Chapter 1

Houston, Texas, 2008

Sloan Bevan took her time clearing her desk. The building was empty, but unlike most of her colleagues, she didn't have anyone to rush home to. She already missed the sounds of laughing students and paper being torn from notebooks. There was nothing sadder than a silent classroom.

Sloan thought about the fifth graders who had filled these empty desks just hours ago. She could usually say with confidence she'd prepared them for middle school but worried this year that her disaster of a personal life had seeped into her classroom.

Picking up a few folders from the desk, Sloan glimpsed the papers she'd been avoiding for three weeks now, Final Decree of Divorce . Even after five months of going through the process, reading the words still hurt.

She and Liam married in 2000. The same year she started teaching. Sloan approached her marriage the same way she approached the start of her career, with unbridled optimism. It was hard to remember the feeling now, eight exhausting years later.

Sloan knew she needed to sign the papers and put all this behind her. Liam certainly had. Of course, he'd put their marriage behind him during their marriage—the moment he met Megan Cooper, to be exact.

As much as Sloan hated Megan, she couldn't place all the blame on her—even if she was a homewrecker. No marriage is unraveled by pulling a single thread. Just like no family is. Sloan understood that all too well.

Sloan was a child of the '80s, and growing up, she never considered a world without shopping malls or Saturday-morning cartoons. Never gave thought to a time before she existed, when her parents lived separate lives. She'd been an only child once but remembered little from those two years. In every memory, her brother was there. As a girl, it was impossible to imagine a world unlike the realm of her childhood. It was just as difficult to imagine a different future. Sloan never dreamed of a world where MTV aired more television shows than music videos—or where she carried a computer in her pocket.

She never thought her parents would again live separate lives or that she would become an only child once more. Never expected the river she'd learned to swim and fish in would be the river that claimed her brother's life. And never in a million years would she have guessed her father's hands would hold Ridge under the murky water at Crow's Nest Creek until he stopped breathing.

No, she didn't see any of it coming.

Sloan's phone vibrated in her pocket. She drew in a long breath. The number was not Liam's, but seeing it made Sloan's heart skip just the same: Noah Dawson. Her voice cracked as she answered.

"Hi, Sloan. It's Noah," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Sloan cleared her throat. "Oh, hey." She tried to sound like she didn't already know it would be him on the other end of the line. Tried to sound like somewhere along the way she'd deleted his number from her phone, forgotten it entirely.

"Sorry to bother you, but have you checked your voicemail? Cedar Grove is trying to reach you. Caroline left."

Sloan shot up from her chair. "What do you mean she left? She can't do that."

"She can, Sloan. Everything since the psychiatric hospital has been voluntary. She's in a private facility."

Sloan paced across the classroom, staring down at the carpet dotted with orphaned pencil stubs, erasers, and a few sparkly hairbands.

Her mom seemed to like the home. She hadn't complained about it. Not that Sloan had called her much or ever asked for her opinion. Sloan had given up the hope that anyone or any program could help her mother, but at least they had kept her safe and fed. What was she supposed to do now?

"I can help," Noah said as if he'd read her mind. "She's back at the house. I can turn the utilities on and bring down the old furniture from the attic. My mom's gonna pick up some groceries too."

"Yeah, thanks." Sloan looked around the classroom. "I have some work to finish up. Mandatory meetings tomorrow, but I can be there Saturday. Let me know what I owe you."

"Well, I've always wanted an explanation."

Sloan tensed. "Noah. Don't."

"Hey, I'm kidding. Don't worry about it. I'm sorry all this is happening. First, your dad's release date was set, and now this. I wish . . . I wish I could . . ."

Sloan choked back tears. She couldn't cry to Noah. Not anymore. "I've gotta go. I'll be in touch."

She ended the call before Noah had a chance to say anything else. She grabbed the box of tissues. Empty. She threw it across the room and wiped her eyes across her sleeve. Then she grabbed a pen and signed the divorce papers.

Dad was getting out, Mom was getting out, and Sloan was getting out too.

As soon as Sloan passed the sunbaked Welcome to Mallowater sign, it felt like an x-ray apron had dropped on her chest. Mallowater was only half a day's drive from Sloan's home in Houston, but it was also a lifetime away. She'd left this backwater town the summer after graduation and hadn't looked back.

Sloan noticed the population marker was almost too faded to see now. It read 38,375, but Sloan was certain that number decreased every day.

There was nothing much special about Mallowater, Texas. Towering pine trees, scattered crops of wheat and cotton, nearly lost in weeds, old rotting barns in forgotten fields, shredded tires and beer cans littering the road, and of course, crows. Crows on every fence post, crows dotting telephone wires, crows at Easthead River. With so many crows at Easthead River, no one even called it by its name. It was always Crow's Nest Creek.

And Crow's Nest Creek had swept away twelve years of happy memories.

Sloan's phone rang from the passenger seat. She flipped it over and saw the number. Liam. Her breath caught. He deserved to be sent to voicemail, but she couldn't bring herself to decline his call.

"Hi, Sloan. How are you?"

How was she? What kind of cliché question was that? She was terrible. "I'm okay."

"My lawyer said you dropped off the papers. Thanks for signing them."

Sloan sank in her seat. It was over. It was really over. "I didn't think I had a choice."

"Don't start that, Lo." Liam exhaled into the phone. "This isn't all on me."

Sloan gripped the wheel. "Don't call me Lo. You have no right to call me that. And it is all on you, Liam. You and Megan, that is."

"Leave her out of this." Liam raised his voice. "I wasn't perfect, but I never cheated."

"Right. Guess it's normal to have 3 a.m. conversations with coworkers."

"Come on. You never trusted me, not from the start. You were always waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Sloan gave a wry laugh. "And drop it did."

"Believe whatever you want, but Megan had nothing to do with this."

"So, you aren't seeing her?" Sloan's tire hit the road's shoulder.

Silence.

Sloan yanked the car back onto the road. "Are you seeing her?"

"Yeah, I am now. She's been a friend and—"

"Enough, Liam. I signed the papers. Tell me when the house sells. I got everything out I needed."

"Sloan, wait." Liam lowered his voice. "I heard you were going to Mallowater."

"Who told you that?"

"Take my car," Liam said, ignoring the question. "That Chevy is on its tenth life. And we can find someone to help with your mom."

"Wow. Guess good news really does travel fast."

"Don't be like this, Sloan. You shouldn't have to do this alone."

Sloan's eyes flooded with tears. No, she shouldn't have to do this alone, but she was alone. Completely alone, again.

"Goodbye, Liam." She ended the call and threw the phone onto the floorboard. The road blurred through her tears. Liam always said her eyes were prettier when she cried. That they brightened to emerald green, like a sky changing colors during a storm. With all the crying she'd done recently, they had to be glowing like the Emerald City by now.

Sloan riffled around in her purse, searching for the cassette. It would only make her feel worse, but she needed it. She carried the tape around like an alcoholic stashing an emergency bottle of whiskey. Sloan's hands shook as she slid it into the tape deck, the only part of the old clunker that somehow still worked perfectly. Keith Whitley's "I'm Over You" began right on cue. Of all the songs to start on. When Sloan couldn't stop her tears fast enough, she pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed. She could pretend it was for Liam, but these tears were really for the first man to break her heart, Jay Hadfield, her father.