Fading Embers

Milo has already been left behind too many times.

Lucia Pierce refuses to let it happen again.

After weeks of preparing for his arrival, Lucia and Isaac finally bring the three-year-old home. Slowly, carefully, the three of them begin learning how to be a family. And for Lucia, who has spent years haunted by everything she has lost, loving Milo feels like discovering a piece of herself she never knew was missing.

Then a tornado rips through Whitehill.

In a single night, their home is destroyed, Isaac is seriously injured, and the fragile safety they have built disappears beneath the wreckage.

So does Milo.

In the chaos following the storm, Milo is placed in the care of emergency responders while Lucia and Isaac are pulled in different directions. But when they finally make it back to him, he isn't there.

Somewhere between disaster and daylight, Milo has vanished.

As the search becomes increasingly desperate, Lucia and Isaac push themselves beyond exhaustion, injury, and reason to find the little boy who made them a family.

Because Milo has already learned what it feels like to be abandoned.

Lucia will die before she lets him believe they've abandoned him, too.