Suspecting that her unforgiving, harsh father may have been somehow involved in her mother's sudden and mysterious death, Georgie Smallwood is stunned when he too is murdered and her sister, Claire, a divorcée in dire financial straits after the breakup of her marriage, is implicated in the crime. Reprint. Lisa Scottoline High Water is a lyrical, compelling novel about secrets, family, and even love. -- Review Lynn Hightower is the author of six previous novels, including Satan's Lambs, which won the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. She studied creative writing with Wendell Berry at the University of Kentucky and holds a degree in journalism. She lives in Tennessee. Chapter One I was angry with my mother the night that she died. Angry because I had been made to feel guilty, frustrated and helpless. Guilty because her life seemed to me a form of undeserved hell; frustrated and helpless because she would not change it according to my dictates. The drive to the hospital is etched in my memory -- the flat, tarry pavement, a straight stretch down Highway 17, the newly settled dark riding softly on the treetops and sandy soil. I think of that drive as the last normal moment, before the slow, heart-nailing realization that the things I took for granted, the things everyone takes for granted, did not hold true. But I did not look, then, to find treachery among my own. You don't look for bloodstains, or double-bolt the doors, when you know it's only family coming. There is a softness in the night when full dark comes over Beaufort. I notice it this night, as I notice everything: the moss in the trees beneath the beam of my headlights, the unreal sense I have that tonight is not really happening. I feel I am drifting through a dream. I know that my mother is dying. I turn the radio off because it only plays one station -- 98.1 the bull -- which doesn't seem like the right kind of music for a time like this. I crank down the window. Big Mama is my Ford pickup, and as much as it is possible to love an automobile, I love Big Mama -- a 1987 F-150, black with gray trim, oak side rails installed in the back so I can carry furniture, which I refinish and sell for a living. It's a stick shift, with gray vinyl seats that are murder in the summer sun. My air conditioner only blows hot air. Wear shorts on hot days and you will leave a layer of burnt hide on my upholstery, which is ripped on the passenger's side, exposing dirty yellow foam. What I do have is a 350 V-8 engine, a scratched-up trailer hitch and huge chrome side mirrors, so I can pull a trailer if I have a lot of pieces to move. There's no door on the glove compartment, which is stuffed with some things I remember putting there and some things I don't. The heater works, and the tires are Michelin, though they need to be rotated. Big Mama gets ten miles to the gallon and holds forty, and between the seat and the back is a convenient open space that right now is cluttered with an old flannel work shirt, a pair of work gloves, some balled-up maps and a tarp. I don't owe any money on this truck. The Beaufort Hospital parking lot is nearly empty. I put Big Mama in park and open the heavy door, which creaks no matter how much I oil it. A Coke can rolls off the gritty black floorboard and hits the pavement with a clank. I'm out in a heartbeat, grabbing the Coke can and looking over my shoulder to check if anyone has seen and disapproved -- one of the realities of small town life. I hate to be thought of as trashy. But I am alone in the parking lot, thirty-four feet from the emergency entrance where my mother has been brought in, heart-stilled and cyanotic. It is Sunday night and the good people of Beaufort are tucked in front of their television sets, boats docked, beer or highball in hand, lazing through the last dark hours of their weekend. The first person I see in the hospital is my father, Fielding Smallwood. He has retired from the Marine Corps and works in a bank as a loan officer, lending money to good old boys and retired marine officers. Active enlisted men cannot afford the rates. He is wearing, as always, his off-duty, off-work jogging-suit uniform. He has two of them, a soft gray cotton with blue piping, and the one I hate, a navy blue polyester ensemble that has a slippery look and makes raspy noises whenever he moves. He is wearing the gray cotton one. We look each other over, my father and I, bristling like territorial dogs, and neither of us likes what we see. I have worn my high-heeled black boots and slung my black leather jacket over my shoulder for effect, and because I know I will need to be tough. I am wearing my favorite 501 Levi's and my lavender T-shirt, because it is my lucky T-shirt and lavender is Mama's favorite color. My father is compactly built, muscles running to fat, his exposed flesh raw with the freckled burn he maintains religiously on the golf course. His crew cut is a yellowing gray, short and sp