It wasn’t the sort of wall-shaking, fainting-spell-inducing alarm that people often reported in the seconds before they lose someone they know. She’d heard about those moments, known neighbors and friends, deeply spiritual people, who swore they had sensed the passing of their loved one in the seconds before it had happened. Some had fainted; some had grown so dizzy they’d had to sit down; some had bolted awake from a deep sleep. For Jill, she’d blinked and pulled her car to the side of the road. This was how she knew Claire had come to Folly. Jill had felt the same flutter around her heart that she’d felt the day Foster died; not once, but consistently, that whole morning as she’d dried and folded piles of guest towels and ironed pillowcases and sheets in their bedroom, a makeshift office and linen closet in the busy season. She heard Shep’s footsteps ascend the stairs and watched the doorway, waiting for him to fill it. When he finally did, he wore a resigned smile.
