Prologue


Emma was 5'2 with curly blonde hair and a smile like sunshine.

She liked wearing the color green because it matched the color of her eyes.

She always wore this old spoon-handle ring that I made for her during welding week in shop class back in high school. She'd had it on her finger so long that when she took it off the skin underneath it was pale and white.

She was prone to sunburns, and wore a lipstick called Australian Coral. She had a slight accent left over from being born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa.

She had a summer birthday - in July, the 13th - and insisted that the fireworks on Independence Day were for her, just a week early. She looked amazing in a bikini and shorts. She wore polarized sunglasses that reflected the world. She had a laugh that danced and a cry that mourned. She'd paint her fingernails weird colors and leave the polish on until it chipped off. She said she liked it chipped better.

he loved red geraniums, and she had this weird habit of sucking on her two front teeth, which were slightly larger than the rest of them.

She drank coffee like a fish drinks water.

She changed my life.

She disappeared from the airport and two weeks later her jacket and purse showed up on the banks of a river twenty miles away, but I only know that from the news reports I saw at the diner.

She told me to run.

So I ran.