Chapter One
She came here to lay flowers at the place where the boy died and the girl was
kidnapped.
She came here because she was a heavy girl and had a pocked face and not many
friends.
She came because she was expected to.
She came because she wanted to.
Ungainly and sweating, twenty-six-year-old Lydia Johansson walked along the dirt
shoulder of Route 112, where she'd parked her Honda Accord, then stepped
carefully down the hill to the muddy bank where Blackwater Canal met the opaque
Paquenoke River.
She came here because she thought it was the right thing to do.
She came even though she was afraid.
It wasn't long after dawn but this August had been the hottest in years in North
Carolina and Lydia was already sweating through her nurse's whites by the time
she started toward the clearing on the riverbank, surrounded by willows and
tupelo gum and bro ... read full excerpt from The Empty Chair: A Novel ebook
