Miranda stood in the open doorway bundled up in a dark pea coat and polkadot rain boots. Her hair hung about her shoulders, long and parted down the middle. She was pale—paler than she had been the last time I’d seen her—and there were dark, purplish circles beneath her dark green eyes. She was a mixture of death and a woman haunted. I knew at least one of those things she actually was. “Miranda,” I said, shock freezing me in place while fear made me want to run and be anywhere but here. “I… I didn’t think you’d come here.” “Didn’t think?” she asked, her voice icy and her expression a study in pale anger. “Or hoped that I wouldn’t?” “Miranda, I...” I didn’t know what I wanted to say. It was true, I had been hoping that she just wouldn’t come. That she would simply disappear from my mind once again. Instead, she was here on my doorstep staring me down with those icy, haunted eyes. “I thought you were in Maine,” I finally said lamely. She gave a bitter laugh.
