Chapter 1

Happy families are all alike, Leesa Nyland had read somewhere, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. That statement certainly applied to her family, Leesa thought—it was hard to imagine another family anywhere that had been ruined by a mom who claimed she had been bitten by a one-fanged vampire.

As the memories came flooding back to her, Leesa's fingers began to twirl in her long blond hair the way they often did when she became anxious or upset.

She was three when she first realized her mom was different from other moms. Strangely, the first thing she remembered noticing was the tomato juice. Her mom drank nothing but the thick red juice, downing a big glass with every meal. Eventually, she even began putting it on her cereal instead of milk. Later, she began avoiding direct sunlight, claiming the sun hurt her skin. For a while, Leesa enjoyed the game they made of it, pretending they were furry little moles darting from shadow to shadow, but by the time Leesa was six her mom had stopped going outside except on the cloudiest days, doing what errands she could at night and leaving the rest to Leesa's dad.

The eccentric behavior was bad enough, but her mom's increasingly anxious and depressed ramblings eventually drove her dad away.

“Why couldn't I have been bitten by a real vampire?” her mom would complain endlessly. She was convinced the one-fanged version was a crippled, sterile creature, unable to impart true vampire powers. One day, her dad simply did not come home from work, and Leesa had not seen him since. She wondered if she was part of the reason for his leaving. She had been born missing a small piece of bone in her lower right leg, making the limb an inch shorter than the other and causing her foot to twist slightly inward, resulting in a noticeable limp. Maybe her dad didn't want a gimpy daughter any more than he wanted a deranged wife. A year after her father left, her mom uprooted the family, moving them from New Jersey to San Diego. Thank God for her big brother Bradley, or her childhood would have been intolerable.

She forced the memories from her mind. She wasn't surprised they had returned now, while she sat on a hard black vinyl chair in the noisy baggage claim area of Connecticut's Bradley International Airport—how like Bradley to get an airport named after him, she thought laughingly—waiting for her Aunt Janet to pick her up. This was her first time in Connecticut, the place where her mom had supposedly been bitten by the one-fanged vampire. No wonder the story had come flooding back to her here, triggering the memories. Her light-hearted musing about Bradley and the airport quickly turned into a pang of loss, and her hand moved reflexively toward her purse and the carefully folded piece of white paper she carried with her everywhere. Catching herself, she stayed her hand—she didn‟t need to take the paper out to know every word printed on it.

Suddenly unable to sit still, she pushed herself to her feet and limped toward the exit. The glass doors slid open, and she stepped out onto the sidewalk, squinting in the bright sunlight. The air was hot and damp, and in just a few minutes her dark green cotton shirt began clinging to her skin.

So this is Connecticut, she thought. This was so not what she had been picturing. Where were the brooding gray New England skies she'd been imagining? There was nothing remotely mysterious, gloomy or dangerous here. No way could she picture this as a place where someone could be attacked by a vampire, one fang or not. Nor did it seem like the kind of place where a beloved older brother could suddenly disappear. But that was exactly what had happened.

Her eyes moistened as she thought of Bradley. Until he left for college, he had been her best friend. She knew how lucky she was. Plenty of her classmates had brothers who wanted nothing to do with their little sisters; or worse, who teased them incessantly. Not Bradley, though. When she was four, he began walking with her every day, until she was able to make it to a neighborhood park more than a mile away. At the park, Bradley would push her on the swings or spin her on the merry-go-round as a reward for her efforts. Walking with her brother and playing in the park were among her best childhood memories.

The heat was beginning to bother her, so she turned and limped back into the comfortable coolness inside, settling into the same seat she had vacated a few minutes before.

She remembered the day Bradley left for college like it was yesterday. She had hugged him on the sidewalk while the cab driver loaded his luggage into the trunk. Phone calls, texts and email would keep them in close touch, he promised. Leesa told him she understood, that above everything she wanted him to be happy, that it was time for him to make his own life, though she secretly wondered why he had chosen to go all the way to Weston College, in Connecticut of all places.

Bradley had been true to his word, calling or writing every day without fail. In the middle of his sophomore year he told her about a girl he had met, someone very special. Leesa was so happy for him, but not long after that things began to change. His calls and emails became shorter, and he began skipping a day now and then. She let it slide. She was fine with it—until the day she received that fateful email.

No longer able to stop herself, she reached into her purse and pulled out the printed copy of his final message, unfolding it with exquisite care and laying it open on her lap. As her eyes moved down the paper, she didn't know if she was reading or simply reciting the words from memory.

Dear Sis, This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write. There’s something I need to do. I have to go away, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be coming back. Her eyes began to mist. Why couldn't he have been more specific? Why the secrecy? She could have handled his going away, if she thought he was going somewhere to make a new life with his girlfriend, far from the turmoil of his youth. The message hadn‟t ended there, though. Not by a long shot. Please don’t try to find me. Get on with your life in California. Forget about me. As if! She still couldn‟t believe he had said that. Forget about him? No way. She had to find him. She just had to.

Sitting there alone in the airport, she read his final words. Always remember, pumpkin, your big brother loves you. A single tear wobbled down her cheek.

The sound of her name rescued her from the painful memory.

“Leesa, honey,” her Aunt Janet called warmly, her heels clicking on the hard floor as she hurried toward her niece. “It's so good to see you.”

Leesa carefully folded the paper and placed it back in her bag. She wiped the tear from her cheek and pasted a smile onto her face as she stood up to greet her aunt.

“Hi, Aunt Janet,” she said as she moved into her aunt's waiting arms.

For a moment, as Aunt Janet tightened the hug, Leesa felt three years old again, wrapped in the safety of her mother's embrace, before everything began to change. As she returned her aunt‟s hug and soaked up her loving warmth, Leesa‟s pasted-on smile slowly became real.