Chapter 1

"Give it a rest already, Dad. It's not like I'm moving out to Alaska, or anything. I'll be fine."

Erica set aside the suitcase she had been about to haul into the back of the minivan, and took the padded envelope her father held out to her. Bob Liebkind stopped down to reach for the handle of the suitcase, but she blocked him with her body while she opened the flap of the envelope.

"Don't try and lift that with one hand, Dad. I'll get it."

"Paralyzed arm or not, I'm still twice as strong as you are with what's left working, kiddo." Bob nudged his daughter aside and then hauled the suitcase up into the cargo space behind the rear seats.

"There, all done. You sure you got everything?"

"You sound like mom, you know? Yes, I have everything." Erica glanced into the open envelope and rolled her eyes.

"More money? I already have enough in the checking account to leverage the federal deficit."

"Yeah, but you'll need some cash on hand for the trip and the first few days. And there's an emergency credit card, too, just in case. Some places don't take debit cards, you know."

"Dad, everyone takes debit cards," Erica said with a smile, and kissed her father on the cheek. "You worry too much."

"It's my job to worry. My only child is going off to college in the frozen wastes of the north, instead of staying close to home and going to UT like her father."

Erica knew that her dad's disappointment was mostly an act—he did recognize the added value of a degree from an Ivy League school—but she also knew that he was genuinely apprehensive about her leaving the nest in earnest for the first time. As if he had read her thoughts, Bob pulled his daughter close and hugged her firmly with his good arm.

"You've not been more than a hundred miles away from me since you were born. Dartmouth is a thousand miles away. I'll need some time to get used to that."

She smiled and returned his hug, and they remained locked in their embrace for a few moments.

"Me too, Daddy," she said.

They had lunch at a Ruby Tuesday on the way to the airport. It was that blissful Sunday period between the after-church lunch rush and the early dinner crowd, and they had the dining room mostly to themselves. It was nominally early fall, but the temperature in the valley was still in the eighties during the days, and Erica was the only person in the dining room who wasn't wearing shorts.

"You'll get sick of the snow before you hit your junior year," her dad predicted as they picked at the sampler platter in front of them.

"I love snow," Erica replied. "It'll be nice to have a real winter. Besides, I'll be in a dorm for the first year at least. It's not like I'm going to have to shovel the stuff."

"I hope they won't stick you with the kind of roommate I had at Chapel Hill," her mom said, and did a little shudder for emphasis. "I think I only ever heard her take a shower twice in our entire freshman year."

"I'm sure it'll be okay, Mom. Geez, you guys sound like you're trying to get me to change my mind about college. I've been hearing nothing but dreadful anecdotes all day."

Her mom opened her mouth to protest, but her dad merely shook his head and laughed.

"It's all new to us, too, kiddo. We've been a trio since you were born, you know?" Bob stirred his iced tea with a straw and then shrugged.

"Maybe it's the idea that you're an adult now. It just sort of reminds me that I'm getting older, and it makes me want to turn back the clock a bit, that's all."

"Technically, I won't be an adult until May. But I get your point." Erica reached out and patted her father's hand.

"We're still a trio, Dad. And don't run off and get a Corvette to recapture your youth, okay?"

"Oh, that one's already ordered," Bob said, ignoring the questioning look his wife shot him. "Candy apple red, with slate gray leather interior. And your den over the garage is going to be the new Man Cave, so you'll have to crash in the guest bedroom when you come home for the holidays."

Christa's cell phone buzzed, and she fished it out of her purse after a few moments of digging. She looked at the display and smiled when she saw the name on the caller ID.

"It's Uncle Will," she announced to them in explanation before answering the call.

"Hello, Will. How are things up in Maine?"

Erica and Bob watched as Christa listened to her brother-in-law. Her mom always had the volume on the cell phone turned up to the maximum, so Erica could almost hear Will's side of the conversation as well.

"Oh, yeah? Well, let's hear it," Christa said. Then Will said something in reply, and Christa let out a very uncharacteristic, girl-like squeal that made heads turn in the dining room. She looked at her daughter and husband with sudden wild excitement in her eyes.

"Oh, that's wonderful, Will! I'm so glad for you two. Hang on, I gotta tell Bob and Erica. We're seeing her off to college right now, actually."

She looked at Erica and grinned.

"Looks like you're going to be Cousin Erica in the spring. Claire's three months pregnant. She's due in March."

"Awesome," Erica exclaimed, returning her mother's grin. She leaned forward to bring her mouth closer to her mom's cell phone.

"Congratulations, Uncle Will! Grandma is going to flip!"

Will said something to Christa in response, and she laughed.

"Of course you did." She looked at her daughter and husband. "He already called her."

"Hell, I would, too," Bob said. "No way I'd bring down mom's wrath on me for not letting her know first about her new grandchild."

Christa finished the conversation, and they all said their good-byes to Will before looking at each other with grins on their faces.

"I won't be the only grandchild anymore," Erica said. "I wonder what they're going to have?"

"Will says they'll know for sure next week, when the doctors do their round of genetic testing."

"Amazing," Bob said, shaking his head. "Will's going to be a Dad. If you had told me this just two years ago, I would have said you're out of your mind."

"Things have changed, haven't they?" Christa mused.

"No joke. Two years ago, I was able to type with two hands, or ride a motorcycle, for one. And two years ago, my brother was a bit of a prick. But I'll tell you this—if you took me back in time and gave me the choice to give up the use of that left side in exchange for the new Will, I'd not change a thing."

"You're not really going to turn my room into a den, are you?" Erica asked her dad when they were seeing her off at the security check at McGhee-Tyson an hour later.

"I don't think so," Bob answered, and ruffled her hair. "I think I'll leave it the way it is for a little while."

"Good." She hugged him and placed a kiss on his cheek. "That way I'll feel like I still have a place, you know?"

Bob returned her hug with a laugh, winking at his wife as he did.

"I see. Not ready to cut those strings all the way just yet, are you?"

Christa joined the hug, and they all stood together for a moment, arms around each other.

"Be careful, you hear?" her mother said. "And remember, Uncle Will and Aunt Claire are only three hours away if you need help with anything."

"I know, Mom. I won't bug them unless it's really important, you know that."

"Have fun, don't freak out if it all seems a bit much the first few days, and try not to overload your schedule the first semester. You don't have to finish ahead of time."

"We'll see you for the holidays," her Dad said. "I'll book the flight in October sometime, and then I'll email you the ticket details."

"Okay, Dad. I'll be alright. It's just like high school, only with dorms, right?"

"Yeah," he chuckled. "Just like high school."

Erica waved to her parents and then watched as they went back to the airport entrance, walking arm in arm down the sloped skyway with its rock garden and its soothing little waterfalls. For just a moment, she felt like running after them. Then the feeling passed, and she turned around to go through the security gates.

There was a bookstore in the secure area of the airport, and Erica took some time to browse around. They had mostly paperbacks, but there were a few tables with hardcover novels, and she smiled when she saw the familiar dust jacket of her father's book. She walked over to the table and picked it up to look at the picture of her dad on the back flap.

That Distant Shore, by Robert Liebkind. A golden foil sticker on the front cover announced that this novel was a "Pulitzer Prize Winner", and she remembered how her dad had rolled his eyes when they had made a big deal out of printing a hundred thousand of those little foil stickers to slap onto the already-finished second print run after he had won the Pulitzer.

There was another book on the hardcover display with the name "Liebkind" on it, and it was a new edition of Uncle Will's The Crow's Lament. She picked it up, and laid the opened books beside each other to compare the author pictures.

How weird, she thought. My dad and my uncle, side by side, sold at every bookstore in the country. What the hell am I doing declaring my major as English and Creative Writing? Like there's any space on those shelves for another Liebkind.

She placed the books back in their spots on the display, and walked over to the register to buy some bottled water and chewing gum.

There was a soothing familiarity to Logan Airport. This was where they changed planes every year to fly up to Maine for Christmas at her Grandma's place, and Erica had walked across the dingy carpets of the terminals at Boston many times. She browsed some of the stores in the terminal, and then ate an early dinner at a Pizza Hut before wandering over to the gate for her connecting flight to Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dartmouth was located in the town of Hanover, just north of Lebanon. When she had made her decision on which college to attend, her mom and dad had accompanied her on a whirlwind tour of the Northeast. In the span of a week, they had combined an October vacation with tours of four different universities. She had quickly narrowed down her choices to Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth, and in the end, the smaller school had won out because she much preferred the sedate and laid-back setting of Hanover to the bustle and energy of Providence or Boston. Her father had made fun of her for picking a small-town campus over an exciting and busy metropolitan one, and her mom had been a little disappointed at the fact that Erica would give up the extra cachet of a Harvard degree, but in the end, they had respected her decision.

The plane to Lebanon was a small twin-engine turboprop commuter with two rows of seats on each side of the narrow center aisle. Erica guessed that it was a slow week; the plane only had some thirty seats, and half of them were empty. Nobody claimed the seat beside her when the door was closed and the "fasten seatbelt" sign came on, so she folded up the armrest between the seats and stretched out a little.

The flight was a short one. It seemed that the plane was at cruising altitude just long enough for her to drink her soda and eat the little bag of airline pretzels before they already started to descend into Lebanon. Erica watched through the window as the plane descended lower and lower over the brightly-colored tapestry of New Hampshire's fall forests, banking as it turned into its final approach.

There was no Dartmouth welcoming committee at the airport. The place didn't even really deserve the title—Lebanon Regional was a one-terminal affair, and that terminal was the size of a fast food restaurant. Five minutes after the plane touched down, she had her suitcase, and ten minutes later, she was in a cab on the way to Hanover.

She had come up here for the orientation, of course, and the college had sent her a letter with all the details she needed to know for her first two days. The letter had included the name of her roommate and her contact information, and Erica had called her some weeks prior to introduce herself and discuss who would bring what. The college provided the rooms, beds, desks, and a wireless network connection. Erica had her own laptop to make use of the network, and she hadn't bothered to pack much in the way of clothing or personal items. Her closet back in Knoxville contained very few winter clothes, and she owned nothing that couldn't be bought new in Hanover or Lebanon for less money than it would have cost to ship her old stuff a thousand miles north.

Her assigned dorm was called Campbell Hall. The cabbie seemed to know his way around the expansive Dartmouth campus, and he dropped her off right in front of a building that looked as if it had been finished barely in time for the fall freshmen. The dorm looked a lot like the residential halls she had seen at Harvard, a five-floor structure with tall windows, red brick walls, and a gray-shingled roof. There were bushes planted all along the front edge of the building, and the freshly plowed earth around them told Erica they had been recently transplanted into their current location.

Her room was on the third floor, and when she walked in, she was surprised to find that it was a single suite, with just one bed and desk. There was a bathroom, and the door was open. She looked inside and saw that there was another door on the other side of it, which was open as well. There was a second lock on both doors that looked like it only worked from the inside, which made the setup obvious to Erica. These were shared bathrooms, one to every two rooms, and each resident could assure privacy by locking out the other one when needed.

There was some noise coming from the dorm room on the other side of the bathroom, the sound of someone rummaging through boxes, and Erica stepped over to the other door.

"Hello?"

She peeked around the corner and saw a room that was a mirror image of her own, with the same brand new generic furniture. There was a girl kneeling on the floor and sorting through a box of belongings, and she turned around when she heard Erica's voice.

"Oh, hi there."

The girl got up and brushed her hands on the legs of her jeans as she straightened out.

"You sound like Erica," she said matter-of-factly, and extended a hand.

"That's me," she confirmed, and shook the other girl's hand. "Lily, right?"

"The very one," the girl said, and they smiled at each other. Lily was tall, beating even Erica's above-average five nine by a fair margin. She had long brown hair which she kept partially braided, and there was a motley collection of armbands and pendants jingling from her wrist. Lily had a narrow face with high cheekbones and very clear gray eyes. Erica thought she was rather pretty. Her voice was low and a bit husky, just like she remembered from their phone conversation.

"Lovely digs, huh?" Lily gestured around the room, and her jewelry jingled softly with the movement of her arm. "I had no idea we'd have private rooms. My advisor said that getting into this place is like winning the lottery, or something. They just finished it last month."

"I had no idea, either. I think I can live with it, though."

"Hell, yeah," Lily said. "Don't worry about the whole bathroom thing. I'm not super high maintenance. I'll just be in and out."