Free The Shadow of Your Smile by Susan May Warren Page B

dreams died on the tile floor of coffee shops and convenience stores. How it inflicted wounds not just on the victim or the family, but on entire communities.
    It simply wasn’t right that a forty-six-year-old woman could drive into a strip mall coffee shop and lose her life. Or at least, most of it.
    Kyle was sick to death of randomness. Of injustice.
    Marc stood by the other door. “We’ll find him.”
    Kyle nodded. No, I’ll find him.

Lee Nelson’s front yard resembled one of her homemade lemon meringue pies. Snow drifted in swirls across her driveway, out toward the lakeshore. Ravenous waves from the storm the night before had devoured the ice buildup onshore, leaving only jagged crumbs, now crashing together as the current moved them. They tinkled like the wind chimes Lee hung over her deck during the summer, the wind gusting now and again to add a rattle to the pane.
    Lee shivered as she stood at the picture window, zipping up a vest. Not so long ago, Clay would have covered this window with plastic to stave off the wind. She could get Derek to help her hold up one end, secure it with tape, and blow-dry it taut. But the kid usually arrived home after dark, exhausted to the bone after basketball practice, ate his dinner with a sum total of five words, and fell asleep in the spine of his algebra book.
    Add to that games on Saturdays, his part-time work bagging at the grocery store, and church on Sundays, and the boy had no time for chores.
    Not that Lee had extra time, either. With her volunteer positions around town, as well as her new treasurer duties at church, if she managed to cook something from scratch, she counted it a triumph.
    No wonder they still had six cords of unsplit wood in the shed and a pile that needed stacking outside the wood burner.
    Why on earth couldn’t Clay have installed a gas heater? But no, he wanted to be efficient, and with the acreage his family left him, they could log off their own land, keep themselves in wood until the end of time.
    Except he hadn’t counted on leaving her with the work. Sometimes she could still see him, his body lean and strong from hours with the wood splitter, covered in shavings, smelling of poplar, cedar, and pine, grinning at her as she gathered up the wood to stack. Their Saturday morning dates. She’d bring him coffee, bundled to the gills, and they’d talk about the kids and how they would manage to send Emma and Derek to college on a cop’s salary.
    The wind shook the house, the sun low on the horizon, bleeding through the late-afternoon shadows that hovered over the lake.
    She had to shovel if she hoped to get her car out of the garage for Derek’s game tonight. She planned on surprising him. It seemed the only time they talked was when she trapped him in the car.
    Lee checked the fire grate, made sure it was secure before she went into the entryway, pulled on her Sorels, her down parka, Clay’s old beaver hat, and her work mittens with the wool liners. She added a scarf so that only her eyes showed, then, taking a breath, opened the door.
    The chill had the power to freeze her eyelashes to her face. She shut the door quickly behind her, hating how the cold slicked up her nose, made her eyes water.
    She picked up a scoop of kitty litter in a bucket next to the door and sprinkled it on the fresh snow as she packed down a new trail to the garage. They’d lived in the two-car garage for a year before they finished the cabin, building on as their family grew. Clay added an attic to the garage three years before he died, a place for Emma and Kelsey to practice.
    Emma . . . do you need anything? Lee had tried not to betray her concern in her voice this morning—Emma had become so distant in the past three years, and it seemed every time she offered her support, Emma simply pushed her away.
    No, I’m fine.
    No, she wasn’t, but Lee had no idea how to fix her. Or any of them. She just kept trying to survive a little bit better every day.
    Lee hit