A Breath Away. Rita Herron

like everything had changed that horrible day when she was eight years old, and she’d stood by and let her best friend die.

      “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT this morning, dear?” With gnarled fingers Violet’s grandmother gripped the coffee cup painted with magnolia blossoms, and slid into a kitchen chair. “You look tired.”

      Violet shrugged, pushing away her half-eaten piece of dried toast. “I didn’t sleep well.”

      “Having nightmares again?”

      She nodded, her gaze straying to the rain still drizzling in soft sheets onto the beach sand outside. “It’s that time of year, I suppose.”

      Sympathy lined her grandmother’s face. “I know it’s hard, Violet. Try not to dwell on the past, though.”

      Violet nodded, resigned. She wouldn’t upset her grandmother by confessing about the voices. She was twenty-eight now, independent and strong. She’d even invested in a gift shop in downtown Savannah, Strictly Southern, determined to plant roots and build a life here. She’d save some money, buy this cabin and fix it up for herself and her grandmother. In fact, she’d already mapped out the first decorating plans: she’d paint the fading, chipped walls yellow; sew some frilly curtains; add a window seat by the bay window so she could bask in the sunlight there to read and draw.

      And maybe she would finally escape the ghosts. “I’m going to the shop for a while. Do you need anything?”

      Her grandmother pointed to the list on the butcher block counter. “Thanks, dear. I hate that I can’t get about like I used to.”

      “You’re doing fine, Grammy.” Violet patted her hand, then scraped the dry toast into the trash, a twinge of anxiety pulling at her. The doctor had cautioned Violet about her grandmother’s high blood pressure and irregular heartbeat. Occasionally she suffered memory lapses, and her arthritis was becoming more of a problem.

      At one time, Violet had told her grandmother everything. Had shared her fears, all her nightmares, the bitter sense of loss that had eaten at her over the years when her father had never called or visited.

      “Maybe you’ll find a nice young man here in Savannah,” Grammy said with a teasing smile. “Get married, make me some great-grandbabies.”

      “Maybe.” Violet feigned a smile for her grandmother’s benefit, although she didn’t foresee marriage or a man in her near future. If her own father hadn’t loved her, how could someone else? Besides, her failures with men were too many to count. The psychologist she’d finally spoken with about her phobia of the dark had suggested she was punishing herself for Darlene’s death by denying her own happiness. So she had forced herself to accept a few dates.

      But Donald Irving, the man in Charleston, had given her the creeps. When she’d refused to see him again, he started showing up at odd times, calling at all hours of the night. Then the hangup calls…

      Her grandmother had become so distraught, Violet had finally agreed to move.

      Violet had no plans for marriage or men. She had been a loner most of her life.

      And she probably always would be.

      “Oh, my goodness.” Her grandmother paled. “Did you see this, Violet?”

      Violet leaned over her shoulder and stared at the newspaper, her stomach knotting at the headlines.

      Twenty-five-year-old Woman from Savannah College of Art & Design Reported Missing. Police Suspect Foul Play.

      GRADY MONROE STACKED the files on his desk, wishing he could rearrange his attitude and life as easily. He traced a finger over the edge of Darlene’s photo. She’d been so damn young and innocent, just a freckled-faced kid with a heart-shaped face, who’d liked everyone. And trusted them.

      But she’d died a violent death.

      He pressed the pencil down to scribble the date on the file, his gaze shooting to the desk calendar. The pencil point broke. The date stared back at him, daring him to forget it, the red circle around the fifteenth a staunch reminder of the reason he couldn’t.

      The single reason he’d studied law himself. Only so far he had no clue as to who had committed the vile crime or how the killer had eluded the police for two decades. The police referred to it as a cold case—a dead file.

      The file would never be shut until he found his half sister’s killer.

      Jamming the pencil in the electric sharpener, he mentally sorted through the recent cases on his desk. Crow’s Landing had the usual small-town upheavals. Traffic citations. Domestic crimes. A complaint against a stray dog that might be rabid. Not like crime in the big cities. A man murdered in Nashville two days ago. A drive-by shooting in an apartment complex in Atlanta. And this morning, reports of a woman missing in Savannah.

      As if to mock him, the phone trilled. “Sheriff Monroe here.”

      “Sheriff, this is Beula Simms.”

      Oh, Lord. What now?

      “Get out to Jed Baker’s house right away. Your daddy and Jed’s at it again.”

      She didn’t have to say at what; Jed and Grady’s father had hated each other for years. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up and snagged the keys to his patrol car. A headache pounded at his skull, the painkillers he’d managed to swallow barely touching the incessant throbbing. He should have left off the tequila the night before, but the approaching anniversary of his half sister’s death always brought out his dark side, the destructive one.

      And now this call.

      Five minutes later, he screeched up the graveled drive to Baker’s clapboard house. His father and Baker were yelling at each other on the sagging front porch. Grady opened the squad car door and climbed out, although both men seemed oblivious that he’d arrived.

      “You should have left town a long time ago.” His father waved a fist at Jed.

      “I did what I had to do and so did you,” Jed yelled.

      Grady’s father raised a Scotch bottle and downed another swallow, staggering backward and nearly falling off the porch. “But if we’d done things differently, my little girl might be alive. And so would my Teresa.”

      “I know the guilt’s eatin’ at you, Walt.” Jed ran his hand through his sweaty, thinning hair. “We’ll both be burning in hell for keeping quiet.”

      “Hell, I’ve been living there for years.”

      “But you don’t get it—someone’s been asking around.” Jed’s voice sounded raw with panic. “Claims he’s a reporter.”

      His father coughed. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

      “Hell, no, but I don’t like him asking questions. What are we gonna do?”

      “Keep your goddamn mouth shut, that’s what.”

      “I ain’t the one who wanted to blab years ago. And what if he gets to Violet?”

      “It’s always about her. What about what I lost?” Walt lunged at Jed, ripping his plaid shirt and dragging them both to the floor. Jed fought back, and they tumbled down the stairs, wood splintering beneath them, before they crashed to the dirt.

      The late evening heat blistered his back as Grady strode over to them. “Get up, Dad.” He yanked his father off Jed, and the other man rolled away, spitting out dry dirt and brittle grass.

      Walt swung a fist at his son. “Leave us alone!”

      Grady grabbed him by both arms and tried to shake some sense into him. “For God’s sake, Dad, do you want me to haul your ass to jail for the night?”

      Jed swiped a handkerchief across his bloody nose and climbed onto the lowest step. Grady’s father wobbled backward, a trickle of blood seeping from his dust-coated lower lip.

      Grady