A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  And no one would ask for a DNA test to show who was or wasn’t the father. It was better no one knew for sure, and the fact that Tobin had wanted to provide for Cadey’s child was enough for Win. And with Jimmy’s name on the birth certificate and without a DNA test, presumably Tobin’s parents would never get wind of a small child growing up in the Adirondacks their son may have fathered.

  I don’t think Tobin killed himself. I think his death was an accident, a confluence of events, the day his luck ran out. Maybe in a way he’d welcomed it. Maybe when he’d slipped under the ice he hadn’t fought the water, hadn’t struggled to keep the lake from claiming him. Maybe he was tired and until that moment when the ice cracked hadn’t known just how tired—tired of carrying the weight of his brother’s death and his father’s perfidy and his own transgressions and a thousand other things. We’d never know. Everyone could envision whatever version they could live with.

  The ice palace had begun to sag. I was looking forward to its melting away, to the last remnant of ice leaving, so that the space where Tobin’s body had been found would be only a distant memory, would be only a spot in a clear blue lake under a bright shining sun, and it would no longer hurt me to look at it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to:

  Sandy Ebner, Cynthia Christian, Quinn Cummings, Teresa Rhyne, Debbie Patrick, Robert Smolka, Mike Modrak, Ben Malisow, Howard Frank Mosher, and David Freed for reading, cheerleading, or both; Wayne Mackey, former New York state trooper, for background info; Anthony R. Mascia, MD, for medical information; Reed Farrel Coleman, for being a great CP.

  Amy and Topher King (and the small Kinglets), for everything; my cousins, for their love and support; Joe Mascia, for being a particularly astute reader.

  All the great booksellers and librarians out there—you know who you are.

  And the wonderful readers who fell in love with Troy and her friends, and let me know about it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SARA J. HENRY, like her protagonist, was a newspaper sports editor in the Adirondacks for several years, and lived in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. She freelanced for various magazines and was a magazine editor, health and fitness writer, book editor, and copy editor before turning to fiction. She also spent a very short time as a soil scientist, and later loved working as a bicycle mechanic.

  Her first novel, Learning to Swim, won the Anthony Award and Agatha Award for best first novel and the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and was nominated for the Macavity and Barry Awards. She was a featured author at Booktopia Vermont.

  A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Sara graduated from the University of Tennessee, attended the University of Florida, and received a master’s in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. She now calls southern Vermont home, but frequently visits Nashville, where she wrote her first novel, and the Adirondacks, which somehow still feels like home.

  Her website is www.SaraJHenry.com, and she loves to hear from readers.