Sanctuary by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

life.
    She’d whiled away many hours gardening with her mother, learning the names of the flowers, their needs and habits, enjoying the feel of soil under her fingers and the sun on her back. Birds and butterflies, the tinkle of wind chimes, the drift of puffy clouds overhead in a soft blue sky were treasured memories from her early childhood.
    Apparently she’d forgotten to hold on to them, Jo decided, as she turned wearily from the window. Any pictures she’d taken of the scene, with her mind or with her camera, had been tucked away for a very long time.
    Her room had changed little as well. The family wing in Sanctuary still glowed with Annabelle’s style and taste. For her older daughter she’d chosen a gleaming brass half-tester bed with a lacy canopy and a complex and fluid design of cornices and knobs. The spread was antique Irish lace, a Pendleton heirloom that Jo had always loved because of its pattern and texture. And because it seemed so sturdy and ageless.
    On the wallpaper, bluebells bloomed in cheerful riot over the ivory background, and the trim was honey-toned and warm.
    Annabelle had selected the antiques—the globe lamps and maple tables, the dainty chairs and vases that had always held fresh flowers. She’d wanted her children to learn early to live with the precious and care for it. On the mantel over the little marble fireplace were candles and seashells. On the shelves on the opposite wall were books rather than dolls.
    Even as a child, Jo had had little use for dolls.
    Annabelle was dead. No matter how much of her stubbornly remained in this room, in this house, on this island, she was dead. Sometime in the last twenty years she had died, made her desertion complete and irrevocable.
    Dear God, why had someone immortalized that death on film? Jo wondered, as she buried her face in her hands. And why had they sent that immortalization to Annabelle’s daughter?
    DEATH OF AN ANGEL
    Those words had been printed on the back of the photograph. Jo remembered them vividly. Now she rubbed the heel of her hand hard between her breasts to try to calm her heart. What kind of sickness was that? she asked herself. What kind of threat? And how much of it was aimed at herself?
    It had been there, it had been real. It didn’t matter that when she got out of the hospital and returned to her apartment, the print was gone. She couldn’t let it matter. If she admitted she’d imagined it, that she’d been hallucinating, she would have to admit that she’d lost her mind.
    How could she face that?
    But the print hadn’t been there when she returned. All the others were, all those everyday images of herself, still scattered on the darkroom floor where she’d dropped them in shock and panic.
    But though she searched, spent hours going over every inch of the apartment, she didn’t find the print that had broken her.
    If it had never been there ... Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead on the window glass. If she’d fabricated it, if she’d somehow wanted that terrible image to be fact, for her mother to be exposed that way, and dead—what did that make her?
    Which could she accept? Her own mental instability, or her mother’s death?
    Don’t think about it now. She pressed a hand to her mouth as her breath began to catch in her throat. Put it away, just like you put the photographs away. Lock it up until you’re stronger. Don’t break down again, Jo Ellen, she ordered herself. You’ll end up back in the hospital, with doctors poking into both body and mind.
    Handle it. She drew a deep, steadying breath. Handle it until you can ask whatever questions have to be asked, find whatever answers there are to be found.
    She would do something practical, she decided, something ordinary, attempt the pretense, at least, of a normal visit home.
    She’d already lowered the front of the slant-top desk and set one of her cameras on it. But as