From Chapter 1, MORNING IN RIVERTON FALLS

Celeste reached for the remnants of last night’s dream. She’d woken, gasping for breath, throat raw and sore as if she’d been screaming in her sleep. A woman at a window, bushes blowing in a soft breeze. A shadow coming at her from behind. She’d scribbled down the disjointed images in her journal before she’d even opened her eyes, but now the morning had whisked the rest away. Still, she couldn’t shake the feelings of panic and guilt. She tried again to find a thread that would lead her back in, but it was too late.

Battered old Mr. Coffee burped and spluttered the last drops of java into the carafe. Celeste poured herself an oversize mug and stumbled back to bed to see what she could figure out. Propped against a pile of pillows, she opened the black leather notebook and sipped her coffee. Nothing in the trio of lines she’d scratched out in black ink explained why the dream left her feeling both frightened and ashamed. At least nothing she could figure out on her own. She wondered what Larry would make of this dream—the last she would share with him after four years of therapy.

All that time, Celeste had tracked her dreams, learning to decipher the letters and words she’d jotted down, often with eyes still closed, on the unlined pages of her journal. She’d poured out hundreds of dreams–some just scraps or a single startling image, others pages long, like surreal short stories. But now, if she could stick to her plan, she was done. Today was the day she was going to tell him she was quitting, and there was no way he was going to talk her out of it again. She’d had enough of Larry Blatsky, his Dreamers, and this thing he called the “Dreamscape,” the thing Jake called a cult.