Free Silver Falls by Anne Stuart

she hoped was an encouraging voice. It sounded dubious at best.
    Caleb was watching them, a faint, disbelieving expression on his face. He saw far too much, and Rachel was half-tempted to grab David and plant another kiss on him, just to show the man.
    She didn’t move until they were out the door, and then she crossed the room to lock it behind them. Leaving her alone with her daughter, and her doubts.

5
    A nother cool, rainy day, Rachel thought the next afternoon, closing the door on her darkroom. She just couldn’t face choosing to work in even more darkness—the persistent gloom of Silver Falls was hard enough. She’d actually gotten on the internet to check out weather patterns—maybe this was just an unusually rainy period. Surely the Pacific Northwest wasn’t always so wretched, or people wouldn’t be moving there.
    The research was far from promising. The rest of the state, even some of the rainiest areas, averaged far less rainfall than this tiny little college town. Silver Falls consistently averaged twice the yearly rainfall of Seattle and Portland combined, and this year was ostensibly drier than usual. It was no wonder nothing ever seemed to dry out and it felt like mold was growing everywhere. It probably was.
    She poured herself a cup of coffee and stared outtoward Silver Mountain, shrouded with clouds as it always was. She and Sophie had planned to hike there on the next clear day, but that day hadn’t come.
    It had taken all of Rachel’s resolve not to keep Sophie home that morning. Sophie, of course, had shrugged off the murder relatively well, thanks to the invulnerability of youth, but Caleb’s words kept echoing in her ear. The victim had been young and slender, with long, straight blond hair. She’d scoured the Silver Falls Sentinel for the gruesome details—Jessica Barrowman had been a student at the college, just eighteen years old. Her face haunted her.
    She looked too much like Tessa.
    She and Sophie had arrived back on the west coast after two years in Spain, and the cool, foggy atmosphere of San Francisco had been a welcome change from the sun and heat and bright blue sky. It had been easy enough to find a community—she had enough connections from her photography friends and it had been easy to find a place to live and a job, and Sophie ended up at the local alternative school in the Fillmore District just outside of Japantown. Sophie settled in quickly, aided by her usual ability to make friends, the closest one being Tessa Montgomery, a girl three years older than she, just sixteen, and almost a clone. They were always being mistaken for sisters as they wandered around the big, fascinating city.
    But then Tessa had a boyfriend. A mysterious one she met in Golden Gate Park. He was older, she said, and rich, and romantic, and sexy, and he was going to wait until she was old enough to get married but Tessa didn’t want to. She’d spilled all this to Sophie, her best friend, and Sophie had been taught by her mother not to gossip and not to repeat secrets.
    It wasn’t until Tessa didn’t come home one day that Sophie finally told Rachel about Tessa’s secret lover. And when Tessa’s body had been found six days later Sophie had been inconsolable.
    Rachel wasn’t sure how they would have gotten through that time if it weren’t for David. She couldn’t even remember how she’d met him—one day he was just there, calm and friendly, a college professor on sabbatical, doing research. He had a sublet nearby, and his quiet, gentle manner was the perfect antidote to the anger and despair that filled her community. Even Sophie liked him. She was more like her old self when he was there, able to laugh at his admittedly pathetic attempts at a joke.
    One thing Rachel liked about him was that he never pressured her for sex—he was an exquisite gentleman. In fact, she was the one who finally instigated them going to