Michaels Wife
by Marlys Millhiser
Category: Fiction

In this modern twist on a Gothic classic, a woman awakens in the desert with no memory of who she is or how she got there A screeching hawk circling ominously above rouses a woman from sleep. She finds herself immersed in total darkness, with no idea of who she is or what she’s doing here. Only two things tether her to reality: the intriguing Westerner who gives her a ride into town, and a piece of paper tucked into the waistband of her trousers, containing the handwritten words Captain Michael Devereaux, Luke A.F.B. Soon she discovers that her name is Laurel, and Michael Deveraux is the husband she abandoned two years ago, along with their newborn son. She has no memory of these missing twenty-four months, or of how she ended up in the Arizona desert. She also has no memory of Michael—now a bitter, volatile stranger—or of giving birth to their son. But she makes her way to the remote Devereaux estate, where she begins to believe that she is who everyone says she is. As Laurel struggles to put together the missing pieces of her life, it gradually becomes apparent that the shadowy terrors of her past pose a very real danger to her present—one that threatens her life and the life of her child.