From Chapter 1

After breakfast, Camryn and Zoe headed to I-70 which would take them to Silverthorne--a mountain town that was littered with outlet shops. There was a whole new season to fill with clothes, shoes, and accessories. At fourteen, Zoe was already taller than Camryn. She was shy about her body--already overly critical of the form which she saw in the mirror. The magazines she read were filling her with unrealistic images of what a woman’s body should look like.

“Mom, what do you think about this top?”

“I love it. The color really brings out your eyes. It’s funny how that is.” The sky-blue tank-top pulled the blueness of Zoe’s eyes into sharp focus.

“Zoe, what do you think of these shorts?” Camryn asked as she stepped through the curtain into Zoe’s changing stall. “I can’t seem to hang onto shorts from year to year. Whatever happened to the khaki shorts I had last summer? Did you take them?”

“Mom, can I get two tops. Look at this one.”

“But your bras straps show through.”

“Everybody wears tank-tops like this. Do you think this makes me look fat? Can I buy a couple of new bras? I hate the way my stomach looks in this top.”

They walked from shop to shop, tried things on, laughed and joked. It was a luscious feeling of freedom. There was nowhere to be, no time schedule to keep. That carefree day would become the symbol of all she had lost.

The shadows were growing long when they headed home from the outlet center. Their bellies still full after a late lunch. Zoe napped as Camryn drove home.

As they reached the road which took them into Boulder from the Interstate, the purple sky held the silhouette of the mountains in a gentle embrace. She was at peace. Glancing over at her sleeping daughter a deep feeling of love seeped into every pore.

When Camryn was pregnant with Zoe she had just started graduate school--it was a Master’s degree. It was a hot dry summer that year and toward the end of her pregnancy she waddled and lumbered her way through the tiny apartment unable to find comfort from the heat or her body. Being pregnant meant not dieting. Camryn always paid attention to everything she ate. Her mother etched into her consciousness the need to stay thin and fit and beautiful. But pregnancy changed that for awhile. Camryn ate everything. She gained 45 pounds. But still, she loved being pregnant. She read stories to her unborn child and rubbed her big belly and talked sweetly about what life was like outside the womb. As her due date approached, Camryn ached to hold the child inside of her. The need to hold the person who was sharing her body, her life was powerful. In the early morning hours the day Zoe was born, the sounds of her cries, her wet dark hair pasted to her scalp, the puffiness of her newborn face were heaven. The bluish tips of her tiny little fingers--her finger nails were long, they actually grew while she was inside--filled Camryn with a love she had never experienced. She would give her life for this child. The image of the lioness instinctively caring for her cubs was accurate of the protectiveness she felt for her newborn daughter.

All was right with her world that June evening as they headed home. Then, in one brief second in time, one small choice made by another driver, one poor decision, it all changed.

In a fleeting, lucid moment, Camryn realized the car in her rearview mirror would not stop in time. It was traveling too fast.

Then there was darkness. Nothingness. The void that befalls those unconscious. There were no images, no lights, no voices, just emptiness--time that wasn’t filled. She came out of the darkness and found she was in the car some distance from where she last remembered it to be. She had been slowing for a red light and was almost completely stopped when her car was hit from behind.

Zoe was crying, “Are you all right? Mom, wake up. Get up. Mommy!!”