Prologue: What if Jane had come home sooner that fateful night? What might his life have turned out to be? This is just the set up—the next chapter will be longer.

He was coming off the high that doing a show always left him with. It was the power, knowing that all those people in there believed his lie, believed that he was really spiritually communicating with dead relatives and psychically communicating with cheating spouses.

There was a party now. There always was and he usually enjoyed them—the after parties with all the adoring fans—but tonight something was off. He had felt it all night. From the first woman wanting to know if her husband had died right away in the car crash that killed him to the last woman who wanted to communicate with her dead father, he had felt it. He wasn't psychic, really. He was just really good at pretending, at seeing. He wasn't often wrong and tonight he had felt an odd vibe from his wife when he called before the show.

So, instead of staying and schmoozing with all the wealthy and well to do, he begged out early and headed home while it was still light out. The sun was just setting when he pulled up to his house and right away he knew something was wrong. Abigail was still petrified of the dark and with the amounts of shadows being cast on the house from the surrounding trees, the house should be aglow for another three hours until she and his wife went to bed.

He entered the house cautiously, moving his daughter's tricycle out of the main walkway and making a mental note to remind her that in the house was not the right place to be riding it. He heard a muffled noise coming from up the stairs. It sounded like his wife, but it was an almost painful, scared sound. He looked around and for something to take with him upstairs in case something was really wrong. He opened the hall closet and removed one of his golf clubs from the bag. He didn't really care for the game, but all the right people played it so he did too.

He crept up the stairs, noticing the light coming from under the door at the end of the hall. He grabbed the gold club with one hand raising it above his head and flung the door open. He wasn't even thinking when he saw the man posed above his wife and daughter with a knife in his hand. He brought the golf club down on his head, rendering him unconscious. He rushed to his wife's side to make sure she was ok, before pulling the phone off the night stand next to the bed and calling 911.