Free The Cinderella Hour by Katherine Stone

the window Jared had nailed shut.
    Luke saw his reflection—a boy pursued by fire.
    A strong boy and a soaring one. Like Peter Pan.
    Luke felt freedom in that soaring moment, and the blessed
coolness of the November air.
    He felt something else before losing consciousness. Nails
impaling flesh. And he heard a new sound as his spine caved and his bones
snapped.
    He awakened to paramedics nearby and onlookers overhead.
    “Jared’s dead,” he heard someone say.
    “Jared? No!”
    “He’s inside the house. Dead .”
    The poolside crowd was large and diverse. Pinewood neighbors.
Larken High teachers. The Hilltop husbands Jared golfed with. The Hilltop wives
he slept with.
    It was a jury of Jared’s peers, not of Luke’s, and as Luke
lay below them, crucified on nails and glass, Jared’s jury proclaimed him
guilty on all charges.
    “Luke murdered him, as Jared always feared he might.”
    “Is he dead, too?”
    “Soon, I should think. Look at all the blood.”
    “Good. Good .”
    Luke didn’t recognize the disembodied voices. But he knew who
wasn’t wishing for his death, or at least was committed to his near-term survival.
The paramedics offered words of reassurance, and Mrs. Evans, too, had climbed
into the pool.
    And then . . .
    “Luke!”
    “Snow.”
    For the first time since regaining consciousness, Luke looked
from his crumpled body toward the plumes of smoke that veiled the moon. The
faces that wished him dead hovered above.
    And so, too, did the face that didn’t.
    “You’re wrong!” she cried to the townspeople who had already
convicted him. “Luke didn’t kill his father. Luke could never kill anyone. ”
    You’re wrong, something told him to say to her. I was planning to kill him. I wanted to. Luke didn’t say those words, or the other desperate ones. Hold me, Snow. I’m so afraid. I can’t feel my legs. Don’t leave me. Please.
    What Luke said to her, when even Mrs. Evans couldn’t prevent her
from climbing down to him and she knelt on the broken glass beside him, was, “Go
away, Snow. Go away .”

FOUR
    Wind Chimes Towers
    Chicago , Illinois
    Saturday,
October 29
    6 : 45 p.m.
    Snow didn’t need to glance at the
clock to know it was time to leave for the Harvest Moon Ball, to make the short
walk from her Wind Chimes Towers condominium to the Wind Chimes Hotel.
    She didn’t need to glance in the mirror, either, to know that
apprehension was written all over her face. She felt her frown. And the
clenched muscles in her neck. And, as she had massaged concealer into the
shadows beneath her eyes, she had felt nerve endings rebelling from too little
sleep.
    She had actually tried a smile when she finished applying her
makeup and styling her hair. The mirror hadn’t been convinced. Like the
talkative mirrors of the fairy tales she once loved, it even had some advice.
    Watch out what you wish for, for you may surely get it.
    Her return to Chicago was a decision, not a wish, and she had
pursued it with zeal. She needed to go home. To resolve issues left unresolved?
Not really. There were none—unless you admitted that by living anywhere but Chicago you were running from the past.
    No Windy City ghosts awaited her. But finding peace in Atlanta was one thing. She needed to find peace in the place where she had fallen in love
and lost her daughter . . . and where that beloved baby lay sleeping in her
hidden grave.
    Peace with the place? Yes.
    And peace with the man.
    She had to see Luke, talk to Luke, to say, face-to-face, the goodbye
she had promised him sixteen years ago. And if he had forgotten the promise, or
didn’t care that she had broken it? That would be fine. Best.
    Luke lived in Quail Ridge. Directory Assistance provided a
number but no address. She hadn’t permitted herself more than that rudimentary
investigation. It wasn’t relevant to her mission what Luke did, or where he
lived, or to whom he was married—the woman he had found who could carry his unborn
babies to term.
    Maybe he