“Just a sec,” she says. Someday I’ll have enough money saved to move into a house with more than two bedrooms but until then or until Max goes off to college we’re stuck with this. I grab a brush off my dresser and start running it through my hair until she says it’s okay for me to come over to her side of the room.

“I have to brush my teeth,” she says sadly and leaves while I hang behind. Just peeking out beneath her bed is one of her sketchbooks. I feel sort of guilty looking but Violet’s drawings sometimes tell me so much more about what’s going on with her. Violet is a perfectionist when it comes to her art and the first few pages are of subjects she has drawn a million times: unicorns, peace signs, Boomer.

I have to admit she is very talented and I wish I could afford to pay for the extra art classes I know she would love. I flip to the middle of the journal and land on the first hesitant strokes of her project. The paper is smudged from the rub of an eraser and she abandons the page. This goes on for the next several pages until I can tell that she’s trying to draw a face, though I can’t tell whether the subject is male or female.

I keep turning the pages and eventually the face of young man with intense eyes is looking back at me. He has a long, straight nose and prominent cheekbones. Though he’s only drawn from the neck up, there is something old-fashioned about him. Maybe it’s the way his hair is swept away from his forehead, maybe it’s the seriousness of his expression—something that I’ve always connected with old-time portraits.

In any event, the drawing is astonishingly realistic for such a young girl to have drawn. Centered, at the bottom of the page are the initials JW. My blood runs cold.

Could this be the person pretending to be Joseph Wither? Who is he? And why is Violet sketching him? Or maybe a picture is just a picture and it has nothing to do with Joseph Wither.

“Mom,” Max calls from downstairs, “Officer Grady is here.”

Startled, I close the sketchbook and put it back beneath the bed where I found it. “Coming,” I call back and on shaky legs go into the hallway and tap on the bathroom door. “Vi, are you ready?”

Violet opens the door and, though she’s dressed, has washed her face and combed her hair, she still looks exhausted. She must have slept about as well as I did last night. Purple smudges stain the thin skin beneath her eyes and crusty sleep has collected in the corners.