If She Sensed (Kate Wise #16)

PROLOGUE

Carol Paige kicked off her heels just inside the front door, set her bag on the entry table, and made her way down the hall.

She was smiling, and had been doing so for about the past twenty minutes.

It had started after leaving the restaurant and seemed to be plastered across her face now.

She carried that smile with her all the way down the hall.

She straightened a throw pillow on the couch as she passed, then stopped to collect a coffee mug she'd left on the side table that morning and carried it to the kitchen.

Some nights she came home and walked straight past the mess.

Tonight, she found herself wanting to tidy it.

The kitchen was small, but she loved it.

It was her favorite part of the house, actually.

She'd repainted it herself three years ago, a warm sage green that a few friends had told her was a mistake and that she had never once regretted.

She rinsed the mug, set it in the drying rack, wiped down the counter with a dishcloth, and then caught herself wiping the same stretch of counter twice. She set the cloth down… still smiling.

It had been a genuinely wonderful evening.

That was the only honest way to put it. She had been turning it over since she'd pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, testing whether it held up under scrutiny.

She was pleased to find that it did. His name was Paul, and they had met three weeks ago through an app that her daughter had installed on her phone with the ceremonious energy of someone performing a public service.

Carol had taken her time before agreeing to anything with Paul.

They had exchanged messages for long enough to feel like she was making an informed decision, and then she had accepted the dinner invitation.

She'd then spent most of the following week quietly dreading it.

But Paul had been easy. That was the right word for it.

He was funny without trying to be, and he listened in a way that Carol had assumed no one did anymore.

He'd asked about her job at the community library and had seemed genuinely interested in her answer.

And when she'd told him about the after-school reading program she'd been running for the past four years, he'd asked follow-up questions that were specific and thoughtful.

He talked about his own life without being self-absorbed, mentioning his grown son in a way that was warm and unguarded.

He had not once looked at his phone. It had been an honest-to-God adult conversation.

He had walked her to her car, and when they'd said goodnight, he'd asked if he could call her.

Just that. No performance, no uncertainty about what came next.

She had said yes, gotten in her car, and driven home feeling lighter than she had in a long time.

And sort of wishing he'd made a move and tried to kiss her.

It had been almost two years since she'd kissed a man and even longer since… well, since anything else.

It had been nine years since her divorce. This was the first date in all of that time that had felt like something other than a chore.

Carol opened the refrigerator, found the half-bottle of white wine she'd opened on Thursday, and poured herself a glass.

She stood at the counter for a moment with the glass in her hand, looking out through the window above the sink into the dark backyard.

The lights were off out there and she could see only her own reflection, faint and pale against the glass, still wearing the navy wrap dress she'd agonized over that afternoon.

She looked, she thought, like a person who'd had a nice evening.

She walked over to the back door and unlocked it. Deb, her neighbor, had known she had the date tonight and she would surely come over at some point to ask questions about it. Deb came over all the time, usually through the back door—which was why Carol made sure it was unlocked.

Carol moved back through the kitchen toward the living room, straightening a stack of magazines on the counter as she passed, then adjusting the angle of the lamp on the end table.

There was a throw blanket that had slid partway off the arm of the couch and she folded it, set it back, and settled into the cushions.

She’d realized long ago that when she was happy, she tidied up.

Maybe so that her environment could match her mood.

The house felt quiet and comfortable around her.

She'd lived alone here for nine years, which was long enough that the quiet no longer felt like absence. She had her routines, her reading, and her neighbors. She had Deb two doors down, who had been dropping in through the back door since the summer Carol’s marriage had ended, usually with wine of her own.

The back door had been unlocked for years on account of Deb, who could not be relied upon to knock before entering and who Carol had long since stopped expecting to.

It was the kind of friendship that Carol had longed for her entire life, so she didn’t mind the casual and almost too-familiar comings and goings.

She lifted the wine glass, took a sip, and let her head fall back against the couch cushions. She was thinking about whether to text her daughter to share the details of her date when she heard the back door open.

The sound was familiar. She heard it several nights a week, that soft give and click of the door swinging in off the back porch as Deb made herself at home. Carol smiled a little without lifting her head.

"Hey," she called out toward the kitchen. "I have a lot to tell you."

She waited for Deb's voice, for the sound of her crossing the kitchen in those clogs she always wore, and for the familiar shuffle and rattle of the refrigerator being opened without asking.

But none of it came. Carol lifted her head off the cushion.

The silence stretched out for just a few seconds before a figure stepped from the kitchen doorway into the edge of the lamplight.

It was most certainly not Deb.

In shock, the wine glass left her fingers. It hit the cushion beside her, tipped, and fell. Carol barely registered the sound of it landing on the floor because her attention was locked on the figure standing in the archway to her living room.

It was not Deb, and it was not anyone she recognized. As the figure advanced forward, the warmth of the evening drained out of the room all at once as her voice caught somewhere below her throat and refused to come out.