My father shakes his head, mute. None of us knows what to say. We all stare at my mother who seems so vibrant, twitching with emotions and questions.

She opens her mouth, her eyes glaring again, then shakes her head. “We all need to process this. We all need to think.” She sounds very authoritative, and again none of us know how to respond to this new Victoria McNeil, or perhaps this is the old Victoria McNeil.

“You’ll stay in town for a while,” she says. There is no question mark at the end of her statement, and she gives my father a look that shows she will tolerate no dissension.

My dad, the one who had kept the Camorra on the run, the one who has managed to stay alive when so many others have died, looks relieved that someone is issuing the orders now. He looks at us, taking us all in, and he nods.

Laura Caldwell

Laura Caldwell, who lives in Chicago with her husband, left a successful career as a medical malpractice trial attorney and a partner at a successful firm to follow her dreams of becoming a novelist. In the span of 18 months, she sold four chick-lit novels to the Red Dress Ink imprint and three suspense novels to the MIRA Books imprint, the first of which is Look Closely.

But in addition to her now-successful writing career Laura does have two other jobs. She’s an adjunct professor of law at her alma mater, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she teaches Advanced Legal Writing. Laura is also a writer and contributing editor for Lake Magazine, a lifestyles publication based in the Indiana/Michigan area where Laura has a second home. Her freelance magazine work has been published in Woman’s Own, The Young Lawyer, Australia Woman’s Weekly and many other magazines.