The Mourning Hours. Paula DeBoard Treick

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      A family’s loyalty is put to the ultimate test

      Kirsten Hammarstrom hasn’t been home to her tiny corner of rural Wisconsin in years—not since the mysterious disappearance of a local teenage girl rocked the town and shattered her family. Kirsten was just nine years old when Stacy Lemke went missing, and the last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Johnny—the high school wrestling star and Kirsten’s older brother. No one knows what to believe—not even those closest to Johnny—but the event unhinges the quiet farming community and pins Kirsten’s family beneath the crushing weight of suspicion.

      Now, years later, a new tragedy forces Kirsten and her siblings to return home, where they must confront the devastating event that shifted the trajectory of their lives. Tautly written and beautifully evocative, The Mourning Hours is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.

      The Mourning Hours

      Paula Treick DeBoard

      

www.mirabooks.co.uk

      For my Tea Time friends, because I always said I would.

      Contents

       Prologue

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       Chapter Forty-One

       Chapter Forty-Two

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgments

       Questions for Discussion

       A Conversation with the Author

      prologue

      October 2011

      Just outside Milwaukee, I saw the lights behind me—Wisconsin Highway Patrol—and pulled over to the shoulder.

      Even before the cop tapped on the window, I started fumbling in the shoulder bag I had been lugging around since that morning, since San Francisco. I had packed in a hurry—my cell phone, a tube of lip gloss, a stack of undergrad papers to be graded, a dog-eared copy of US Weekly.

      While I searched for the power window button, I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass: wrinkled clothes, grease forming at my hairline, mascara from twelve hours ago smudged under my eyes like twin bruises.

      “I know, I was speeding,” I said, even before the window came to a stop. The night was cold—was it really almost winter in the Midwest? I had been living in a mild haze of seasonless fog, and this chill nipped straight through my T-shirt. It was as if I had spent years walking on a treadmill and was just now finding my