Book excerpt: A soul-stirring novel about the bonds between mother and child and the redemption that comes with facing the past and letting it go. Thirty-two-year-old Jess Abbot has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and--most heart-wrenching--her eight-year-old son, Chance, to a tragic accident. Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what's left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman. A rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a "loose end" in need of closure. But Jess isn't the only guest in Lucy's large Victorian home. There's also Star, a teenage runaway with a secret too painful to share. And the little boy with heart-shaped stones, who comes with a hope for reconciliation--and a warning. Soon Jess learns that she's not the only lost soul running from the ghosts of the past. She and Star have been brought together for a reason: to be saved by the very thing that destroyed them.