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One

Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop

—HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN

Eleven months later…

Driving from the shop by the beach to her hoh the deepening dusk and weighed the ernail She’d read a line of the stuff could close a wound What she faced was more dire, however Would immersion in a tub ofinto a thousand little pieces?

She needed her protective shell It kept her emotions contained and it kept away the rest of the world But the jarring information she’d been told twenty le hammer blow to porcelain, and she sensed the cracks in her control

She arrived home to find her foyer shadowy, her kitchen just as dark, but she didn’t flip a single switch Bright lights, a deep breath—who knehat ether for the last eleven months?

With slow, careful steps, she made her way across the terra-cotta tiles in the kitchen, her gaze brushing the butcher-block island, the ashed cabinets, the gleastone deck and the pool that stood between her and the guesthouse From there she took in the stretch of Pacific Ocean that was her western view

It was an incredible vista, worth every penny she’d paid for the place, and though she’d lived here a week, its beauty wasn’t sinking in, any more than the news she’d been told at the yarn shop by the beach That was the downside of her shell—it kept her distant froood as well as from the bad

“Who am I?” she said out loud, and at the saht flashed on outside Startled, she jerked, stu by sla her hand onto the butcher block

Some idiot had left a knife there, a small one that the same idiot—Juliet herself—had used to cut up an apple earlier in the day

It cut her now Without thinking, she lifted her forefinger to her ain

The pool lights were glowing, turning what had been dark waters into a tranquil, turquoise lagoon, a lovely contrast to the now-descended night This tiht struck her, a second hammer blow

And then the surface rippled, the lagoon was invaded, the tranquility shattered

A man was in Juliet Weston’s pool

Her finger was still bleeding The blood was salty on her tongue, giving an earthy flavor to a further realization