the girl ended up here?”

“I have no idea. Why don’t you roll her over, maybe you’ll find something.”

Occasionally there was a crucial piece of evidence under the body, a lead. IT could be a round that would be tested for ballistics comparison against other homicides. It could be money or drugs, suggesting a possible motive, or it could be a cell phone that would lead to the possible killer or killers.

But there was nothing under the dead girl. No ID. No cell phone. Her body was bagged and the remains taken to the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office. They took O’Clair’s lounge chair too.

“It’s evidence,” Holland said. “You’ll get it back eventually.”

O’Clair doubted it. He knew what happened to evidence.

Bush and Diaz went upstairs, woke the BU students and brought them down to the pool, nine kids looking hung over, yawning. Eight twenty in the morning was the middle of the night for them. O’Clair had noticed they usually didn’t get up till after noon. Holland questioned them one by one, showed photos of the dead girl, took statements, and sent them back to their rooms. No one knew or had ever seen the girl before. No one had seen anything suspicious or heard anything during the night.

The MacGuidwins from Mt. Pearl, Newfoundland in unit two, who had complained about the students making too much noise, were questioned next by Holland. O’Clair watched the fair-skinned, red-haired couple shaking their heads.

As it got hotter, Holland commandeered unit seven for his makeshift interrogation room and brought the other renters in two-by-two for questioning. There were the Burnses, Susan and Randy, from Troy, Michigan; the Mitchells, Joe and Jean, from San Antonio, Texas; the Belmonts, John and Shannon, from Chicago, Illinois; and the Mayers, Steve and Julie, from Syracuse, New York. Steve Mayer woke up with four-alarm heartburn at three-thirty a.m., got up, took a Nexium, walked out by the pool and remembered seeing the lounge chair on the beach, but didn’t think anything of it. None of the other renters saw or heard anything.

O’Clair walked Holland out to his car at eleven twenty, glad to finally get rid of him.

“Miss the life?” Holland said.

“Are you kidding?”

“Some things about it I’ll bet.” He handed O’Clair a card. “Call me if you think of something.”

The descent into Hell is not always vertical.

Bishop Frank Morgan

PART I

Chapter One

THE QUESTION MOST PEOPLE ASK when they first meet me is: How does an attorney from a reputable law firm in La Jolla end up on death row? When they hear my story, it becomes clear that the greater question is not how, but why.

I have found it difficult at times to forgive myself for what happened. But a significant part of the answer involves forgiveness, something I never truly understood until I could see in hindsight.

Orpheus went through hell and back to rescue his wife Euridice from death in the underworld. Through his music, he moved the hearts of Hades and Persephone and they agreed to allow Euridice to return with him to Earth on one condition: He must walk before her and not look back until they reached the upper world. On seeing the Sun, Orpheus turned to share his delight with Euridice, and she disappeared. He had broken his promise and she was gone forever. This failure and guilt was a hell far worse than the original.

My own personal hell began one night almost four years ago. Like images carved into flesh, the memories of that night would forever be etched into my mind. The work day had been tense enough”my position at the firm was in jeopardy because of the inexplicable appearance of lewd internet images in my folder on the main file server.

Later that night, as I scrambled to get out the door on time for a critical meeting with a high profile client, my son Aaron began throwing a screaming fit. Hell hath no fury like a boy who has lost his Thomas Train toy. In my own frenzied state, I lost my temper with him.

Amazing how much guilt a four-year-old can pile on you with puppy-dog eyes while clinging to his mother’s legs. His sister Bethie, in all her seventh grade sagacity, proclaimed that I had issues, then marched up to her room, slammed the door and took out her frustration with me by tearing though a Paganini Caprice on her violin. All this apocalypse just minutes before leaving for my meeting, which was to be held over a posh dinner at George’s At The Cove, which I would consequently have no stomach for.

I couldn’t wait to get home. The clock’s amber LED read 11:28 when I pulled my Lexus into the cul-de-sac. Pale beams from a pregnant moon cut through the palm trees that lined our street. The October breeze rushed into the open window and through my hair, a cool comfort after a miserable evening.

If I was lucky, Jenn would be up and at the computer, working on her latest novel. She’d shooed me out the door lest I ran late for the meeting, before I could make any more of a domestic mess for her to clean up.

The garage door came down. I walked over to the security system control box and found it unarmed. On more than one occasion, I had asked Jenn to arm it whenever I was out. She agreed, but complained that the instructions were too complicated. It came with a pretty lame manual, I had to admit.

The system beeped as I entered the house, greeted by the sweet scent of Lilac”her favorite candles for those special occasions. So much more than I deserved, but that was my Jenn. Never judging, never condemning, she understood how much stress I’d been under and always prescribed the best remedy for such situations.

From the foot of the stairs I saw dimmed light leaking out of the bedroom. It wasn’t even date night, but I had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. So before going up, I stopped by the kitchen, filled a pair of glasses with Merlot and set out a little box of chocolates on a breakfast tray”my secret weapon.

As I climbed the stairs I smiled. The closer I got, the more I could smell the fragrant candles. From the crack in the door classical music flowed out: Pie Jesu from Faure’s Requiem. Must’ve been writing a love scene. She always used my classical CDs to set her in the right mood.
A beam of amber light reached through the crack in the doorway into the hallway. The alarm system beeped. She must have shut a window. It had just started to rain and Jenn hated when the curtains got wet.
Kathleen Battle’s angelic voice soared.

Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem,
Requiem sempiternam.
Jenn didn’t know a word of Latin. She just liked the pretty tunes.

I nudged the door open with my foot.

“Honey?” Caught a glimpse of a silky leg on the bed. Oh, yes. I pushed the door open.

Shock ignited every nerve ending in my body like napalm. The tray fell from my hands. Crashed to the ground. Glasses shattered and the red wine bled darkly onto the carpet.

Jenn lay partially naked, face-down, the sheets around her soaked crimson. Stab wounds scored her entire body. Blood. Blood everywhere!

“Jenn!”

I ran to her, turned her over.

She gasped, trying to speak. Coughed. Red spittle dripped from the corner of her mouth. “The kids…”

I took her into my arms. But her eyes begged me to go check on them.

“You hang on, honey. With all you’ve got, hang on!” I reached for my cell phone but it fell out of my belt clip and bounced under the bed.
On my knees now, I groped wildly until I found the cell phone. Dialed 9-1-1. Barely remembered what I said, but they were sending someone right away.

Jenn groaned. Her breaths grew shorter and shorter.

“Bethie… Aaron.”

Her eyes rolled back.

“I’m going. Hang on, baby. Please! You gotta hang on!” I started for the door. Felt her hand squeeze mine twice: Love-you.

No.

Tears streamed down my face. As I began to pull away, she gripped my hand urgently. For that split second, I knew. This was the end. I stumbled back to her. Gathered her ragdoll body in to my arms.
“Jenn, oh God, Jenn. Please don’t!”

“Whatever it takes,” she said. Again, she squeezed my hand twice.

“Mercy, not…sacrifice. One last gasp. She sighed and then fell limp in my arms, her eyes still open.

Holding her tight to my chest, I let out an anguished cry.

All time stopped. Who would do this? Why? Her blood stained my shirt. Her dying words resonated in my mind. Then I remembered. The kids. I bolted up and ran straight to Bethie’s room.
Bethie’s door was ajar. If my horror hadn’t been complete, it was now. I found her exactly like Jenn”face down, blood and gashes covering her body.

Though I tried to cry out, nothing escaped the vice-grip on my throat. When I turned her over, I felt her arm. Still warm, but only slightly. Her eyes were shut, her face wet with blood.
“Bethie! Oh, sweetie, no!” I whispered, as I wrapped the blanket around her.

I kissed her head. Held her hand. Rocked her back and forth. “Come on, baby girl. Help’s on its way, you hold on,” I said, voice and hands trembling. She lay there unconscious but breathing.

Aaron.

Gently, I lay Bethie back down then got up and flew across the hall. To Aaron’s door. His night light was still on and I saw his outline in the bed.
Oh God, please.

I flipped the switch.

Nothing.

I dashed over to the lamp on his nightstand, nearly slipping on one of his Thomas Train toys on the carpet. Broken glass crackled under my shoes.

I switched on the lamp on his nightstand. When I looked down to his bed, my legs nearly gave out. Aaron was still under his covers, but blood drenched his pillow. His aluminum baseball bat lay on the floor, dented and bloodied.

Dropping to my knees, I called his name. Over and over, I called, but he didn’t stir. This can’t be happening. It’s got to be a nightmare. I put my face down into Aaron’s blue Thomas Train blanket and gently rested my ear on his chest.

I felt movement under the blanket. Breathing. But slowly”irregular and shallow.

Don’t move his body. Dammit, where are the paramedics?

I heard something from Bethie’s room and dashed out the door. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, I clutched the handrail over the stairs. Thought I heard Aaron crying now. Or maybe it was the wind.
My eyes darted from one side of the hallway to the other. Which room?
Faure’s Requiem continued to play, now the In Paradisum movement.
Aeternam habeas requiem.

Something out in front of the house caught my attention. The police, the paramedics! Propelled by adrenaline, I crashed through the front door and ran out into the middle my lawn which was slick with rain. I slipped and fell on my side.

Nobody. Where were they!

Like a madman, I began screaming at the top of my lungs. My words echoed emptily into the night.

“Help! Somebody, please!”

A dog started barking.

“Please, ANYBODY! HELP!”

Lights flickered on in the surrounding houses.
Eyes peeked through miniblinds.

No one came out.

I don’t know if I was intelligible at this point. I was just screaming, collapsed onto the ground, on my hands and knees getting drenched in the oily rain.

Just as the crimson beacons of an ambulance flashed around the corner, I buried my face into the grass. All sound, light, and consciousness imploded into my mind as if it were a black hole.

         Emily watched her friend weave through the crowd of broad-shouldered Cavalrymen and toward the captain. Alone at the bar, Emily twirled her wine in the glass, staring into the swirling pale golden liquid.

She sipped her wine and glanced around the wide open space, feeling the warmth. She was comfortable in this place. A drink after work. A good friend. This was a good life. It was simple. It had purpose. So much better than the complicated mess she’d left behind.

She lifted her glass, savoring the freedom of her rebellion. She might not fit into her uniform just right but she fit here among these soldiers better than she’d ever fit back home.

She saw Olivia gyrating slowly with the captain across the dance floor. Her friend’s movements were slow and sensual, a sultry undulation that spoke of power and of sex. She smiled at her friend’s pleasure. It was enough that Emily could enjoy another’s happiness. She’d come here tonight to relax, to help Olivia celebrate.

“You don’t come here often, do you?”

Emily glanced at the man who’d appeared at her shoulder. He’d been standing with the group of captains that Olivia had just infiltrated.

“Not really,” she said, sipping her drink. She thought about easing away, putting space between where their upper arms touched.

Personal space much? she thought.

“Are you here with friends?” he asked. She caught a heavy scent of beer from his direction, beer mixed with cigar smoke. It was not unpleasant.

She glanced over at Olivia. “Yeah.”

“Not up for company?”

She smiled and finally glanced back at him. “Not really. Thank you though.”

He brushed the tip of his hat with two fingers. “My pleasure, ma’am.”

He swaggered off, leaving her alone at the bar. That had been nice. Too bad she wasn’t interested. Once upon a time, she might have danced but there was something missing from the way he’d carried himself.

He was missing that power that Sergeant Iaconelli wore like it was second nature.

She shook her head and took a long sip of her wine. She’d done nothing but argue with the man but now she was thinking about him in a way that was purely unprofessional.

The heavy iron door swung open at that moment and Emily’s breath caught in her throat.

“Speak of the devil,” she muttered.

Reza Iaconelli stood in the doorway, his gaze scanning the room as though he was taking a headcount. What was it about the man that he was always walking through doors at the wrong time? And this time, his gaze swept the bar and landed directly on her.

His eyes lit up, his mouth flattened. Just a faint flicker, but it was enough to tell her he’d recognized her.

And the familiar hostility was gone.

Her mouth went dry and she took another sip. He wasn’t going to come over. It was going to be fine.

They would keep the rampant hostility and no lines would be blurred.

It would be fine, right?

Except that he was now coming over. Weaving through the crowd, his Stetson adding to his height.

What the hell was she supposed to do about that? The closer he got, the more her stomach flipped beneath her ribs.

She was too tired to fight. And the alcohol would probably allow her to say something that she’d regret come Monday.

His clean white shirt accented his shoulders and made his skin look darker, more appealing. His face was shadowed by the brim of the Stetson.

He was there. A short space separated them. He radiated something—a power.

A rawness.

She was doomed.

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INTRODUCTION

Behind the Song

I grew up in a single-parent home with a single mother and six siblings—therein lay the crux of my problems. Too few people know the devastating long-term effects that can ravage the life of a child raised without a father—or at least a good father figure. I had no uncles—my mother was an only child—and my father had two sisters but no brothers.

When I was five years old, we moved from an apartment building to a two-family house. There was a young, childless couple, John and Mary, who lived on the second floor. I often visited them, and they played with me every day.

One day Mary went to the hospital to deliver their first child. I had come to think of them as an aunt and uncle, so it was not strange to me when John invited me up to their apartment to have cookies and milk. I innocently allowed him to lead me into the bedroom, where he proceeded to lift me onto the bed and remove my panties. As he began to molest me, I looked up at him and said, “My mommy’s not gonna like this!”

He responded angrily: “Your mother’s not gonna know!”

“Yes, she will, cuz I’ll tell her,” I timidly said.

At that he hurriedly replaced my panties, snatched me from the bed, and dragged me to the front door of the apartment, where he shoved me out with a growl: “Git on back downstairs. You make me sick.” Looking back on it now, I think he probably meant, “You make me scared.”

My mother was a no-nonsense, take-no-crap-from-anyone kind of person, and John knew it. Because of that, I never told her what happened that day. I believed she would probably have hurt him seriously, which would have meant jail time and that I would be left without a mother as well as a father. I had no way of realizing then that John had stolen my innocence that afternoon and had reinforced the low self-esteem and abandonment issues I already suffered, born of fatherlessness.

Fatherlessness, coupled with this incident, set the stage for my behavior in male relationships from then on. I grew up feeling that every rejection or maltreatment from any man for any reason was because I wasn’t worthy of better treatment. When I was twelve, my mother had a relationship with a man she grew to love. For two years she kept him away from my siblings and me, so as not to have someone around who might, in some way, harm her daughters. Eventually he came to live with us, and we grew to like him a lot. He was a father figure—until one day he sexually molested me while I was asleep in my bedroom and my mother was asleep in hers.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked as I awoke.

“I was just trying to see if you were messing with those little boys,” he answered.

“You could have asked me that,” I snapped back.

I stopped him before he had gone too far, but the damage to my psyche had already been done. Again I didn’t tell my mom, even though her greatest fear had come to pass. I had seen her alone and lonely for years, and I didn’t want to get in the way of her happiness with the man she loved. I also didn’t want her to get into trouble for trying to seek retribution against him.

The incidents with my stepfather and John, as well as my reactions to them, set the tone for my future relationships with men and became par for the course. I ended up being rejected, disrespected, and neglected in every relationship, from puberty up to and including my marriage. When I was eighteen, I was naïve enough to trust the cousin of an ex-boyfriend. I allowed him to take me to visit his girlfriend—only to find that not only was she not home, there was no one there at all. He raped me. “Don’t even think of screaming,” he threatened. “No one else is here, no one will hear you, and you will only piss me off. So, act like you like it!”

When I got home that night, I went straight to the bathroom and tried to scrub away the guilt and shame I felt. It did not work. I never told anyone about it because, again, I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble for trying to defend me. Legal recourse never crossed my mind. Again, I just considered it all par for the course.

When I met my husband, Linwood, I thought he was my knight in shining armor. He was handsome, intelligent, gallant, chivalrous, generous, and so much fun. After two years I made him my manager. As artist/girlfriend and manager/boyfriend, our relationship was great for two years that was followed by a not-so-terrific one.

In the midst of my trouble in paradise, I received a notice from my record company. For no apparent reason, they were not renewing my recording contract, which would expire at the end of the year.

One night, at one of my shows, I had an accident onstage and woke up the next morning paralyzed from the waist down. I ended up in the hospital for spinal surgery. People were going around the record company saying, “The Queen is dead.” Was I simply a one-hit wonder with “Never Can Say Goodbye”? During the three-month hospital stay that followed, God got my attention. Gripped with fear of abandonment, physical handicap, and showbiz obscurity, I reached out to Him for help.

True to form, the Lord didn’t fail me. Within a year I had a massive hit with “I Will Survive,” and Linwood and I were married. Like so many innocent women, I thought, now that we’re married, things will be different; our focus will be on building a happy family together. I wasn’t the perfect wife, but I was attentive, trusting, reassuring, supportive, affectionate, loving, caring, and faithful. Linwood wasn’t all that bad as a husband. He was supportive as far as my career was concerned—physically protective and affectionate. But he took disrespect and disregard to a whole new level. I think he became so self-absorbed that he didn’t care if he was being hurtful to me. He had no concept of commitment and thought a grown man should be free to do whatever he wanted, stay out all night as many nights as he liked—so he did. It’s enough to say, as I often do, that I stayed at that party way too long.

What Linwood didn’t count on was the impact of “I Will Survive” and how much it would do for me. When I recorded the song, I thought of it concerning the courage it produced in me regarding my career, my mom’s passing, and the surgery I’d just had, and how it would encourage and inspire other people as well.

Now it became my mantra. It guided me in holding on to my faith and trusting God to bring me victoriously through all my trials and tribulations. I learned that internal scars—like those caused by fatherlessness, my stepfather, my ex-boyfriend’s cousin, and Linwood—put holes in your soul. Those scars can be just as deep as physical ones. They are just as painful and damaging, and generally hurt longer and are more debilitating. It took a while, but I grew strong, and I truly learned how to get along. My courage grew, and I began to recognize my own strength and the power God had placed in me. I spent several more years trying to make my marriage successful. But, as I told my husband on several occasions, “The problem with pushing a person to her limit is that no one knows what her limit is until she reaches it, and then it’s too late.”

Indeed, it became too late. I had reached my limit and came to the conclusion I couldn’t make the marriage work on my own and it was time to end it. My husband had taken up permanent residence in the state of denial and it was time for me to make a move as well. When I told my pastor I was getting a divorce, he asked me how I felt about it. After a long pause, I said, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!”

I never missed Linwood because, to tell the truth, he had left me years before the divorce. But it was great getting to know the new me, the me so many abusive men had caused to hide deep down inside. Well, she’s out now. I love her, and God loves her, and she’ll never go into hiding again.

Indeed, I will survive.

…

In the following pages, you will find compelling stories that will likely mirror the experiences of yourself, family members, friends, and acquaintances. They are real-life stories of real people who valiantly climbed mountains of seemingly insurmountable obstacles to reach the pinnacle of triumph.

This book came about in a special way. My team—Sue Carswell, Stephanie Gold (my manager), and I—put out the word across the world that we were looking for survival stories for this book. We eventually received stories from as far away as Africa—including one story of a woman who was encamped in Auschwitz, another from a 9/11 mother, and the story of an autistic boy ordering flowers for his mother for Mother’s Day. We contacted blogs and writing magazines and reached out to various organizations that had members’ stories depicting the true essence of the song. Several of these groups included healing resources for abused women and men. It seems we used every connection we could find. Some in this book are even our friends’ stories. In the end we narrowed it down to forty stories we felt best illuminated the lyrics of my song. They vary in dimension, but I am very proud of each and every contributor for making this book come true.

My sincere hope is that these stories will provide inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment to you—no matter what challenges you might be facing. If the remarkable people in these stories can survive as I did, I know you can too!