The Breakdown by B. A. Paris

 

Matthew told Cass not to take the shortcut through the woods at night, especially tonight when a storm was predicted.  But it makes the ride home so much shorter than Cass decides to do it anyhow.  She sees a car pulled over with a woman inside.  Could she be broken down in this rain and need help?  Cass pulls over and waits for the woman to come to her but no one gets out.  Perhaps she already has called for help.  After waiting a while, Cass goes ahead and drives home.

The next morning, she hears that a woman was killed in the woods last night.  Even worse, it was a woman that Cass had recently met and lunched with and was hoping to form a new friendship with.  Cass is immediately overcome with guilt.  She is just getting her life back in order after several years of caring for a mother with dementia.  Matthew was the start of her new life but has she ruined it already?

As the days go by, Cass feels more guilty rather than less.  She starts to feel afraid to be in her house alone as they are the closest house to the woods.  She starts to hear and see things that Matthew insists she is imagining.  Is Cass starting to show the same early onset dementia symptoms as her mother?  Soon packages start to arrive that she doesn't remember ordering and workmen show up with signed contracts to do work that she doesn't remember signing.  She talks things over with her best friend and a doctor but the symptoms keep getting worse.  Is Cass's life about to be over before she can enjoy it?

Readers will be torn between sympathy for Cass and a desire for her to shake herself and get on with things.  There are several twists and turns and red herrings before the mystery is revealed and everything gets resolved.  B.A. Paris has written several other mysteries in this vein with women who seem at a loss at how to get on with life and who are easily fooled into believing things that a normal person wouldn't give credence to.  This book is recommended for readers of mysteries.