I turned on the bath, plugged the drain, and aimed it for scalding.

I was wearing yesterday’s clothes. I stripped them off and eased my sore body into the tub. The hot water dissolved the sickness from my skin and warmed me. Questions fluttered in my mind like a flock of small birds swarming to food, pecking, settling, and frightened away, fleeing back up to tree branches.

Who wanted me here? Who sent me those text messages? Who left a dead opossum on my doorstep? Who killed Dawn? Who stabbed my mom? Why had Gal said a coyote got her opossums but everyone else said it had been my mom?

The steamy air dissolved the sludge in my mind, and strings of conversation came to me.

Holly. Whatever was on these videos, someone killed her for it.

Father Greg. Cliff called me in… because your mother had signs pointing to satanic indoctrination… Melinda agonized. Nurses had to tie her down. She’d screamed. . . I’m gonna cut you with my knife. Does that make your cock hard?

Gal Kender. He loves that hokey pokey. Talks about possession maybe once a month.

Alice Paulson. She had Multiple Personality Disorder… She killed that girl… She spoke of cutting Dawn Young with a knife… So did you… You blocked it out.

The letter from Sin.

Basically, this is an apology and an invitation to more trouble… I've made copies of the videos.

Sinclaire’s a doctor. In Rochester, I think, Tracy Summers had said.

Cleveland, Mayo, MD Anderson, Becky had said in my dream. That might have saved us. If she'd gotten help at a big hospital.

Claire, she’s gone and hates coming back, Alice Paulson had said. Each comment was nothing more than loose change, but add them up, they were enough to buy something.

I had assumed Tracy Summers meant Rochester, NY. But there’s a Rochester, Minnesota, made famous by Mayo Clinic.

Sin was an awful self-given nickname for Sinclaire, but at this point, it seemed likely.

I pulled the drain plug.

Trevor was still sleeping, snoring.

I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to ask him again about Brandon Paulson and hear him lie again.

I had never been much of a talker.

Trevor and I working through a disagreement looked a lot like two beefy, flannel-wearing, bearded guys sitting side by side at the bar. Lots of grunts, sipping our beers, nodding. It was something Trevor liked about me, that I wasn’t a talker. It was something I thought I liked about myself, but now that I thought about it, it was window dressing. Something I could brag about to myself, I’m low maintenance, I’m not a talker, but it didn’t serve me.

Downstairs, the TV was on low volume. Emily was trying to not wake anyone on this glorious no-school Saturday morning.