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left
of the circus tent to search for her mother and father. They lay
dead, pinned down by a still-burning pole. She grabbed hold of it
with her bare hands to pull it off them, in her shock unaware of
the flames licking her hands, burning her palms and fingers. Then
she smelled the nauseous odor of frying, sizzling fresh, her own
and her family's, and she dropped the pole and threw up.
    The townsfolk had succeeded in stampeding to
safety, and miraculously, only three of them suffered burns, two of
them minor. Mrs. Pitcock, the mayor's wife, suffered the most. She
was burned on the forehead and cheeks, but that eventually healed,
blemishing her face slightly. Not one townsperson died.
    But the holocaust took its toll on the
traveling circus Elizabeth-Anne's parents owned. All but Hazy, the
dwarf, and Hester, the bearded lady, died before they could be
taken to the nearest hospital. Hester died in agony that same
night.
    Elizabeth-Anne would never forget that
terrible sight and the horrible stench of burning flesh for as long
as she lived. She would be unable to bear to look at her hands,
even long after their wrinkled, parchmentlike skin had healed, for
they were a constant reminder of tragedy and loss and death.
    Elizabeth-Anne would never forget the
terrible fate which had been so cruelly meted out to her.
    Her father, dreamer that he was, had traded a
rundown farm near Naples, Texas, where Elizabeth-Anne had been
born, for an equally dilapidated traveling circus years before.
    Now, at six years old, she was without
parents or any family she knew of—the traveling circus had been her
only family.
     
     
    The remains smoldered for days. There was
little entertainment in Hidalgo County, and the news spread like
wildfire. Even those who had not come to see the circus traveled
from miles around to gawk with morbid fascination at the
destruction firsthand.
    Elender Hannah Clowney was not one to thrive
on sensationalism and misery. Neither was she a gossip.
    She was far too busy to squander her time
uselessly by prying into other people's affairs—she had enough
headaches and problems of her own, mainly her rooming house on Main
Street—where she lived on the ground floor with Jenny, her niece,
and rented out the upstairs rooms by the week—as well as the Good
Eats Café across the street.
    Twenty-six years earlier, Elender Hannah
Clowney had been born in Boston. That legendary streak of New
England frugality, coupled with an implacable calm and a
no-nonsense approach to life, was ingrained in her bones. She
rented out rooms by the week instead of the month because of a
simple matter of arithmetic: she figured that there were fifty-two
weeks in a year. Divided by four, that came to thirteen months.
Renting out rooms by the calendar month, on the other hand, would
have netted her only twelve months. It just made plain old
Bostonian common sense to squeeze an extra month out of every
year—and the money with it.
    If she'd known about the fire, she'd have
been the last person to hop into her buggy, drive out to Geron's
Fields, and survey the damage. As it was, she didn't hear about it
because, for the past two days, she'd been in Brownsville.
    She'd taken Jenny, who had just turned nine,
along with her. Since Quebeck was not even a pinpoint on a map, she
decided it would be educational for the girl to be exposed to
something bigger, more cosmopolitan. Coming from Boston, Elender
Hannah Clowney knew the world offered much more and was certainly
faster-moving than sleepy little Quebeck, where time stood still.
She considered ignorance dangerous and exposure all-important. And
yet . . . yet she had moved to Quebeck a little more than
eight years ago. By choice. It had seemed the perfect place to
settle down and carve out a new life for herself. When she'd
arrived, no one had known her, and she had since become a model
citizen, admired and respected.
    She'd paid for her past mistakes. Her slate
had been cleansed.
    She had to admit