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dinner while you’re a guest in my home.”
    It was on the tip of Heather’s tongue to remind her aunt that this wasn’t the White House, but one look at her two young cousins, and she felt a wave of sympathy. It must be terrible to have to live with so much seething anger and resentment. There seemed to be no love left in this home.
    â€œIf you’d like me to change…” she began.
    â€œIf I’d like?” Meredith’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “Are you so thick-headed you have to ask? Get this straight. I don’t want to see you in this room until you’re wearing what you’d wear to one of your fancy country club dinners. Is that understood?”
    Before Heather could reply Meredith slammed out of the room, leaving her sons staring after her in disbelief.
    Hoping to calm them, Heather put an arm around each of them and gave them her brightest smile. “Looks like this is your lucky day. You’re about to see me looking the way I look at a glamorous dinner party. I’ll be right back after I change.”
    They all looked up at the sound of a loud report, followed by the shattering of glass.
    â€œWhat was that?” Teddy’s eyes went wide with fear.
    Even as he cried out the question, they all knew what they’d heard. It was unmistakably a gunshot. The sound was eerily like the sound they’d heard another time, at Joe’s party.
    For the space of a heartbeat they all went perfectly still, absorbing the shock.
    Heather was the first to recover her senses. She was already rushing through the open doorway and toward the stairs, a scream lodged in her throat, when the boys started after her. Seeing them, she stopped and held out her hands.
    â€œYou don’t want to come up here,” she said insistently. “Not until I see what’s happened.”
    The thought of these two little boys finding their father lying in a pool of blood, dead or wounded, was too terrible to contemplate. As they rushed toward her she caught them and held them back, then glanced over their heads to where Inez stood in the doorway, staring in stunned silence. “Take the boyswith you into the dining room and keep them there.”
    The poor woman was too frightened to respond.
    Just then her aunt hurried into the hallway.
    The woman who had for years pretended to be Meredith paused at the scene before her. Her mind couldn’t seem to take in what her heart already knew. The gunshot. The eerie silence. It was so much like the previous time. But that time she’d been prepared. It had all been carefully choreographed by her, Patsy Portman. This time the gunshot had caught her completely by surprise. What was going on here? This hadn’t been part of her plan. In fact, she’d been so busy trying to do away with Emily, she hadn’t given any more thought to getting rid of Joe.
    â€œAunt Meredith.” Seeing her aunt’s apparent confusion, Heather adopted a tone she’d used as a camp counselor whenever she was dealing with an errant child. “You don’t want your boys to go up here. Please see that they stay downstairs, out of harm’s way.”
    For a few more seconds Patsy’s mind seemed to be somewhere else, mulling this strange twist. Then, with great effort, she pulled herself back from her thoughts and called sternly, “You heard Heather. Come down here and wait with me.”
    Heather turned away, relieved, and started up. Justthen Joe Colton appeared at the head of the stairs. In his eyes was a look of dazed fury.
    In a voice that sounded deadly calm he said, “Heather, call the police.”
    â€œAre you all right? Was it a gunshot?”
    He nodded. “I’m fine. Call now. And, Heather…”
    She paused.
    â€œKeep everyone downstairs and in one place until the police detectives have had a chance to gather evidence. We know the routine by now. I don’t want anyone messing up