Silver Bells of the Mountains — Laura Thomas

Guilt. It manifests as a dark pit in the chest, metastasizing to the furthest extremities of the fingers and toes. It weighs down every footfall. For five long years, Brooke Martine has felt the guilt of her sister Amélie's abduction while she and her other sister Claire remained safe. Targeted because they were different from normal children, able to reshape matter and bend it to their will. Brooke's earliest memories were of their strangely fascinated Aunt Rose observing the triplets in their nursery like puppies in a pen. Memories that followed were of a never-ending train ride across the French countryside for the next foster home that would supposedly keep her and Claire safe. Throughout the devastation she had caused, Aunt Rose left Brooke and Claire with a single terrible promise that their last encounter wasn't truly goodbye.

Never able to forget, never permitted to settle down with a permanent family, Brooke is given new hope in the town of Mont Trois Belle. There, a little girl named Anne Marie was abducted seventy years ago, her name lost under a stack of paperwork. To ease her guilt, Brooke tries to solve the mystery and, upon their social worker's glowing testimony of success, earn her and Claire a ticket home to their parents after years with no signs of danger from their scheming aunt.

But Brooke and Claire were far too interesting subjects for Aunt Rose to abandon indefinitely. Her presence is felt in a spy who hinders the girls' efforts, testing them for the time when the axe that's been hovering over their heads for so long will finally fall.

As Brooke delves deeper into the mysteries of the town, she finds more than she was anticipating, not only about Anne Marie but her own shadowy origins as well.