A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel (34 page)

The ice palace had begun to sag. I was looking forward to its melting away, to the last remnant of ice leaving, so that the space where Tobin’s body had been found would be only a distant memory, would be only a spot in a clear blue lake under a bright shining sun, and it would no longer hurt me to look at it.

Thanks to:

Sandy Ebner, Cynthia Christian, Quinn Cummings, Teresa Rhyne, Debbie Patrick, Robert Smolka, Mike Modrak, Ben Malisow, Howard Frank Mosher, and David Freed for reading, cheerleading, or both; Wayne Mackey, former New York state trooper, for background info; Anthony R. Mascia, MD, for medical information; Reed Farrel Coleman, for being a great CP.

Amy and Topher King (and the small Kinglets), for everything; my cousins, for their love and support; Joe Mascia, for being a particularly astute reader.

All the great booksellers and librarians out there—you know who you are.

And the wonderful readers who fell in love with Troy and her friends, and let me know about it.

SARA J. HENRY
, like her protagonist, was a newspaper sports editor in the Adirondacks for several years, and lived in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. She freelanced for various magazines and was a magazine editor, health and fitness writer, book editor, and copy editor before turning to fiction. She also spent a very short time as a soil scientist, and later loved working as a bicycle mechanic.

Her first novel,
Learning to Swim
, won the Anthony Award and Agatha Award for best first novel and the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and was nominated for the Macavity and Barry Awards. She was a featured author at Booktopia Vermont.

A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Sara graduated from the University of Tennessee, attended the University of Florida, and received a master’s in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. She now calls southern Vermont home, but frequently visits Nashville, where she wrote her first novel, and the Adirondacks, which somehow still feels like home.

Her website is
www.SaraJHenry.com
, and she loves to hear from readers.