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WEDDINGS FROM HELL

Omnibus of novels by

Maggie Shayne, Jeaniene Frost, Terri Garey, Kathryn Smith

TILL DEATH

Maggie Shayne

Prologue

It was an ordinary Saturday afternoon. Seven-year-old Kira wore bib overalls of faded denim, a striped T-shirt, and copper-red braid that hung all the way to her butt. Her feet were bare, pant legs rolled up nearly to her knees as she waded in the lake. It was too early, Dad said, to go in for a real swim. But wading in the shallows was okay. The water felt just fine to Kira, and she wondered if she should "trip and fall" all the way into the water. Once she was wet, her parents wouldn't see any sense making her get out.

She glanced at the shore, where dandelions were like yellow polka-dots in the lush green grass. Her mom was spreading a plastic tablecloth on the picnic table. It was red and white checks. Kira thought it was silly to bother with a tablecloth at a picnic, but her mom liked things the way she liked things, so she didn't voice her own opinion on the matter. Probably, Kira thought, there were important reasons to use a tablecloth at a picnic—reasons she was just too young to understand yet.

Her dad was standing at the grill, with a big two-pronged fork in one hand and a long-handled burger-flipper in the other.

"Darlin'?" Mom called, her Scottish accent clear, even in that one word. She'd managed to get the flapping tablecloth to stay put by laying her purse on one end, and Kira's shoes on the other.

Dad turned toward her, and when he caught her eye, he smiled.

"Could ya get the cooler from the car? And while ya do, why not move the car outta the sun, so t'willna be like an oven by the time we're ready to leave. "

He looked at the parking lot, just up the hill from where they were picnicking, on the shore of Cayuga Lake . "I don't see any shady spots. Do you?"

"Right there, love, beneath the shading arms of that oak tree," she said, pointing.

He followed with his eyes, and spotted the place she had in mind.

Kira grinned, because she heard something in his voice that told her he thought moving the car was about as necessary as a tablecloth on a picnic table. But he would never say so out loud. Mom liked things the way she liked them, and there was no point in arguing.

She had skin like cream and hair the same color as Kira's, but wildly curly where Kira's was straight. Her eyes were green, as green as emeralds, her father used to say.

She'd left Scotland to find a husband, and vowed never to go back. She didn't talk about why not, or what had happened there that had made her so very unhappy. And since Kira didn't like seeing her mom unhappy, she didn't ask. She wondered, though.

Dad moved the car to the spot Mom had dictated, then got out and fetched the giant red cooler full of food from the trunk. It was as he carried the cooler around the car and down the hill, that the car began to roll forward.

It started slowly. So slowly, that Kira wasn't sure it was really moving, at first. Mom didn't notice it. She stood by the table with a roll of masking tape she'd unearthed from the depths of her purse. She tore off one strip and then another and then another, using each of them to hold the tablecloth to the table, tucking the tape underneath so it wouldn't show.