PROLOGUE

LITTLE JUMP OFF STORE
NANTAHALA NATIONAL FOREST, NORTH CAROLINA
APRIL 11, 1988

Mom? I’m home.” Mary Crow tugged open the back door of the store, releasing the rich scent of curing hams and dried apples into the warm April afternoon. Inside, she could hear the ancient bait cooler wheezing over her mother’s favorite oldies station, currently playing a scratchy version of “Hey Jude.”

“Mom?” Mary repeated. “It’s me.”

She pushed her glossy dark hair back from her forehead, waiting for her mother’s familiar “In here,” but only her own voice echoed through the store.

With a shake of her head, Mary began to weave her way through aisles piled high with everything from laundry detergent to dusty, old-fashioned slop jars. Though her mother had worked here for ten years, the Little Jump Off store had been dispensing mountain merchandise since the days of cracker barrels and pickle jars.

“Mama?” Mary called louder as the bait cooler gave a grinding shudder. “I’m back. Sorry I’m late. I’ll help you close up.”

Again, there was no response. Mary felt a sudden odd coolness, as if someone had jerked a sweater from her shoulders. She frowned. Something was strange here. Something was not right.

“Mother?” Her call now rang edgy in the too-still air. She heard footsteps thudding from the store’s front porch. Not her mother’s light tread, but heavy steps, with a curious rhythm.

Quickly, she turned toward the checkout counter. She rounded the new spring seed display, then stopped, stunned, as if someone had slapped her hard across the face. At the counter the old wooden cash register gaped open like an empty mouth; change splattered on the counter, five- and ten-dollar bills littered the floor. For an instant Mary could only stand and stare, her stomach twisting into a sick, hard knot.

“Mom?” she called. “Where are you?”

She rushed to the front of the store, then gasped. Cans of baked beans rolled around the floor among boxes of oatmeal and burst bags of flour. Two ruptured six-packs of Coke spewed over the mess.

“Mom? Are you here?” Mary looked down the hardware aisle. Nothing. She checked behind the counter. Again nothing. She ran around to the corner of the store where her mother kept her loom; her heart turned to dust.

There, on the floor, beside a bag of wool scraps, lay Martha Crow. Her blue gingham skirt had been pushed up around her thighs; the front of her blouse was ripped away. Her face was the color of a fresh bruise and a line of large red blotches crawled up her throat.

Mary blinked as everything started to tumble—her mother, the store, her whole world. Her mind snatched at ideas as a dog might snap at flies. She should go to her mother, she should call the sheriff, she should run out on the porch and scream for help. But her legs felt like rubber, and at that moment she couldn’t even remember where they kept their old black telephone. All she could do was stand there, staring mutely at her mother as the Beatles droned on and those heavy footsteps lumbered away.

“Mama!” she screamed, her voice gone tinny with terror.

“Mama?” Mary ran over and knelt beside her mother, pleading, praying. Please let her open her eyes. Please let her smile. “Are you all right?”

Martha Crow did not answer.

With the tips of her fingers, Mary touched her mother’s shoulder. Her body was warm, still soft with life, but her chest remained motionless. As Mary gently shook her, a trickle of saliva threaded down from the left corner of her mother’s mouth. Her hands—the hands that just this morning caressed Mary’s cheek before she went to school, were bleeding. Every knuckle was scraped and one fingernail had been torn away, as if Martha Crow had fought someone very hard.

“Mama?” Mary shook her again, harder, and pulled the ragged blouse back across her chest. Though her mother’s gold wedding band still encircled her finger, the Saint Andrew’s medal, the one item of jewelry Mary had never seen Martha without, was gone. With a sob Mary touched the pale spot just above her breasts where the little medallion had always rested; the flesh there had already begun to cool.

She knew then exactly what had happened. Not the how, and not the why, but Mary Crow knew with certainty that the last person to leave this store had gone, taking her mother’s life.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered. “Please don’t leave me. . . .” With that plea Mary leaned over and buried her face in her mother’s dying warmth, ignoring the footsteps fading from the porch, ignoring the Beatles crooning from the radio, ignoring everything except the thunderous breaking of her own heart.