Uncle Andrew was just as opposed to Nana being buried right in the West Hills, at St. Elizabeth’s cemetery. He reasoned that Nana’s ties to that church were too recent; she’d only started attending when she moved in with Lindsay and her family, too infirm to care for herself any longer.

In the end, Dad, the elder sibling, won out. He usually did.

Lindsay was pleased. She’d visited her grandmother’s grave often-until she left St. Elizabeth’s, and Portland, for good.

Now, her mother had told her the last time they talked, the old school and church were about to be razed. The news was unsettling.

“What’s going to happen to Nana’s grave?”

“I imagine the cemetery will stay intact,” her mother said vaguely and changed the subject to yet another investment property she and Lindsay’s father were purchasing in Nevada, where they’d moved after retirement.

Lindsay hung up troubled by the thought of the familiar old red-brick school-her alma mater-being destroyed.

Ironic, since her lingering memories of the place were less than positive.

It was there, in the garden labyrinth that lay between the school and the cemetery, that she had discovered Jake Marcott’s body, pinned to a tree by a crossbow.

The macabre sight had haunted her ever since…

Among other grim memories.

I should be glad that St. Elizabeth’s will be closed down, she told herself now. Maybe that will bring some closure.

For Jake’s horrific death, and for her own persistent maternal ache.

Except…

Somebody knew her secret.

Probably somebody from her past who had resurfaced to taunt her in the middle of the night.

It was just a cruel prank.

Now, remembering that Jake’s murder had never been solved, she couldn’t help but hope, with a shudder, that that was all there was to it.

The arrangements had been made. She was going to New York the day after tomorrow, staying in a hotel on the East Side. Not fancy, but you’d have to be a multimillionaire to afford a fancy hotel in Manhattan for as long as she’d need to be there.

The best part: she had cleverly selected one of those all-suite hotels that catered to business executives who needed to stick around New York for more than a couple of nights. Nobody would question her ongoing presence-a single woman alone in a big city. They’d just think she was there on business.

And I will be.

Important business.

She smiled to herself.

And she kept picking her way through the basement of St. Elizabeth’s school, guided by her lighter’s flickering beam to the secret supply closet.

After twirling the lock, she slipped inside and closed the door after her-as though it were necessary. As though anyone in their right mind would want to be down here…

Anyone other than me.

Then again, some people might think she wasn’t in her right mind. But they didn’t know what Jake-yes, Jake, and the others-had put her through. Nobody knew.

That was why nobody would ever suspect her when this was over and her mission was accomplished.

She lit the lantern’s wick and surveyed her handiwork: the reconstructed row of lockers that had once lined the wide corridor a few stories above.

Tonight, she bypassed Kristen’s and paused only briefly at Haylie’s, with its newest relic added just the other night: that ridiculous black armband she used to wear in ongoing mourning over Ian’s death.

What an unexpected bonus it had been to find it tucked into her jewelry box right on her dresser. She’d discovered it while ransacking the apartment, trying to make it seem as though the murder had been triggered by an interrupted burglary. She took her wallet, some jewelry, and a couple of stock certificates.

Passing Louie Blake, a nefarious local junkie, slumbering on the sidewalk not far from Haylie’s apartment, she was struck by inspiration. She tucked the wallet, jewelry, and stock certificates in among his belongings heaped in a shopping cart.

The armband, she kept, of course-and spirited it right over to its place of honor in Haylie’s old locker.

Haylie really was a sicko to have saved it for all these years.

But now it belongs to me.

Along with everything else assembled here.

She opened locker 123-Lindsay Farrell’s.

The contents were meager, so far. Taped to the door, in an attempt to reconstruct its senior-year state, were dozens of pictures of Jake, surrounded by shiny red paper hearts. There were also a couple of textbooks on the shelves.

On a hook, however, was a prized item: the sleeveless ice blue dress Lindsay had worn to the Valentine’s Day dance that night. Lindsay’s mother went through the family’s closets every season and donated a whole load of clothes to a secondhand shop run by a charitable organization.

The spring after Jake’s murder, the ice blue dress was among them, as she had prayed it might be.

What a thrill it was to spot it hanging there on a rack amid designer dresses worn once, if at all, by Portland’s elite, then cast off without a backward glance.

It had obviously been cleaned after that night. Yet if she looked closely, she could still see the faintest remnants of a stain in the satiny folds of the skirt.

A bloodstain.

It made her giddy just to look at it, to remember Lindsay covered in blood.

Somebody else’s blood, that night.

But soon enough, it would be her own.

The dress was a find, and a steal…

And I didn’t even have to steal it.

She would have, though. Just as she had stolen-and would continue to steal-all those mementos from the others.

This shrine was a work in progress. She planned to have it completed before the wrecking ball swung into the brick wall of the old school this summer.

It seemed fitting that these forgotten relics be buried deep in the underground rubble…

Just as their owners would, by then, also be buried.

Dead and buried.

But forgotten?

She doubted it. But she sure as hell was going to try to forget all that could never be forgiven.

“Lindsay Farrell,” she said into the phone, her eyes still on the report in her hand.

“Lindsay?”

“Yes?” Then she recognized the voice and set the report aside, surprised to hear from him.

“It’s Isaac.”

“Isaac! How’ve you been?” she asked her ex-boyfriend-the man she had honestly thought, if only fleetingly, might be The One.

Yes, he had baggage…who didn’t?

Yes, he was a couple of years younger than she was…who cared?

Not Lindsay. Not at first, anyway.

Isaac Halpern’s dark, brooding good looks blinded her to the fact that he wasn’t ready for a serious relationship.

Or maybe it was more that his dark, brooding good looks reminded her of someone else.

Someone she still wasn’t over, even after all these years.

Someone who’d never even known that she was truly in love with him…

Because she’d never realized it herself.

Not back then. Not until it was too late. For them. For a lot of things.

But that was ancient history.

Isaac was more recent-but history nonetheless.

“I miss you,” he said simply.

She hesitated. “I miss you, too.”

It was true.

She did miss him. But nowhere near as much as she missed his predecessor, who showed her that phrases like weak in the knees and butterflies in the stomach were rooted not just in the romantic novels she liked to read, but in reality.

Weak knees, butterflies, a pounding heart, a light head…those were all things she experienced when she was with him.

But she never felt those things with Isaac.

Not with anyone else, ever.

Still, she couldn’t help hoping that maybe someone would eventually come along to make her forget him. Yes, maybe someday she’d fall in love again, get married, have a baby…