Without waiting for a response to something that wasn’t really even a question, Lacey turned and led the way across the marble tile of the entryway, her socked feet sliding just a bit against the polished floor.

Mia trailed behind her, Izzy bringing up the rear. “That was a chandelier,” Izzy muttered. “In the freaking entryway.”

All of the decorations in the mansion were ostentatious, but Mia had been there enough times that summer to get used to it.

There were new additions, of course.

Large, dark paintings hanging without frames followed them on their way back to the kitchen. None of them were actual pictures; rather, they were simply black and gray and white splashed on canvas, all the same style. Mia wondered if they were Lacey’s.

She stopped by one. It was midnight black at the center, deep blue swirling from there. Something about it made Mia’s body tip forward, a tug beneath her belly button, as if she could be swallowed by the yawning abyss. The desire to sink into it eased only when Izzy bumped her shoulder, her eyebrows lifted. “Are they hers?”

A signature scrawled in white at the corner popped against the darker colors. “Looks like.”

The painting was every nightmare that hibernated in Mia’s chest, waiting for her to fall asleep.

Neither she nor Lacey had escaped that summer, it seemed.

“Can you tell?” Mia murmured the question, even though Lacey was well ahead of them.

“Not her,” Izzy said.

“You’re confident?”

Izzy tipped her head. “As much as I can be. Too short. The person definitely had a few good inches on you.”

And Lacey was about Mia’s height.

But Ellen would fit.

Still, this wouldn’t be a wasted trip. They’d needed to interview Lacey anyway, and all it had taken for Mia to stop dragging her feet was Izzy getting shot.

By the time they got to the kitchen, Lacey had cracked a window and was toying with a box of cigarettes.

She didn’t ask if they minded when she slid one out of the neat row. Flipping it between her fingers, she tipped her chin toward the long, artsy farmhouse table that ran the length of the room.

Mia slid onto the bench on the far side, so she could lean her forearms on the wood. Izzy propped herself against the wall just inside the doorway. It gave them the observational advantage.

Lacey plucked a gold-plated lighter from the windowsill, the click of the flame the only sound in the kitchen. Her cheeks hollowed as she took the first drag, and then her red apple–painted mouth twisted to the side so she could direct the smoke toward the window. Haloed as she was by the light, she looked like a disgruntled movie star who’d been misplaced in time.