Violet stared at the bracelet—engraved with birds, given to her by a man who loved her, and smeared with another man’s blood. I can’t wear this. Not for something this repulsive. Instead of fastening the clasp around her wrist again, she set it on a little shelf built into the side of the hull. It had a small door to keep items safe and dry, and she closed it to keep the bracelet out of the way while she worked.

A few minutes later, she was done. He was buried. She now turned to the area behind the motor. She’d seen the drain plugs when she stumbled, and this was how she’d take care of it all. She remembered from her long-ago morning boat rides with her dad, in a similar type of boat, that if the drain plug was pulled, water would rush in and eventually sink the whole thing. This boat had two plugs, and that equaled an even quicker sinking.

She was right. As soon as she pulled the two plugs, water began to flow in. She quickly climbed out, untied the rope from around the piling, and threw it in the boat. With the extra weight from the mound of bricks, the boat was already sitting low in the water, and under her watchful eye, it slowly began to sink even lower.

Just before it was out of her reach, she leaned down and gave it a great push away from the dock. It crept slowly, almost lazily, toward the center of the river, sinking ever lower as it went.

Sitting back on her heels in the steamy darkness, Violet caught a flash of movement at the end of the dock. A large brown pelican stood on top of the last piling, its small round eye catching light from somewhere and staring right at her. She couldn’t tell if its knowing gaze was one of sympathy or accusation, but before she could decide, it stretched its great wings and lifted itself off the wood. With a wide flap it lifted high, sending air currents down and swirling the fog into shadowy tentacles that snaked around the boat until it dipped below the surface and disappeared completely.

A moment later, a few air bubbles rose to the surface, then nothing. The bird was gone, the boat was gone, and all was still. Even the fog seemed to quiet down. It was like nothing at all had happened.

Later, in the car on the way to her house, with Trudy in the passenger seat next to her and a hastily thrown together suitcase in the back seat, Violet rubbed her scraped wrist and realized the bracelet was gone.

Frank.

In those final moments she’d forgotten the bracelet, and Violet knew then she could never go back to him. He was too good, too true for the ugliness that had taken place this night. She could never tell him. She could never tell anyone. It was too late to run to Frank, too late to go back and keep Trudy away from Jay in the first place, too late to keep the promise to their mother, but not too late for everything. As far as anyone else would think, Jay Malone disappeared. He never came home from the Showboat. And if the question ever came up of what happened?