she could have ever imagined. She felt a million miles removed from Shepherd’s Bay, despite standing front and center in the town she grew up in.
A woman’s voice called down to her. “Hello, Isla.”
She looked up and saw Felicia standing on the second-floor landing and wearing a white bathrobe. Stainless-steel cables ran horizontally across the second-floor landing and acted as a railing, allowing Isla a head-to-toe view of the other woman.
“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes. I need to take a quick shower before we get started.” Her voice sounded theatrical, as if to emphasize every syllable.
Fifteen minutes? Isla needed to get back to the shop for her next appointment. But then she remembered that Willow was still missing, and she bit her tongue.
What would she do with herself for fifteen minutes? She placed her tool bag down on the granite island and stood staring at the waves lapping the shore. She’d grown up near the ocean, but for some reason, it looked different from this vantage. No longer did she see Shepherd’s Bay as a gritty fishing town along the water. For the first time, she viewed it as an almost glamorous place.
She waltzed through the kitchen area and took in the stainless-steel refrigerator built into the wall. Spotless, not a smudge on it. She opened it and saw enough food for an army, organized and with everything in its place. Her own refrigerator looked like a terrorist had set a bomb off in it.
She shut the refrigerator door and slipped out of the kitchen. The hallway resembled a bowling alley. She went from room to room, each bigger than the next. Some were bedrooms. One was a study. The third room on the right had no windows and had theater seating. A large screen hung from the ceiling against the far wall. Along the back wall stood an authentic theater popcorn machine. It amazed her that people could afford such luxuries.
She knew almost nothing about film projectors, but she could see that this one was high end and streamed movies as well as played DVDs. She saw an open Blu-ray disc case and examined the front of it. It was a television show from 2000 that she vaguely remembered. Against her better judgment, she flipped the projector’s power switch to ON, and the show appeared on-screen.
The picture filled the entire far wall, and she felt like she was standing in a real movie theater. She watched the show with interest, the plot coming back to her with each scene. The show was called Lost ‘n’ You, and the main character was a beautiful young woman struggling to make it through her first year of college but trapped between a lecherous professor and a burgeoning love interest her own age.
She glanced at her watch and saw that she had about seven minutes remaining before Felicia came downstairs. Something about the beautiful girl on-screen piqued her interest, and she moved closer to the screen. Why did she find this show so familiar? Did it remind her of her own painful college experience? No, it was something entirely different. And then it struck her, and she nearly collapsed into one of the theater chairs, in shock. The blond girl on-screen was Felicia Briggs! She was beautiful beyond words. And the resemblance between the younger Felicia and her daughter, Willow, startled Isla. Why hadn’t she noticed this before? As she stared longer at the screen, she realized that whereas Willow possessed striking, angular features, the younger Felicia looked softer and her body more rounded.
So why had Felicia dyed her hair black? Did she not want to be recognized in town for her role on that show?
It took a few seconds before she calmed herself down. Her heart raced in her chest as she switched off the projector. On the far end of the projecting table, she saw three photo albums. Her watch told her she had five minutes left before she needed to head back. She walked over to the albums and casually flipped through them. Members of the TV show’s cast mugged in silly poses. It looked to her as if all the pictures had been taken on set.
Then she came to one photograph that startled her. Felicia leaned over a handsome man sitting in a director’s chair. His black hair was slicked back over his head, and his tanned skin glowed with a healthy vigor. He looked to be fifteen years older than Felicia. Finally, it came to her. The