Panic set in about five minutes after Paige Matthews realized her son was gone.

At first, she told herself it was no big deal. That he was probably two rows over in the toy aisle, checking to see if the selection was up to snuff.

When he wasn’t there, pouring over the surprisingly extensive collection of miniature cars, she figured he’d simply wandered over to the ice cream case—Luke was a sucker for strawberry ice cream.

And when he wasn’t there either, when the small kernel of concern that had formed the moment she realized he was not at the end of the aisle like she’d thought he was, started to grow, she still told herself that she was overreacting. This mom and pop grocery store in the small Oregon town she’d grown up in was a far cry from the huge supermarkets of Los Angeles, where Luke had been born and raised. Even at eight, he knew how to take care of himself, knew not to talk to strangers and to stay in one place if, for some reason, he did get separated from her—though it had never happened before.

So what could possibly happen to him here?

The reassuring thoughts didn’t keep her from walking faster, any more than they kept her from remembering her own childhood here in Prospect and all the trouble she had managed to get into. While the fact that they weren’t in the big city made her feel a little better, the feeling didn’t last long—especially when she got to the candy aisle and realized Luke hadn’t wandered over there either. Worse, the store’s display of gummy animals and body parts was completely undisturbed, a sure sign that he had not bothered to stop by there at all. And that was so unlike him that concern turned to terror between one heartbeat and the next.

“Luke!” she called, racing the few steps up the deserted candy aisle to the front of the store. “Luke, where are you?”

There was no answer and in those moments every terrible thing that could happen to an unaccompanied eight year old boy flashed through her mind, small town be damned. Sure, this was Prospect, but Eugene really wasn’t that far away. Salem. Portland. All reasonably sized cities with rising crime rates.

“Luke!” She was running now, from one end of the store to the other, looking down each aisle that sprouted off from the long path that wound its way around the perimeter of the store.

Other shoppers began staring at her, whispering, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge them. They’d whispered about her here for the first seventeen years of her life—right up until she’d left town, broke and alone, save for the baby she carried in her womb. The fact that they started talking about her so readily, even after all this time, came as no surprise. She might only have been back in town for a day and a half, but she knew how this town worked—knew how it had always worked.

Some things never changed.

Besides, at least this time, there was something real to talk about. Sure, she was running around like a crazy woman, but if they knew she was looking for her son, maybe someone else would spot him. Maybe someone else would start to look. Finding Luke, making sure he was safe, was the only thing that mattered.

But—surprise, surprise—no one came forward to help.

Where could he be? she wondered again as she frantically combed the aisles for her son’s yellow and purple hoodie. She’d bought him the outrageously expensive jacket for his eighth birthday and he almost never went anywhere without it.

This wasn’t like him—he never wandered away like this. From the time he’d been very young, she’d made sure he understood just how dangerous it was to disappear. Made sure he understood how easily he could get hurt. The fact that he knew better only made her feel more frantic.

Why, oh why, had she let Mary Beth Peters distract her? She hadn’t wanted to let it happen, didn’t even like the woman—and never had, even when they were in school together. Mary Beth had been the most popular girl in school and Paige had been … popular in her own right. But certainly not because she was head cheerleader.

Still, when Mary Beth had stopped her, she hadn’t wanted to be rude. Hadn’t wanted to cause any more gossip than was absolutely necessary—Penny had to live here long after she and Luke went home, after all.

And look what it had gotten her. When was she going to learn that trying to keep on the right side of these people’s opinions cost her way too much?

“Luke!” Heart pounding, hands shaking, Paige screamed his name as adrenaline coursed through her ice-cold body. She was approaching the last few aisles of the grocery store and if he wasn’t there—If he wasn’t there, she didn’t know how she was going to hold it together long enough to call the sheriff’s department for help.

She’d only spoken to Mary Beth for a couple of minutes, just long enough to exchange pleasantries and a quick explanation on why she was back in town after such a long time. How could her son have possibly disappeared in less than one hundred and eighty seconds?

She was on the brink of losing it completely when she spotted the familiar L.A. Lakers hoodie. “Luke.” This time it wasn’t a scream so much as a long, exhale of relief. Grinding to a halt, she rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. She wasn’t. He was still there. Her son—her beautiful, amazing, mischievous son—was seated in front of the store’s small comic book display, the new iPod he’d gotten just yesterday from his Aunt Penny playing in his ears as he flipped through the latest superhero comic.

She was so happy to find him safe and sound that she nearly wept. As it was, she had to blink rapidly to clear her vision—a shock in and of itself as it had been years since she’d allowed herself the luxury of anything as useless as tears, even if they were of relief.

But this time, today, she couldn’t help it. For so long it had been just Luke and she against the world. If anything ever happened to him she would—

Paige shook her head, unable to think about such a nightmarish occurrence, even in the abstract. Especially not right now, when she was still shaking from the aftermath of thinking she’d lost him.

She didn’t go to him right away, didn’t wrap her arms around him and squeeze him as she wanted to—so tightly that he objected to the embrace. If she did, she might say to hell with stoicism and start crying— which was a really bad idea, especially here in the middle of Prospect hell. She had never given the good citizens of her hometown the satisfaction of seeing her cry when she’d lived here—no matter how hard they’d tried to break her—and she would be damned if she gave it to them now. None of them, not one, had stepped forward to help her today, and her semi-hysterical flight had already given them more than enough to talk about.

But Luke chose that moment to look up, and his beautiful, not-quite-little-boy-anymore face lit up at the sight of her. “Hey, Mom! Look, it’s the new one.” He jumped nimbly to his feet, raced down the aisle toward her.

“Can I get it?”

Still forcing herself not to grab onto him like a crazy woman, Paige gently pulled one of the iPod’s earbuds from her son’s ear. “You wander away from me in a public place and you expect me to reward you for it?” she asked in the sternest voice she could muster. It might have worked, too, except for the fact that it—like her—was still shaking.

She saw that fact register in Luke’s eyes, followed by a swift look of shame. “I’m sorry, Mom. I went to find the gummy eyeballs and then found these instead… I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She tried to hang tough, but felt herself cave in the face of his obvious remorse. Taking the comic from Luke, she tossed it on top of the fresh fruits and vegetables she’d piled in their cart She wasn’t normally so lenient, but hey—she was still awash with the joy of finding him safe. Plus, she’d transplanted the kid away from everything he knew to this small town in the middle of hell. If a comic book helped get him through the interminable summer, then who was she to argue?

“Don’t ever do it again. I couldn’t find you and ended up running screaming through the store like a crazy woman.”

“Ugh, Mom, that so isn’t the first impression I was hoping to make.” Luke glanced down the aisle at a couple of boys who looked to be close to his age. Both were staring at them like they were alien life forms. She didn’t have the heart to tell him it was probably more about the nasty things they’d heard their mothers say about her as she’d passed them, rather than her mad dash through the store.

Prospect had a long memory, and no matter how much she’d accomplished in the nine years since she’d left, here she was still that wild Matthews girl from the wrong side of the river. The one whose mother had conceived her while her husband was serving his country overseas, then left her to wear the Scarlet A.
It was a legacy that had proved impossible to live down no matter how hard she tried, so in the end, she’d done her best to live up to it instead. It had been lonely, but infinitely more satisfying than crying herself to sleep every night had been.

In those moments, hearing the echoes of whispers and taunts and boys asking her for things she had been only too eager to give in her search for affection, she wished that she’d never come back. Never let Penny talk her into returning to this one-horse town, even if it was only for a few months. But then, the wish was nothing knew—she’d been repeating variations of it since she and Luke had rolled into town the day before—and even before that, if she was completely honest with herself. She was pretty sure she’d felt her first pang of regret before she’d even hung up the phone.

“Come on, Luke, let’s go.” She hustled her son to the front of the store, lecturing him the entire way. “You know you’re not supposed to wander away like that. Anything could happen—especially in a place you don’t know.”

Luke stared at her in disbelief. “Mom, this place has a population of like, five people. Nothing’s going to happen to me here.”

“More like five thousand people and you don’t know that nothing will happen to you. No one does.” God knew, plenty had happened to her in this sleepy, seaside town. More than enough that she had gotten the hell out and never looked back. At least not until her sister had called, desperate for her help and too embarrassed and afraid to ask their parents for it.

That vulnerability, that fear, had been impossible for her to ignore. She’d turned her back on Penny once, had all but cut her sister out of her life in her own bid for survival. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that again—not even if it cost her a little of her hard-won sanity.

Something in her voice must have tipped Luke off, because he stopped arguing much more quickly than usual. “I’m really sorry, Mom.”

“I know you are. Just, please, stay with me. You don’t know the town yet, and anything could happen.”

“I know. I promise I won’t do it again.” His big, silver eyes shined with remorse.

“Good. Because next time I won’t be so nice.” She was rubbing his back even as she made the threat, leaning down to press a quick kiss on his rumpled black curls and marveling—not for the first time—at how incredibly blessed she was to have him. Up until Luke, her luck with men had been so abysmal that when she’d found out she was having a boy, she’d actually broken down and sobbed in the ultrasound room.

But that was before she’d had him, before she’d held him. Before she’d known him. From the moment he’d come into the world, Luke had been the most amazing creature. Beautiful, smart, and with a heart full of joy and eyes full of mischief, he made every day an adventure. She wouldn’t trade him for the world—and certainly not for a perfectly coiffed, well-behaved little girl. Any gray hair he gave her would be more than worth it … She was certain of it.

“Thanks for the comic, Mom. It’s really cool. The bad guy, Dr. …” Paige emptied her cart onto the conveyer belt as she listened to Luke rattle on about the adventures of his favorite superhero/bad guy duo. She should have thought to check the comic books area for him first, would have, if she’d known the store carried them. When she’d been a kid, the only books old Mr. Marshall had allowed into his store were religious and nature ones. Obviously, some things had changed in Prospect.

But not too many, she acknowledge wryly, hyper conscious of the not-quite-whispers currently filling up the market.

“Isn’t that Paige Matthews? What’s she doing here?”

“Always knew she was no good. Unwed mother—“

“Losing her child on her first day back—“

“Come to stay with her sister, in that pitiful little B and B—“

“She must be broke and now she’s come to mooch off Penny—”

“I don’t think she’s broke. Did you see her car? Must be some drug dealer’s girlfriend—“

Paige slammed her purse down on the small check-writing counter, began bagging the groceries as the clerk—a teen-aged girl who didn’t seem to be aware of the barbed comments filling up the store—asked if she was new in town. Normally, bagging your own groceries was considered the height of rudeness in Prospect, as it indicated a desire to leave instead of participating in a nice, long chat. But being thought rude was the least of her problems, so she shoved a head of broccoli into the same bag as a loaf of bread and a chocolate bar and prepared to call it a day.

“We’re here for the summer,” Luke told the girl with his quick, easy grin. “Mom says she’s going to teach me to surf.”

“Oh, yeah?” The girl looked impressed. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that myself.”

“Well, maybe, my mom can teach you too. She’s really good at it—“

Paige laughed. “By really good, he means I only fall off the board about half the time.” She put the last bag in the basket. “How much do I owe you?”

“Ninety-seven forty.”

“And she’s taking me for lunch at Prospector’s,” Luke continued. “She says they make the best strawberry shakes in all of Oregon.”

“Maybe in the whole universe,” the girl agreed. “And they’re even better if you have them throw a banana in there with the strawberry ice cream.”

“Really?” Luke looked skeptical.

“I swear.”

He turned to Paige. “Can I try one, Mom? Please? I looooove bananas.”

Cursing under her breath because she’d completely forgotten her promise to take her son for lunch—and after the last few, frantic minutes she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less—Paige forced a smile, even as she prayed for patience. “You can have whatever kind of shake you want—as long as you eat some vegetables with lunch. Sound fair?”

Luke groaned, but agreed, “Sounds fair.”

After signing the credit card slip and handing it back to the girl, she let Luke push the basket out to the car. Watching him carefully maneuver around the other vehicles made her smile, despite the worry that lingered in the corners of her mind. What was she going to do if Luke finally clued in and realized just what kind of reputation his mother had had when she’d run away from this old-fashioned, bigoted little town nine years before?

And how was she going to explain her reasons for doing what she’d done to him? He was already the only kid in his class without a dad—something he seemed to be taking reasonably well. But she wasn’t sure what old gossip could do to him—and she didn’t want to find out.

One thing was for sure, she determined as she slid into the driver’s seat. After today, she was going to do her damnedest to keep him away from this place and the people who wanted nothing more than to hurt him, simply because he was hers.

Whoever had said ignorance was bliss definitely knew what he was talking about.