I’d come to Hunther to learn what had happened to my mom while we lived here, but that she’d murdered a girl? Well, that one wasn’t something I’d expected to draw out of the hat.

Part of me had suspected I would learn things fast. In towns like Hunther, word gets around. Everyone knew everybody’s business.

The other part of me had suspected I wouldn’t learn a thing. Secluded towns could be tight-lipped. Filled with people whose genealogies went way back, so that even if they didn’t like each other, they covered each other’s tracks. Places like Hunther didn’t have outsiders, skeptics, witnesses, to offer alternative views. People wrote their own history, and in remote municipalities especially, everyone’s narrative synchronized like a school of graceful anchovies, a flash of silver as they turned together.

I didn’t believe Desiree of course. I didn’t think she was lying—she was only repeating a rumor—but it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. My memories of my mom were shitty, but alcoholic-shitty, not violent. A few memories troubled me, but, I figured, if I dug deeper, their strangeness could be explained away.

My mother died four months ago. I found out on Facebook.

I wasn’t Facebook “friends” with my sister Holly or Mom, but I occasionally checked in on them.

Holly had posted a photo when Mom died—both of them smiling, Holly’s arms wrapped around Mom’s neck. The photo was recent, both of them looking old, captioned, I am sad to tell you my mother is no longer with us.

I didn’t reach out to Holly. I hadn’t seen her post until weeks after the funeral—what was the point?

Mom’s last Facebook post was five months ago: a photo she took of her legs stretched out in front of her on the couch, her bare feet crossed at the ankles, her cat’s head resting on her shin. Her feet were pale, her toenails unpainted and yellowed. A patch of thin, wiry hairs sprouted from her right ankle. Missed by her razor. Her comment: Plissken’s a good boy.

Her photo came across as either unselfconscious and honest and, therefore, likeable, or it came across as lazy and self-centered. I leaned toward the latter.

My online search for details regarding her death had uncovered a more gruesome story.

Burglary Gone Wrong: Local woman, Melinda Hornne, stabbed to death in her apartment.

When I’d read the headline, I’d inhaled sharply and held my breath, expecting tears or anger or regret because when you found out your mom had been violently murdered, you were supposed to react.

Except Mom had become abstract. We hadn’t talked since I was seventeen. And I didn’t remember much anyway. She had faded, becoming translucent, ghostly, scarcely more than an intimation of a real person.