Raindrops trickled down the window, icy tears falling from the stony eyes of the dismal sky. Thunderheads swirled and hovered darkly, illuminated occasionally by a jagged bolt of lightning which was accompanied by the crash of thunder, as the rain kept up its rhythmic pounding on the roof of the thinly walled cottage. From her seat on the sill of her bedroom window, Melanie Cross gazed out at the violent sea, whipped into a frenzy by the gale winds and tossed against the rocky cliffs -- the cliffs from which the small town of Cliff's Edge drew its name -- where it sent up a spray of foamy water. She was mesmerized by the haunting beauty of the hurricane, and her spirit saturated with the exquisite sense of melancholy that the moody weather seemed to give off. It was an almost pleasant sensation in a romantic sort of way that sent a thrilled shiver down Melanie's spine. Reflexively, she drew her flannel shirt tighter about her thin frame. Her shiver had been partly from cold -- in the past hour, the sky had gone from a sickly yellow- tinged gray to nearly pitch-black, and with the light had vanished the meager warmth it had brought. However, the scene that Melanie's eyes took in drove all other sensations out of her conscious mind.

A sharp knock at the bedroom door brought Melanie crashing out of her reverie.

"Dinner's ready," came a stiff, dry voice. Melanie turned toward the door, her eyes narrowing slightly. "Care to honor us with your presence?"

A grunt of disdain issued from the back of her throat.

"Of course, Leigh Anne," she replied, sickly sweet. "Wouldn't want to disappointyou."

A contemptuous laugh was the reply. Melanie scowled as she listened to Leigh Anne's retreating footsteps on the braided straw rug. She noted with silent scorn the way Leigh Anne seemed to shuffle instead of walk. And that ugly laugh of hers sounded more like a hag's cackle. In fact, Melanie had a whole list of little things about Leigh Anne that incensed her. And those were just the minor things, things that were at best laughable and at worst irritating. They didn't even begin to probe the pure, deep-seated hatred that Melanie harbored for Leigh Anne. Now that the hurricane had trapped them together, Melanie thought she might go insane.

It would have been such a great vacation, thought Melanie, if only it hadn't been for this damned hurricane. God, I hate Mother Nature. And Leigh Anne, too.

Sliding off the windowsill in one fluid motion, Melanie slid a pair of shoes onto bare feet she suddenly discovered were nearly numb, and left the security of her room for the volatile battleground of the kitchen table.

Jessica Cross grabbed her overstuffed purple duffel bag from the passenger seat. Slinging it over her right shoulder, she put one tentative sneaker-clad foot onto the pavement. Immediately, rain soaked the leg of her jeans.

"Christ," she muttered, closing the door and fumbling for the umbrella in the Toyota's glove compartment. She opened the door again, this time quickly opening the umbrella before she climbed out. Making sure to lock the car (this was Boston, after all), she dashed up the sidewalk to the tidy white apartment building in front of her. She rang the doorbell, then waited on the stoop, watching the patter of rain on the concrete, and the menacing thunderheads that circled the sky above like hawks honing in on their prey. Thank God she'd gotten here before the storm really started getting heavy. She hated to think what would have happened if she'd been trapped in her car in the middle of a hurricane.

The door swung open.

"Jess! Get on in here!" Kari Mackenzie cried, holding the door open for Jessica to pass through. She embraced Jessica as best she could over the duffel bag.

"Happy birthday, Kari," said Jessica wearily. "The big two-oh."

"I feel so old!" Kari cried, putting a melodramatic hand to her forehead.

Jessica smiled amusedly, then gave a chuckle.

"Old, right," she replied. "And my father turned fifty-one last weekend."

"You're as old as you feel," said Kari sagely, leading the way up the stairs to the second floor of the apartment building. "So how is your family? Enjoying their stay in Cliff's Edge?"

"I think they're on the cliff's edge," Jessica said dryly. "Leigh Anne and Melanie have been avoiding each other like the plague. Now, with the hurricane, they'll have to actually coexist in the same house. They'll probably kill each other."

"You're like the dysfunctional family poster child!" exclaimed Kari, almost in awe. "Every time I see you, you have some horror story to recount."

"Yeah, well, it didn't used to be like this," Jessica replied darkly, an unmistakable undertone of bitterness to her voice. "But, forget them. This is my vacation, and I mean to enjoy it." She squeezed her bag through the narrow doorway of Kari's apartment. "C'mon, let's get this stuff down and have some grub. I'm starved!"

As Leigh Anne walked away from Melanie's room, she had to fight the urge to turn around, march back to that room, break down the door, and throttle that little bitch until she turned purple. Melanie was the most infuriating person she'd ever known, and seemed to get worse every day, especially now that the hurricane had stranded them together in this secluded cottage. She seemed to know exactly what Leigh Anne's weak points were and exactly when to attack. It was as if she knew the piles and piles of papers Leigh Anne was sure to find on her desk when she got back to work, even though she'd brought some of her work along on this trip -- a trip her husband Edward had insisted was absolutely necessary. (He still entertained fantasies of everyone getting along like a �real family' -- what a joke!) It was as if she knew how Leigh Anne held her breath, waiting for the pink slip that was sure to come her way, borne on the wave of downsizing that was getting ready to sweep her onto Unemployment Beach. It was like she knew just how to bring Leigh Anne down, and was at this moment plotting her fall.

A hot vise of fury gripped Leigh Anne's mind. Quivering with uncontrollable rage, her teeth clenched, she turned around, and for one irrational moment, was all set to go back there and settle the score once and for all. But, exercising the infinite self-possession that was her greatest pride, she turned away again and proceeded down the hall toward the stairs. Let the brat have her little victories -- she would face the consequences eventually. And when she did-

A wave of dizziness swept over Leigh Anne. Grabbing the railing to steady herself, she closed her eyes as her surroundings swam in a confusing blur around her. It was from weakness that her legs shook now. Fighting off the vertigo that threatened to send her tumbling down the stairs, she descended the rest of the way, placing her feet with all the care of an infant just learning to walk. By the time she reached solid ground -- or, rather, solid linoleum -- her dizziness had passed.

For a brief moment, she wondered if Melanie might be a literal witch as well as a figurative one. Then she dismissed the notion.

Leigh Anne Cross, she chided herself, you're really losing it.

Edward watched the bowl of clam chowder as Leigh Anne handed it to -- or, rather, thrust it toward -- Melanie. Chowder sloshed onto the front of Melanie's flannel and the black tee-shirt she wore underneath.

"Jesus, Leigh Anne!" she exclaimed.

Edward sighed inwardly. "Melanie -"

"What!" Leigh Anne replied with an exasperated laugh. "It's not my fault!"

"Whose fault is it?" challenged Melanie, one hand holding the bowl of chowder, the other hand on her hip. Milky white chowder dripped down her shirt as she reached for the napkin beside her plate on the table, dabbing at her shirt while simultaneously balancing the bowl and staring down Leigh Anne.

"Can't we please just have one night of peace?" Edward exclaimed, surprised at how weary and haggard his voice came out. "Can't both of you just deal with each other?"

"Hey, I didn't start it," said Leigh Anne defensively.

"I don't care who started it!" Edward replied in a hoarse shout, slamming his hand onto the table. Plates and utensils rattled; Melanie jumped, spilling chowder onto the floor. For a few seconds, an uncomfortable, shocked silence reigned the room.

"Come on, Eddie, have something to eat," Leigh Anne told him in a tone he found annoyingly patronizing. "You won't be so cranky on a full stomach." Not to mention that he hated being called Eddie.

"I am not cranky, Leigh Anne," he explained slowly, in measured tones, wondering why in hell he had to defend himself to his own wife. "I just wish this family could get along for one night."

Melanie gave a dry, cynical laugh. "Yeah, right, Dad. Not gonna happen."

Edward stared miserably at his food, finding that his appetite had all but deserted him. Nonetheless, he busied himself with cutting his chicken, concentrating on the strips of pinkish- white meat rather than on the silence that had once again taken its place in the Cross kitchen. He found himself thinking wistfully of the past week or so, when he had eaten dinner in the kitchen with Leigh Anne and Jessica and Melanie had opted to eat outside on the porch's wooden swing. There had been a cheerful, complacent sense of normalcy as the kitchen and the porch both buzzed with conversation, something that was missing -- and sorely missed -- now.

Thunk!

Something cold and wet spread across the tablecloth. Edward saw Melanie's overturned soda glass lying beside her plate, spilling out Coke and ice. Leigh Anne snatched away the bowl of coleslaw she'd been reaching for.

Not again, thought Edward.

"You did that on purpose!" cried Melanie. "What is your problem?"

Leigh Anne began to tremble, eyes narrowing alarmingly, but remained silent.

Oh, God, thought Edward, gagging on the mouthful of chicken that slid down his throat without warning. The fear that tried to hide itself in Melanie's eyes signaled that she knew that maybe she'd gone too far.

"No," said Leigh Anne quietly, "what is your problem, huh? Do you want a fight?" She let her silverware drop with a clatter onto her plate as she rose slowly from the table, beads of saliva glistening at the corners of her tightly pressed lips. Melanie rose as well.

"God, switch to decaf," she laughed nervously, the feeble attempt at sarcasm slipping out like a shield, almost automatically. Her laughter was abruptly cut off as her eye was caught by a ray of light flashing off the smooth, sharp blade of her own kitchen knife, clutched now in Leigh Anne's clawlike hand.

Leigh Anne circled around the table, the smile twisting her lips one of crazed amusement at Melanie's vain attempt to smother her fear. Melanie backed away, knocking her chair over. Whether or not she'd gone too far wasn't even a question anymore. As Leigh Anne advanced, Melanie quickly snatched another knife off the counter, the blade still soiled with the cucumbers and tomatoes and such that it had been used to cut. She thrust it out in front of her, but Leigh Anne didn't stop her approach. Melanie continued to back away until she was in the hallway.

"Leigh Anne, Melanie," croaked Edward. No one heard him.

Melanie whirled on the ball of one foot and bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Leigh Anne followed close on her heels, each footfall recalling images of that lethal blade to Melanie's mind. Turning sharply at the top of the stairs, she dashed into her room, slamming the door in Leigh Anne's face just as she reached it, and jamming shut the lock. As the door closed out Leigh Anne, Melanie wasn't surprised at the hatred she saw embedded in Leigh Anne's eyes -- it was becoming a familiar sight. What shocked her, though, was the sheer depth and intensity of that hatred. The way it burned in Leigh Anne's steely gray eyes, they were almost literally aflame.

Leigh Anne pounded on the door, jolting Melanie from where she stood with her back to it. "Open this door! Let me in!" She jiggled the doorknob.

"Not on your life, bitch!" Melanie called, a hysterical flood of relieved laughter pouring from her mouth at having reached safely the haven of her bedroom. Last time she hadn't -- but last time Leigh Anne hadn't had a knife.

"You can't stay in there forever," replied Leigh Anne, apparently giving up for the time being her attempt at forced entry. Her footsteps proceeded down the hall and down the stairs, gradually fading out until they became inaudible to Melanie's alert ears. Melanie's knees suddenly turned to jelly, and she collapsed on her bed, letting out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. The knife she had been gripping as a drowning man would a life preserver slipped from her shaking hand and fell to the floor with a muffled thump. She drew in long, deep breaths, her pulse rate slowing to a more tolerable speed as the nausea in her stomach began to subside. She reached for her Walkman, hoping some music would calm her down, but found that it wasn't on the nighttable where she'd thought it was.

At that moment, a shrieking gust of wind shook the walls of the cottage, plunging the entire house into darkness.

"Shit!" muttered Melanie. She fumbled in her shirt pocket for her lighter, drew it out, and flicked it on. Using the flickering light of the flame, she found her way to the closet and turned on the battery-powered hurricane lamp that was stored on the shelf. She then extinguished the flame and returned the lighter to her pocket.

By the light of the lantern, Melanie found her Walkman (on the dresser beside her sunglasses -- she wouldn't be needing those now!), then placed the lantern on the nighttable beside her bed, put on her headphones, picked up The Shining by Stephen King, and, after a glance out the window at the ever-worsening storm, settled in for a relaxing night.

Edward re-read the paragraph he was on for about the fifth time. Finding it still incomprehensible and impossible to concentrate on, he put down his book and gazed out the window. On the opposite side of the cottage from Melanie's, it overlooked a lush forest of verdant evergreens which tightly encased the cottage, withdrawing it from the other houses on the street. When he and Leigh Anne had been looking for a house to rent for a few weeks out of the summer, he had found this seclusion part of the cottage's charm, but now he found it isolating and almost claustrophobic. Especially with the way the towering, massive trees leaned in acutely toward the house, bending and swaying with the force of the wind. To be perfectly honest, it was almost scary.

Which made him think of Leigh Anne, the way she'd been acting lately. That scene in the kitchen tonight -- maybe Melanie had acted immature, but why had Leigh Anne flown off the handle about it? Why did she and Melanie dislike each other so much? When he'd married Leigh Anne, he had thought everyone would get along -- Leigh Anne and Melanie had really seemed to hit it off when they'd been dating. But once he married her, she and her youngest stepdaughter were almost immediate enemies -- they never even gave each other a chance. When he thought of how he'd envisioned Leigh Anne being like a second mother to Melanie, it seemed so blackly ironic that now they could barely have dinner together.

It wasn't just Leigh Anne's relationship with Melanie that worried him, either. Lately, she'd been under so much stress. And, although he hated to admit it, much of it was self-induced. She worried constantly about being laid off, although she had a fairly high position at the insurance company where she worked, and there hadn't been that many layoffs to begin with. She worked overtime nearly every night -- Edward couldn't recall her having had dinner at home more that once in the past month (which he knew Melanie enjoyed immensely). He also couldn't recall the last time they'd made love. She frequently stayed up long after he went to bed to do the work she constantly brought home with her. Overall, she just didn't seem to have time for him anymore. After the scene with Melanie earlier tonight, she'd driven him out of the kitchen, saying she needed to work. Even on vacation, which, he might add, she'd grudgingly gone on only because he had insisted she needed it.

"Leigh Anne," he'd told her, "you can't keep on going like this. You're gong to have a nervous breakdown!"

"No I'm not!" she had snapped. "Unlike you, I know how to deal with stress."

He knew what she meant, and that comment had stung like a slap in the face. She meant that after the messy divorce she'd gone through with her verbally abusive, cheating ex-husband, she hadn't become an alcoholic the way Edward had after the death of his first wife, Lydia. It still pained him to remember the months he had spent in a drunken haze, plagued by the memories of Lydia, engaged in a futile fight against the cancer that was eating her alive, rendering her pale as a ghost and bone-thin, and the hate-filled phone calls from the Fairchilds, Lydia's parents, accusing Edward of causing his wife's illness. Alcohol, it had seemed, was the only thing that could calm the storm that perpetually raged within him.

A tear ran, uncontrolled yet unnoticed, down one pallid cheek as he thought about how he had neglected his children; how Jessica, at only fourteen years old, had given her nine-year-old sister the care and love her father had denied her. How finally, when Margaret Fairchild had threatened to take him to court for custody of Jessica and Melanie, he had begun the long, slow, almost unbearably difficult journey toward recovery. It killed him to think what a terrible father he'd been to Jessica and Melanie, something he felt he could never make up to them. Sometimes he felt like a complete failure, an utter waste of human flesh. He just kept on screwing up, and now he'd screwed up yet again by thinking that Leigh Anne and his daughters could ever be one big happy family. His idealism would have made him laugh, had it not been so painful. He might keep trying to bring everyone together (he felt it was the least he could do, for Melanie especially), but deep down, he knew it just would not happen.

Letting out a harsh, ragged sigh, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, put the book on his nighttable, rolled over, and slipped beneath the surface of consciousness into an uneasy, dreamless sleep.

The hours were ticking by, too fast to be real, it seemed, and Leigh Anne was still getting nowhere.

"Floyd vs. Jamison," she whispered to herself. "Malpractice. Two million dollars."

Oh, this was useless! She was nearly a week behind in her paperwork. The power failure hadn't been an obstacle to her -- she was now working by the light of a hurricane lamp -- but she couldn't seem to concentrate whatsoever. All she could think about was how much Melanie hated her. Melanie had never given her a chance, really. From the minute she'd moved in with the Crosses, Melanie had stood firmly against her. Leigh Anne knew she was probably resentful of the fact that another woman was taking her mother's place, and jealous of the fact that she had to share her father's love. Still, that made her rejection and her insults no less painful. From the start, Melanie had refused to accept Leigh Anne's ways. She had wanted everything her own way, and she'd been determined to put Leigh Anne in her place. She had gone through her computer files, and had found the annulment request that detailed nearly every aspect of Leigh Anne's failed first marriage. She knew about Jack's constant abuse and countless affairs with easy sluts whose cheap perfume lingered on Jack's clothes when he came home from �work' at two in the morning. She knew about the feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred, whose festering wounds still hadn't healed after nearly seven years, that caused her to take every insult, no matter how small or how jokingly said, deeply personally. And most of all, she knew how to take advantage of Leigh Anne's weaknesses like a wolf going straight for a felled deer's soft, unprotected throat, tearing open the jugular with its razor-sharp teeth.

Pushing her mile-high stack of papers aside, Leigh Anne put her head in her hands and began to weep uncontrollably, her body racked by silent sobs, her face streaked with tears that soaked her palms and dripped onto the wooden table, making a soft patter as they gently hit the glossed wood. Interchanging images of Jack and Melanie taunted her in her mind, tormenting her until she thought she could no longer bear it, until she nearly tore out her hair in agony and rage, her eyes squeezed shut, her teeth so tightly clenched that she believed she would crush them. Mucus ran out of her nose as the tears continued to stream freely down her face, contorted in a mask of pain and frustration, confusion, helplessness, anger, even hatred. Her head pounded as though a hammer were trying to split apart her skull.

After what might have been a few minutes or an eternity, Leigh Anne's sobs began to subside, and her breathing began to slow. She took a few sips of tea, savoring the somehow comforting warmth that flowed down her throat and spread through her chest and abdomen. Relaxing the tensed muscles in her shoulders and back, she returned to Floyd vs. Jamison.

After all, she's not Jack, she told herself. She's just a kid. Don't let her get to you. But as she went back to work, she couldn't keep the bitter smile off her face, for she knew it was useless advice.

Jessica rolled over onto her right side, curling up into a ball and trying to force her eyes to shut and stay shut. For some reason, she just couldn't seem to get to sleep tonight. It wasn't that the bed was uncomfortable -- just the opposite, in fact. It wasn't the storm, either, for she'd been through nearly every freak of weather nature had to offer, and she'd always slept like a baby. She couldn't get over the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that something - - not anything in particular, just something -- was wrong. Momentarily abandoning her quest for sleep, Jessica tried to pinpoint the source of that queasy sense. Was it the break- in that had happened back home in Amherst? She didn't think so -- the police had caught the burglar, and there was now a patrol on the street. She felt safe enough here at Kari's apartment. What was it, then?

Cliff's Edge.

The name popped into her head without warning and seemingly without meaning. Cliff's Edge, the town where her family was vacationing. So what?

Something's wrong with them.

Jessica uttered a soft, strangled cry and sat bolt upright, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, her queasiness fast becoming full-on nausea. She didn't know how she knew, or what could be the basis for such a ridiculous assumption, she just knew. Something was wrong with her family, and she had to get to Cliff's Edge.

"Jess," came a muffled, sleep-drugged voice from the other bed. "Jess, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," she replied. "But I have to get back to Cliff's Edge."

"What? Jess, are you crazy? It's the middle of the night, not to mention the middle of a hurricane! You can't just take off!"

"Yes, I can," Jessica replied, a familiar note of firm stubbornness entering her voice. "I can, and I will." She swung her legs onto the floor, pulled her suitcase out from beneath the bed, and began rummaging through it for clothes she could wear.

"Jess, this is ridiculous," Kari groaned, getting out of bed as well. "Why in the world do you have to go back to Cliff's Edge in the middle of the night when you just got here?"

"Something's wrong," Jessica told her, pulling on a pair of jeans under her nightshirt. "Something's wrong with my family."

Kari threw up her arms in exasperation. "Why in hell do you think that?"

"I just do, all right?" she snapped. "Something tells me it's true. I have a feeling."

"This is so unlike you," Kari said. "You're the most reasonable person I know. You're not one to be taking a road trip in the middle of the night, in the middle of a hurricane, just because of some silly feeling that was probably just a dream anyway."

"It was no dream!" Jessica retorted sharply, her green eyes blazing beneath an unruly fringe of auburn bangs. She yanked a UMass sweatshirt over her head.

Kari sighed. "You're gonna get yourself killed out there. The roads are slippery as hell in weather like this, especially when you get to the Cape."

"I'll take the chance," Jessica replied dryly. "But you know I'm a good driver."

"Is there any way I can convince you to stay?" asked Kari, almost a plea.

"Nope."

"Hey, wait," Kari replied, a light dawning in her eyes. "Why don't you just call the house and talk to them? I'm sure they'll tell you everything is fine."

"All right, I will," grumbled Jessica. Pausing to slip on a pair of sneakers, she picked up the phone and dialed the number. A few seconds later, a frown creased her brow and she returned the receiver to its cradle.

"Phone lines are down," she told Kari.

"Aw, man," muttered Kari, throwing up her arms in resignation. "I give up! I guess I just can't keep you here. Just promise me you won't have an accident. Not on my birthday."

Jessica smiled. "I promise." She swiped her purse from the kitchen counter and her leather jacket from the closet and strode to the door. "See ya later."

"Yeah," replied Kari glumly. "See ya." The door swung shut behind Jessica with a breeze of cool air. Kari sank into a kitchen stool. She rested her elbows on the table and ran her hands back through her thick golden hair, letting out a long sigh.

"This is too fucked up for words," she muttered as Jessica's car revved up and then pulled out, the tires squealing on the wet pavement. "Just too damn fucked up."