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Page 208
then dropped off into a void. "There's where it was," she said. "Feel the vibrations?"
Abby's neck did, indeed, tingle inexplicably. She recalled Mike's intimation the first time he had driven her up here that something had occurred to shake up his neighbors, and she'd sensed his own disturbance, too. "What happened?"
"That's where Mike's wife, Dixie, died."
Abby sat still for a long moment, aware her heartbeat had sped up in anticipation. She was about to learn the source of a giant's share of Mike's sorrow. "Tell me about it."
"This is Dixie's car." Hannah's voice was a monotone as she touched the steering wheel of the small vehicle in which the women sat. "One night last winter, Mike was driving his Mercedes down the hill. This is as far as they got. The car slammed full force into this tree, killing Dixie. Mike was injured, but more in mind than body, I think."
Looking at the emptiness of the drop-off near the trees, Abby clasped her hands in her lap and said in a small voice, "They both could have been killed." She shuddered.
"Mike wishes they both had been."
Abby, shocked, turned to Hannah. The older woman was studying her, as though Abby's reaction was very important. Abby whispered, "He loved her so much that he wanted to die with her?"
Hannah shrugged. "He blames himself."
Abby thought of Philip's accusations. "But . . .

 
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