The LodgersIt could not have sounded more divine.

Tall, shadowy pine trees; a bubbling creek with clear, pure water; meadow upon meadow of swaying wildflowers; temperature in the seventies, and a cute little log cabin with a loft at a lodge.

When my husband suggested we get away for the weekend and celebrate my birthday in the White Mountains, I couldn't have been more enthusiastic.

To Arizonans, the White Mountains are an incredible escape a mere four hours' drive away; to the rest of the world, they're the place where logger Travis Walton said he got sucked up by a UFO and then disappeared for five days while aliens put things in places unseemly. To me, they were a place with no phones, no television sets, no computers, no fax machines, just a cabin with a wood-burning stove, a feather bed, and a forty-degree drop in temperature, which I especially needed since I had just received a zipper burn on the back of my neck from my dress by engaging in the mortally dangerous activity of going to get the mail while it was still sunny outside.

When I told my mother about my birthday plans, she simply said, "Must be a popular place. Your sister is heading up there, too, but at least her boyfriend sprang for a fancy hotel. Why won't your husband pay for a hotel? Why are you staying in an old shack with a woodstove? How can that be fun? I bet you'll leave with a nice case of lice."

"We're not staying in a shack. It's a cabin with a feather bed and a loft," I said, thinking that she was one to talk. I've spent a great deal of time and effort in therapy trying to forget the majority of my family summer vacations. They were spent driving roughly far enough into the desert and away from our house that we couldn't physically run back to it after it was discovered that my parents had only sprung for one hotel room for the five of us and it was 117 degrees outside, making escape far too sweaty an option. To make matters even more closely resemble the comfort level of Guantanamo Bay, my mother consistently struck a claim for one of the double beds as we entered the room by throwing her purse on it, digging out her bottle of Tylenol and her pack of Winstons, and then sprawling out with her eyes closed and her hand over her head. This not only left the rest of the family one bed for cramped quarters but created an undeniable bounty of opportunity for pinching, slapping, and pushing between my sisters and me and sometimes even my dad, to which my mother would respond by roaring from her yacht of a bed two feet away, "SHUT UP all of you! If you people haven't noticed, I'm on VACATION!" We were additionally blessed as a slight, cool drizzle fell like mist as soon as we drove into the lodge driveway and then checked in. As I opened the door to the White Mountains cabin, it was exactly as I had pictured it--well, outside of the shag rug and the black fur of mold in the shower. My husband sighed peacefully, put his hands on his hips, and looked around. "A whole weekend of this!" he commented excitedly. "Can you even believe it? Listen. I don't hear a thing but that slight prattle of rain hitting the tin roof."

"Wow," I said, smiling wide. "To think, four hours ago, the seat belt left a burn so extensive we could have added a side of A.1. and called it dinner."

I unzipped my bags and unpacked my array of snack options, then stood gazing out the window at the steady, patient dribble of rain. My husband spread out on the couch and cracked open a book. "This is the life," he said with a smile before he started to read....

Chapter One

I wish Giovanni would kiss me.

Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and, like most Italian guys in their twenties, he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am a professional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old. Purely as a matter of principle I wouldn't inflict my sorry, busted-up old self on the lovely, unsullied Giovanni. Not to mention that I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy.

To which the savvy observer might inquire: 'Then why did you come to Italy?'

To which I can only reply—especially when looking across the table at handsome Giovanni— 'Excellent question.'

Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it's not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other's languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I'd arrived in Rome, thanks to that big Internet cafÈ at the Piazza Barbarini, across the street from that fountain with the sculpture of that sexy merman blowing into his conch shell. He (Giovanni, that is—not the merman) had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for-word identical in every way, right down to the typeface. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same.

Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, "Are you perhaps brothers?"

It was Giovanni who wrote back this very provocativo message: "Even better. Twins!"

Yes—much better. Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year-old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. After meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless ... I was already composing my letter to Penthouse:

In the flickering, candlelit shadows of the Roman café, it was impossible to tell whose hands were caress—

But, no.

No and no.

I chopped tvhe fantasy off in mid-word. This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, the shy, studious Giovanni and I have become dear buddies. As for Dario—the more razzle-dazzle swinger brother of the two—I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and how they've been sharing their evenings in Rome is another kind of Tandem Exchange altogether. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentle grammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception. A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.

Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome, which meander organically around the ancient buildings like bayou streams snaking around shadowy clumps of cypress groves. Now we are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug. This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice to kiss me. On the other hand, he might just kiss me right now, tonight, right here by my door ... there's still a chance ... I mean we're pressed up against each other's bodies beneath this moonlight ... and of course it would be a terrible mistake ... but it's still such a wonderful possibility that he might actually do it right now ... that he might just bend down ... and ... and ... Nope.

He separates himself from the embrace.

"Good night, my dear Liz," he says.

"Buona notte, caro mio," I reply.

I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night's sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrasebooks and dictionaries.

I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.

Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks.

First in English.

Then in Italian.

And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit.

Chapter Two

And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began—a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.

Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I'd recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o'clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and—just as during all those nights before—I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and confusion and grief.

I don't want to be married anymore.

I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.

I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house. I don't want to have a baby.

But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six—had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn't—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didnt happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn't there. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breast-feeding her firstborn: 'Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.'

How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was experiencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live ...

Talin McKade told herself that twenty-eight-year-old women--especially twenty-eight-year-old women who had seen and survived what she had--did not fear anything as simple as walking across the road and into a bar to pick up a man.

Except, of course, this was no ordinary man. And a bar was the last place she'd expected to find Clay given what she had learned about him in the two weeks since she had first tracked him down. It didn't bode well that it had taken her that long to screw up the courage to come to him. But she had had to be sure.

What she had discovered was that the Clay she'd known, the tall, angry, powerful boy , had become some kind of a high-ranking enforcer for the dominant leopard pack in San Francisco. DarkRiver was extremely well respected, so Clay's position spoke of trust and loyalty. The last word stabbed a blade deep into her heart.

Clay had always been loyal to her. Even when she didn't deserve it. Swallowing, she shoved away the memories, knowing she couldn't allow them to distract her. The old Clay was gone. This Clay...she didn't know him. All she knew was that he hadn't had any run-ins with the law after being released from the juvenile facility where he had been incarcerated at the age of fourteen--for the brutal slaying of one Orrin Henderson.

Talin's hands clamped down on the steering wheel with white-knuckled force. She could feel blood rising to flood her cheeks as her heart thudded in remembered fear. Parts of Orrin, soft and wet things that should have never been exposed to the air, flecking her as she cowered in the corner while Clay--

No!

She couldn't think about that, couldn't go there. It was enough that the nightmare images--full of the thick, cloying smell of raw meat gone bad--haunted her sleep night after night. She would not surrender her daytime hours, too.

Flashing blue and white lights caught her attention as another Enforcement vehicle pulled into the bar's small front parking lot. That made two armored vehicles and four very well armed cops, but though they had all gotten out, none of the four made any move to enter the bar. Unsure what was going on, she stayed inside her Jeep, parked in the secondary lot on the other side of the wide street.

Sweat trickled down her spine at the sight of the cop cars. Her brain had learned young to associate their presence with violence. Every instinct in her urged her to get the hell out. But she had to wait, to see. If Clay hadn't changed, if he had grown worse... Uncurling one hand from the wheel, she fisted it against a stomach filled with roiling, twisting despair. He was her last hope.

The bar door flew open at that second, making her heart jump. Two bodies came flying out. To her surprise, the cops simply got out of the way before folding their arms and leveling disapproving frowns at the ejected pair. The two dazed young men staggered to their feet...only to go down again when two more boys landed on top of them.

They were teenagers--eighteen or nineteen, from the looks of it. All were obviously drunk as hell. While the four lay there, probably moaning and wishing for death, another male walked out on his own two feet. He was older and even from this distance, she could feel his fury as he picked up two of the boys and threw them into the open cab of a parked truck, his pure blond hair waving in the early evening breeze.

He said something to the cops that made them relax. One laughed. Having gotten rid of the first two, the blond man grabbed the other two boys by the scruffs of their necks and began to drag them back to the truck, uncaring of the gravel that had to be sandpapering skin off the exposed parts of their bodies.

Talin winced.

Those unfortunate--and likely misbehaving--boys, would feel the bruises and cuts tomorrow, along with sore heads. Then the door banged open again and she forgot everything and everyone but the man framed by the light inside the bar. He had one boy slung over his shoulder and was dragging another in the same way the blond had.

"Clay." It was a whisper that came out on a dark rush of need, anger, and fear. He'd grown taller, was close to six four. And his body--he had more than fulfilled the promise of raw power that had always been in him. Over that muscular frame, his skin shone a rich, luscious brown with an undertone of gold.

Isla's blood, Talin thought, the exotic beauty of Clay's Egyptian mother vivid in her mind even after all these years. Isla's skin had been smooth black coffee, her eyes bitter chocolate, but she had only contributed half of Clay's genes.

Talin couldn't see Clay's own eyes from this distance, but she knew they were a striking green, the eyes of a jungle cat--an unmistakable legacy from his changeling father. Set off by his skin and pitch-black hair, those eyes had dominated the face of the boy he had been. She had a feeling they still did but in a far different way.

His every move screamed tough male confidence. He didn't even seem to feel the weight of the two boys as he threw them into the pile already in the back of the truck. She imagined the flex of muscle, of power, and shivered...in absolute, unquenchable fear.

Logic, intellect, sense, it all broke under the unadulterated flow of memory. Blood and flesh, screams that wouldn't end, the wet, sucking sounds of death. And she knew she couldn't do this. Because if Clay had scared her as a child, he terrified her now.

Shoving a hand into her mouth she bit back a cry.

That was when he froze, his head jerking up.

Dumping Cory and Jason into the cab, Clay was about to turn to say something to Dorian when he caught an almost-sound on the breeze. His beast went hunting-still, then pounced out with the incredibly fine senses of a leopard, while the man scanned the area with his eyes.

He knew that sound, that female voice. It was that of a dead woman. He didn't care. He had accepted his madness a long time ago. So now he looked, looked and searched.

For Tally.

There were too many cars in the lot across the wide road, too many places where Talin's ghost could hide. Good thing he knew how to hunt. He'd taken one step in that direction when Dorian slapped him on the back and stepped into his line of sight. "Ready to hit the road?"

Clay felt a growl building in his throat and the reaction was irrational enough to snap some sanity into his mind. "Cops?" He shifted to regain his view of the opposing lot. "They gonna give us trouble?"

Dorian shook his head, blond hair gleaming in the glow of the streetlights that had begun flicking on as built-in sensors detected the fading light. "They'll cede authority since it's only changeling kids involved. They don't have any right to interfere with internal pack stuff anyway."

"Who called them?"

"Not Joe." He named the bar owner--a fellow member of DarkRiver. "He called us , so it must've been someone else they messed with. Hell, I'm glad Kit and Cory have worked their little pissing contest out, but I never thought they'd become best-fucking-friends and drive us all insane."

"If we weren't having these problems with the Psy Council trying to hurt the pack," Clay said, "I wouldn't mind dumping them in jail for the night."

Dorian grunted in assent. "Joe'll send through a bill. He knows the pack will cover the damage."

"And take it out of these six's hides." Clay thumped Cory back down when the drunk and confused kid tried to rise. "They'll be working off their debt till they graduate."

Dorian grinned. "I seem to recall raising some hell myself in this bar and getting my ass kicked by you."

Clay scowled at the younger sentinel, though his attention never left the parking area across the road. Nothing moved over there except the dust, but he knew that sometimes, prey hid in plain sight. Playing statue was one way to fool a predator. But Clay was no mindless beast--he was an experienced and blooded DarkRiver sentinel. "You were worse than this lot. Fucking tried to take me out with your ninja shit."

Dorian said something in response, but Clay missed it as a small Jeep peeled rapidly out of the lot that held his attention. "Kids are yours!" With that, he took off after his escaping quarry on foot.

If he had been human, the chase would've been a stupid act. Even for a leopard changeling, it made little sense. He was fast, but not fast enough to keep up with that vehicle if the driver floored it. As she--definitely she --now did.

Instead of swearing in defeat, Clay bared his teeth in a ruthless grin, knowing something the driver didn't, something that turned his pursuit from stupid to sensible. The leopard might react on instinct, but the human side of Clay's mind was functioning just fine. As the driver would be discovering right about...now!

The Jeep screeched to a halt, probably avoiding the rubble blocking the road by bare centimeters. The landslide had occurred only forty-five minutes ago. Usually DarkRiver would have already taken care of it, but because another small landslide had occurred in almost the exact same spot two days ago, this one had been left until it--and the affected slope--could be assessed by experts. If she'd been inside the bar, she'd have heard the announcement and known to take a detour.

But she hadn't been in the bar. She'd been hiding outside.

By the time he reached the spot, the driver was trying to back out. But she kept stalling, her panic causing her to overload the computronics that controlled the vehicle. He could smell the sharp, clean bite of her fear, but it was the oddly familiar yet indefinably wrong scent under the fear mask that had him determined to see her face.

Breathing hard but not truly winded, he came to a stop in the middle of the road behind her, daring her to run him over. Because he wasn't letting her get away. He didn't know who the hell she was, but she smelled disturbingly like Tally and he wanted to know why.

Five minutes later, the driver stopped trying to restart the car. Dust settled, revealing the vehicle's rental plates. The birds started singing again. Still he waited...until, at last, the door slid open and back. A slender leg covered in dark blue denim and a black ankle-length boot touched the ground.

His beast went preternaturally quiet as a hand emerged to close over the door and slide it even farther back. Freckled skin, the barest hint of a tan. A small female form unfolding itself out of the Jeep. Even fully out, she stood with her back to him for several long minutes. He didn't do anything to force her to turn, didn't make any aggressive sounds. Instead, he took the chance to drink in the sight of her.

She was unquestionably small, but not fragile, not easily breakable. There was strength in the straight line of her spine, but also a softness that promised a cushion for a hard male body. The woman had curves. Lush, sweet, curves. Her butt filled out the seat of her jeans perfectly, arousing the deeply sexual instincts of both man and cat. He wanted to bite, to shape, to pet.

Clenching his fists, he stayed in place and forced his gaze upward. It would, he thought, be easy to lift her up by the waist so he could kiss her without getting a crick in his neck. And he planned to kiss this woman who smelled like Talin. His beast kept growling that she was his and, right this second, he wasn't feeling civilized enough to argue. That would come later, after he had discovered the truth about this ghost. Until then, he would drown in the rush of wild sexuality, in the familiar-yet-not scent of her.

Even her hair was that same unusual shade as Talin's--a deep, tawny gold streaked with chocolate brown. A mane, he'd always called it. Akin to the incredible variations of color in a leopard's fur, something that outsiders often missed. To a fellow leopard, however, those variations were as obvious as spotlights. As was this woman's hair. Beautiful. Thick. Unique.

"Talin," he said softly, surrendering completely to the madness.

Her spine stiffened, but at last, she turned.

And the entire world stopped breathing.

Chapter ONE

'THE FUTURE'

Friday 15TH July 1988
Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh

'I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference,' she said. 'You know, actually change something.'
'What, like "change the world", you mean?'
'Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.'
They lay in silence for a moment, bodies curled around each other in the single bed, then both began to laugh in low, pre-dawn voices. 'Can't believe I just said that,' she groaned. 'Sounds a bit corny, doesn't it?'
'A bit corny.'
'I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you.' She turned to face him. 'Not that you need it. I expect you've got your future nicely mapped out, ta very much. Probably got a little flow-chart somewhere or something.'
'Hardly.'
'So what're you going to do then? What's the great plan?'
'Well, my parents are going to pick up my stuff, dump it at theirs, then I'll spend a couple of days in their flat in London, see some friends. Then France-'
'Very nice-'
'Then China maybe, see what that's all about, then maybe onto India, travel around there for a bit-'
'Traveling,' she sighed. 'So predictable.'
'What's wrong with travelling?'
'Avoiding reality more like.'
'I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic.
She sniffed. 'S'alright, I suppose, for those who can afford it. Why not just say "I'm going on holiday for two years"? It's the same thing.'
'Because travel broadens the mind,' he said, rising onto one elbow and kissing her.
'Oh I think you're probably a bit too broad-minded as it is,' she said, turning her face away, for the moment at least. They settled again on the pillow. 'Anyway, I didn't mean what are you doing next month, I meant the future-future, when you're, I don't know...' She paused, as if conjuring up some fantastical idea, like a fifth dimension. '...Forty or something. What do you want to be when you're forty?'
'Forty?' He too seemed to be struggling with the concept. 'Don't know. Am I allowed to say "rich"?'
'Just so, so shallow.'
'Alright then, "famous".' He began to nuzzle at her neck. 'Bit morbid, this, isn't it?'
'It's not morbid, it's...exciting.'
' 'Exciting!' ' He was imitating her voice now, her soft Yorkshire accent, trying to make her sound daft. She got this a lot, posh boys doing funny voices, as if there was something unusual and quaint about an accent, and not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him. She shrugged herself away until her back was pressed against the cool of the wall.
'Yes, exciting. We're meant to be excited, aren't we? All those possibilities. It's like the Vice-Chancellor said, "the doors of opportunity flung wide..."'
'"Yours are the names in tomorrow's newspapers..."'
'Not very likely.'
'So, what, are you excited then?'
'Me? God no, I'm crapping myself.'
'Me too. Christ...' He turned suddenly and reached for the cigarettes on the floor by the side of the bed, as if to steady his nerves. 'Forty years old. Forty. Fucking hell.'
Smiling at his anxiety, she decided to make it worse. 'So what'll you be doing when you're forty?'
He lit his cigarette...

Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title!

Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title!

Listen to the Abridged MP3 excerpt of this title!

Listen to the Unabridged MP3 excerpt of this title!

Listen to the Abridged WMA excerpt of this title!

Listen to the Unabridged WMA excerpt of this title!

Early ChildhoodI was born in the bitter cold but into warm and loving hands. Aunt Lydia Jessop was the midwife who brought me into the world on January 1, 1968, just two hours after midnight.

Aunt Lydia could not believe I'd survived. She was the midwife who had delivered babies for two generations, including my mother. When she saw the placenta, she realized that my mother had chronic placental abruption. Mom had hemorrhaged throughout her pregnancy and thought she was miscarrying. But when the bleeding stopped, she shrugged it off, assuming she was still pregnant. Aunt Lydia, the midwife, said that by the time I was born, the placenta was almost completely detached from the uterus. My mother could have bled to death and I could have been born prematurely or, worse, stillborn.

But I came into the world as a feisty seven-pound baby, my mother's second daughter. My father said she could name me Carolyn or Annette. She looked up both names and decided to call me Carolyn because it meant "wisdom." My mother always said that even as a baby, I looked extremely wise to her.

I was born into six generations of polygamy on my mother's side and started life in Hildale, Utah, in a fundamentalist Mormon community known as the FLDS, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Polygamy was the issue that defined us and the reason we'd split from the mainstream Mormon Church.

My childhood memories really begin in Salt Lake City. We moved there when I was about five. Even though my parents believed in polygamy, my father had only one wife. He owned a small real estate business that was doing well and decided it made sense to use Salt Lake as a base. We had a lovely house with a porch swing and a landscaped yard and trees. This was a big change from the tiny house in Colorado City with dirt and weeds in the yard and a father who was rarely home.

But the biggest difference in moving to Salt Lake City was that my mother, Nurylon, was happy. She loved the city and delighted in having my father home every night after work. My dad was doing well, and Mom had enough money to buy plenty of groceries when we went to the store and even had some extra for toys.

There were soon four of us. I had two sisters, Linda and Annette. I was in the middle--Linda was eighteen months older than I and Annette two years younger. My baby brother Arthur arrived a few years after Annette. My mother was thrilled to finally have a son because in our culture, boys have more value than girls. Linda and my mother were very close. But my mother always seemed very irritated by me, in part, I think, because I was my father's favorite.

I adored my dad, Arthur Blackmore. He was tall and thin, with large bones and dark, wavy hair. I remember that whenever we were around other families I thought I had the best-looking father in the entire world. I saw him as my personal protector and felt safe when I was in his presence. His face lit up when I entered the room; I was always the daughter he wanted to introduce when friends visited our house. My mother complained that he didn't discipline me as much as he did my sister Linda, but he ignored her and didn't seem to care.

We only lived in Salt Lake City for a year, but it was a happy one. Mother took us to the zoo and to the park, where we'd play on the swings and slides. My father's business was successful and expanding. But he decided we needed to move back to Colorado City, Arizona--a tiny, nondescript FLDS enclave about 350 miles south of Salt Lake City and a stone's throw from...