Her older sister’s grip weakened. Her hand fell to the floor and the little girl sprang for the phone, dialing 911 just as SisSis had taught her, because they’d known it might someday come to this. They just hadn’t thought it would be so soon.
The little girl gave her mother’s name and address. She requested an ambulance. She spoke clearly and without emotion, because she had practiced for this, too. Together, she and her older sister had prepared, planned, and strategized.
Their mother wasn’t crazy about everything: Everyone did have to die sometime, and you always had to be brave.
Task completed, the little girl released the phone and raced back to her sister. But by the time she returned, SisSis didn’t need her anymore. Her eyes were closed, and nothing the little girl did made them open again.
Her mother stirred on the floor.
The little girl looked at her, then at the old brass lamp.
She lifted up the heavy lamp, thin arms straining, eyes watching how the silvery beams of moonlight gleamed across its dull surface.
Her mother moaned again, regaining consciousness.
The little girl thought of lullabies and matches; she recalled soft hugs and hungry nights. She remembered her older sister, who had genuinely loved her. Then the little girl clutched the top part of the shadeless lamp, stood above her mother’s body, and one final time, hefted its weight into the air.
Chapter 1
MY NAME IS CHARLENE ROSALIND CARTER GRANT.
I live in Boston, work in Boston, and in four days, will probably die here.
I’m twenty-eight years old.
And I don’t feel like dying just yet.
IT STARTED TWO YEARS AGO, with the murder of my best friend, Randi Menke, in Providence. She was strangled in her living room. No sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry. For a while the Rhode Island cops thought maybe her ex had done it. I guess there’d been a history of domestic assaults. Nothing she’d ever told me, or our other best friend, Jackie, about. Jackie and I tried to console ourselves with that, as we wept together at Randi’s funeral. We hadn’t known. We just hadn’t known or of course we would’ve done…something. Anything.
That’s what we told ourselves.
Fast forward one year. January 21. The anniversary. I’m at home with Aunt Nancy in the mountains of northern New Hampshire, Jackie’s returned to her corporate life as a VP for Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Jackie doesn’t want to mark the occasion of Randi’s murder. Too morbid, she tells me. Later, in the summer, we’ll get together and celebrate Randi’s birthday. Maybe we’ll hike to the top of Mount Washington, bring a bottle of single malt. We’ll have a good drink, have a good cry, then sleep it off at the Lake of the Clouds AMC hut.
I still call Jackie on the twenty-first. Can’t help myself. Except she doesn’t answer. Not her landline, not her work line, not her mobile. Nothing.
In the morning, when she doesn’t show up for work, the police finally give in to my pleas and drive by her house.
No sign of a struggle, I will read later in the police report. No sign of forced entry. Just a lone female, strangled to death in the middle of her home on January 21.
TWO BEST FRIENDS, murdered, exactly one year and roughly one thousand miles apart.
The locals investigated. Even the FBI gave it a whirl. They couldn’t find anything definitive to link the two homicides, mostly because they couldn’t find anything that was definitive.
Bad luck, one of the guys actually told me. Sheer bad luck.
Today is January 17 of the third year.
How much bad luck do you think I’m going to have on the twenty-first? And if you were me, what would you do?
I MET RANDI AND JACKIE when I was eight years old. After that final incident with my mother, I was sent to live with my aunt Nancy in the wilds of New Hampshire. She came to fetch me from a hospital in upstate New York, two relatives, two strangers, meeting for the first time. Aunt Nancy took one look at me and started to cry.