“When I reached out to my husband, his phone was turned off. For more than two hours, the pit grew as he remained unreachable and our adult children began to sense something was wrong.”

The author and Georgie in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2025

The author at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, in 2024

Danielle Girard is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including the Annabelle Schwartzman series and “Pinky Swear.” She is also the creator and host of the “Killer Women Podcast,” where she interviews the women who write today’s best crime fiction. A graduate of Cornell University, Danielle received her MFA in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. When she’s not traveling, Danielle lives in the mountains of Montana.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in March 2026.