I want to say it will be okay, but I hate it when people tell me that. It’s lazy and it’s wrong.

We lie to sad people because we think it will make them feel better. But sad people see through lies. You can only trick happy people with bullshit.

“They keep telling me things will get better,” Bernie says. “They keep talking about the future. But when I think about it, all I see is nothing. Miles and miles of nothing.”

I’m not used to being the shoulder to cry on.

I guess even now, ten years after Mom died, people don’t burden me with their problems just in case. But Bernie doesn’t care about hurting my feelings or adding to my worry pile, and in a weird way, I’m grateful for that.

“I didn’t want to go home,” she says. “I fucking hate it there. So I got drunk, and then I kept drinking, and when I finished the bottle, I went to sleep, and now I’m here.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“What for?”

“For not being your friend anymore.”

Bernie smiles and says, “We could change that.”

I smile and sit with her, stroking her hand and listening to her talk, hoping it makes a difference.

Chapter 80

A body has been found in a park in London, and police are appealing for witnesses.

If you’ve been through this yourself, you know the details are sketchy because the detectives are holding things back.

When the police first want the public’s help, they keep it vague. They say where the crime happened and roughly what time. They say whether the victim was a man or a woman. The real clues come out later, when no one has come forward and the investigation stalls.

Serial killers are not serial killers until they start collecting bodies. It’s their habits that give them their names.

The Magpie Man was no one when he killed my mom, but now he’s a monster you warn kids about. He last killed in September, so if the usual nine-month gap is intentional, he has struck two months early.

I think it’s him. Don’t ask me how. I can feel it.

I go online and try to find more information, but everywhere is saying the same thing.

I don’t know how this woman died. I don’t know if it’s a clue or a coincidence.

When they found my mother, the bottom of her mouth was swollen black, her tongue crushed between her teeth, her hyoid bone and windpipe and larynx all broken.

When your mom was strangled to death, you eventually look up the specifics and wish you hadn’t.