Chapter 1

1

I am browsing shampoos at the drugstore when I become aware that I am being followed.

I've never been followed before. Why would I? I'm not a spy . Yet I immediately recognize that's what's happening. It's like when you walk into a room and instinctively know that everyone was just talking about you. (That happens to me a lot.)

So that's how I know, without ever having been followed before, that there is somebody behind me, watching me. Somebody who saw me enter this drugstore and has been tracking my every move.

Before I recognized that someone was following me, I was attempting to decide which shampoo to buy. The last couple of weeks have been incredibly hard on me, and it's a comfort to get back to a mundane activity like shopping. It's my first step in returning to normal life.

My usual brand is made from tea tree oil, smells like mint, and is supposed to deep clean and refresh my scalp. But every time I shop for shampoo, I start to doubt myself. Do I need one that is more hydrating? Less hydrating? Is my hair oily or dry? How have I gotten through thirty-four years of life without knowing this basic fact about my hair?

Even without somebody watching me, it's overwhelming.

I pick up a bottle of something called coconut milk shampoo. It advertises having coconut oil and egg-white protein. I can see why I might need egg-white protein in my diet, but do I need it in my hair? I examine the bottle, studying the shockingly long list of ingredients, which includes many items that have over ten syllables, none of which are coconut or egg related.

And then, in the middle of dodecenylsuccinate , I whip my head around. Five seconds ago, I felt a pair of eyes boring into me. I would have bet my life on it. And now I am utterly alone in the shampoo aisle. I look left and right, but there's nobody here. Nobody is watching me.

I must be imagining it. Apparently, my life has reached a point where I am hallucinating people following me.

Shopping for shampoo should not be a stressful endeavor. I was doing this exact activity when I met Grant for the first time. I was standing in the shampoo aisle, just like today, trying to figure out if my hair needed more or less surfactant, and Grant was a few feet away, looking at the soap on the other side of the aisle.

I noticed him, of course. It was hard to ignore a man like Grant Lockwood. But the wild part was that he noticed me too.

He smiled at me with a row of startlingly perfect teeth and said, "Whatever you are using in your hair right now, you should buy it again, because it is perfect."

Barely a year later, we were married.

I suppose it's possible that this bit of nostalgia is what brought me here in the first place. That and the fact that my shampoo bottle is nearly empty. I tried turning it upside down and shaking it as hard as I could, but I could only squeeze out a dime-sized amount of liquid.

I replace the coconut oil shampoo on the shelf and pick up my tried-and-true tea tree oil. Above all, I'm a creature of habit. Also, I want to pay for my shampoo and get the hell out of here.

I clutch the brown bottle as I walk in the direction of the cashiers. And with each step, I still can't shake that sensation of being watched. Maybe this is all in my head—a hallucination. But it feels like somebody is there.

I stop. Turn around again.

Still nobody.

You're losing it, Alice. Now you think you're being followed, of all things. What next?

When I'm halfway to the cash registers, I pass a display of sunglasses. In the middle of October, it's hardly sunglasses weather anymore, but I stop there anyway. The array of sunglasses is only slightly less overwhelming than the number of shampoos. I pick up a pair of dark ones that are polarized. I have no idea what that means, but it must be important because the tag on the glasses says it in big block letters.

I make a motion like I'm about to put on the pair of sunglasses, but instead, I peer into the tiny mirror meant for modeling the glasses on my face. I can clearly see my flaming-red hair, although today it looks limp and lifeless. People often compliment me on my vivid sea-green eyes, but now they are puffy, and the rims are lined with pink. I look tired.

But that's not all I see. In the mirror, I can make out a man standing behind me. Watching me. He's a few years older than me, roughly late thirties. He has dark-blond hair that is straight and laced with flecks of gold from the sun. Chiseled features. A square jaw. Determined-looking blue eyes.

I suck in a breath. This man looks exactly like Grant.

I watch him for as long as I dare in the reflection, and then I turn. But as expected, he has vanished, like he never existed in the first place.

I push back a wave of nausea. The resemblance between that man and Grant was uncanny. Of course, it was hard to get a good look in that sliver of a mirror, and the man was at least twenty feet away from me. It's entirely possible that I simply imagined the similarities in appearance. In fact, that is by far the best explanation.

I return the polarized sunglasses to the display. I continue marching down the aisle until I reach the cash registers and join a line that is much longer than it ought to be at two in the afternoon—there are a few people ahead of me, and they seem to be taking forever. One woman is paying with a check. A check? Really? Who pays with a check in this century? She may as well be trading with gold trinkets.

And all the while, I have a creepy-crawly sensation in the back of my neck. I turn around one last time, searching for the man who looks like Grant. I look past the counter where you can print your photos and the snack-food aisle and the one with all the feminine hygiene products. But there's nobody there who looks like my husband.

I need to calm down. Whatever I saw in the mirror of that sunglasses display must have been my imagination. Or an optical illusion. But the important thing I need to remember is that it was not Grant . It was definitely not my husband standing in the middle of the drugstore and watching me while I chose shampoo and browsed sunglasses. It couldn't have been.

Because my husband has been dead for two weeks.