Oxbow, Florida 1985

Something was disturbing my peace, tickling at the edges—light without hope gathering at the corners of my consciousness. Cold. Pitiable. Lonely. Growing. Dissolving the warm, safe darkness. Suffocating my soul.

A woman appeared, pretty and young with empty eyes and strawberry hair. Aman reached for her, straining to get closer, aching to bridge the gap with just a gentle touch. She saw him but was powerless to help herself or him.

It had been another sleepless night, and after the icy scene I had just witnessed, the soft moonlight streaming through my window confused me. It felt like slamming into a radiant, glowing wall, and my senses were overwhelmed as I once again rebounded from the unnatural cold in which my ghostly visitors always enveloped me. Numbed from this eerily familiar and hated cold, I wrapped myself tightly in an old comforter I kept handy at the foot of my bed. Even in the warmth of the southwest Florida autumn, I felt the need for my old talisman. My five-year-old chocolate lab, Dutch, tentatively placed a paw on the edge of the bed, seeking to reassure me. His warm brown eyes pleaded to help me. His low growl turned into a pitiful whine. We were alone again.

"It's okay, boy," I lied, reaching out to ruffle his thick brown coat.

I slipped onto the floor with my comforter and welcomed him into its feathery folds with me, trying to generate warmth after my visitors had sucked the heat from my very bones. I couldn't ignore my own pale, drawn face as it stared back at me from the full-length mirror in the corner. For once that mirror didn't remind me of any excess baggage attached to my backside. Rich chestnut hair, wild and tangled, framed my face, and pure terror shone in my eyes—what my mom had always called my "grandmother's blue eyes."

Molly Martindale, that's me, doorway to the netherworld. How in the world did this happen?

"I know, I know, our visitors scare you as much as they do me," I said soothingly to Dutch, closing my eyes and placing my smooth, icy forehead against his furry warm one. These two intruders were just the latest. I had thought I was free of these otherworldly interlopers since finally uncovering the truth about my friend Dennis, but apparently that wasn't to be.

What could it be now? Oh, God, what could these sorrowful, hollow tendrils from hell be seeking from me this time?

The oh-so-normal day still hadn't quite thawed the previous night's horror, even as my friend Dana and I prepared to enjoy another glorious Florida sunset.

Dana D'Lorenzo had been in Oxbow for a little over a year, and during that time we had become great friends—even though I was a little bit country, and she was a little bit rock `n'roll, as the song goes.

Raised in a working-class West Palm Beach neighborhood, Dana had gone to the University of Florida in Gainesville before returning to the East Coast to practice medicine, so she was at home in the big city. Oxbow, Florida, certainly had none of the things she was used to. When she first arrived, I didn't think she'd make it even six months before hightailing it back to the coast. I guess you just never know.

I had successfully shaken off the shadows of the previous night's visitors as I went about my workday—collecting information for my front-page stories and gathering tidbits for this week's edition of the Oxbow Independent. It was my job to make sure the residents of Oxbow had their local paper to go with their after-dinner coffee, a Wednesday evening ritual at most homes, and it took a full week get it all together. Now as I tried to relax this Friday evening, I was having a hard time keeping my ghosts at bay. Would Dana understand about my hell-spawned visitors if I told her? Would anybody?

I was in the kitchen refilling our empty tea glasses—heavy on the ice and lemon for Dana—and had left her out on the back porch. Through the kitchen window I could see her, picking absently at a couple of pieces of pasta left on her plate, gazing out over the sun-kissed river slowly making its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Dana's pediatric practice was a magnet for all the mothers in Oxbow, and our "us" time seemed to dwindle weekly. My mind went over our earlier conversation as I tumbled ice cubes into our glasses and splashed the sweet brown liquid over them, trying not to think about the extra pounds our "girlie night" pasta dinner would add to my posterior. That fight and trying to quit chewing my nails were the never-ending struggles of my existence. Someday ...

Sitting there on the porch during supper, Dana and I had mused over the past several months of her life—remarkable mainly in their lack of remarkableness, she had said. She was a woman used to highs and lows. We had talked, half-mesmerized by the steady westward flow of the Oxbow River, while Dutch chased a small rabbit. The past few months had been a revelation to Dana.

Growing up, Dana had never had access to the finer things in life, but she was used to a somewhat faster pace—movies, theater, nightlife, traffic. Oxbow had none of those. It was quiet, and life was slow. The small things in life still had importance. Yet there were times when a girl just wanted to have a good time. And Oxbow-well, Oxbow just fell short in that category.

"I do like it here," she said, reaffirming an earlier comment as I returned to the table with the two large sparkling glasses of sweet tea.

I gave my friend a quizzical look. As a sister of sorts, I had often witnessed Dana's symptoms of withdrawal from city life—and it wasn't pretty. "Is this the same Dana D'Lorenzo I've come to know and love?" I asked. "The one who has moaned time and again about no movies, no nightlife, no shopping?"

"I know, I know," Dana said, laughing and brushing her thatch of auburn hair away from her lovely face. "I've been a real pest about that, and I still have a problem with no shopping, for heaven's sake."

I couldn't resist intoning her trademark line. "No shopping, no civilization."

Dana smiled ruefully. "Yes, I admit I'm a shopaholic. Being here has introduced me to the joys of junk store shopping, though—a whole new branch of the sport for me!"

"I know. I'm as guilty as you are," I said.

It was true. We had elevated thrift store shopping if not to a religion, then at least to something just short of idol worship. We both smiled at the shared memories. It was a point of pride—no thrift store within a hundred miles was safe from these two bargain-store plunderers!

We continued to sip our tea as a virtual legion of brilliant red dragonflies swooped across the yard in staggered formation. The troops were well disciplined—there were no malingerers, and every soldier seemed to be aligned just right, their objective, whatever that might be, apparently clear in their little minds.

"Still, in all honesty, I do miss being able to catch a movie on a whim or just head over to the zoo. I used to love to go to the zoo. My mom and I, and later Aunt Stella, spent many a Saturday there when I was growing up."

After her mother died, Dana had been raised by what used to be referred to as a "maiden aunt." We had found out early in our friendship that this was one of life's experiences we shared.

I recalled how our friendship had started. Dr. Dana, as all the kids called her, had come to Oxbow to take over the pediatric practice that her mentor, Dr. Arthur...