“Some secrets I can keep,” I said. “Like what you’re feeling. What I can’t keep is if you are thinking about hurting yourself or someone else or if you are taking illegal drugs.”

Cora wrinkled her nose. “No way.”

“And I promise you that I will not share anything you tell me without letting you know first,” I told her. “You can talk to me about anything, Cora. I’m here to help you.”

Cora thought about that for a minute. “Okay. I do sleep better when my mom’s here but it makes me feel bad, too. I’m almost twelve. I should be able to fall asleep without my mom in the room.”

“You had a scary thing happen to you. It’s understandable to want your mom nearby.”

“Yeah, I guess. But when she’s here, she just looks at me all sad. Like I’m going to die or something. I guess she’s scared, too. She keeps asking me what happened and who did it and what did I see. It just makes my head all muddled, so sometimes I pretend to be asleep. Are you going to ask me about what happened the other night?” She rubbed her fingers across her cast where a scattering of signatures decorated the fiberglass.

“Not if you don’t want me to.” I was hoping that as I got to know Cora, she’d open up to me about what she remembered. If anything. “You’ve got a lot of signatures there,” I observed.

“Mostly the nurses.” She pointed to them. “And this one is the doctor who did my face. And this is Jordyn’s. She’s my friend who brought me the bracelet kit. And her grandpa signed, too.”

“Tell me about Jordyn,” I said.

“She’s okay,” Cora said, but begrudgingly. “She’s kind of hard to figure out. One minute she’s really nice and then all of a sudden she’s acting like she hates you.”

“Sounds confusing,” I mused.

“It is,” Cora said emphatically. “Jordyn, Violet and I used to be best friends but we got in a fight right before Christmas and I thought she’d never talk to me again. But then last week she all of a sudden started talking to me again. I think it was because I told her I was sorry about her grandma getting hurt. She fell and broke her hip and is in the hospital. Anyway, Jordyn came over and it was like things were like they used to be.”

“And there’s your sister’s name and your mom’s. How about your dad? Did he sign it?” I thought of Jim Landry and the anger that seemed to rise up off him in waves.

“Not yet. But he will. He’s just pretty mad at me right now.”

“About what?” I kept my voice neutral, conversational.