Her stepfather, for all his flaws, was a different story. Carl Gilmore, alphabetizer of bookshelves, straightener of photographs stuck to the refrigerator, burner of high school yearbooks if you left one on the kitchen table overnight after he told you three different times to put the goddamned thing away, had also been an FBI agent like her father. Had, in fact, been her father’s boss.

That last point had been a hell of a sore spot between Danica and her mother, all through the long, angry years of her teens.

Why stop there, Mom? Why not just cut off Dad’s balls and float them in a mason jar on the mantle for everyone to see? That would at least be artistic.

She regretted those arguments now, on the rare occasions she thought about them. She still had no idea what had compelled her mother to leave her father, or to turn to a man with all the kindness of a marble bust, but she must have had her reasons. With hindsight—and her own sunken wreck of a first marriage under her belt—Danica felt bad for having twisted the knife so many times. Her mother had tried to make her happy, right to the end—which had come by way of breast cancer the summer after Danica finished college, twenty-two years old. That final, knick-knack-destroying blowup with Carl had happened within a month of the funeral.

She didn’t put the key back in the ignition. She stared at the house, weighing things.

She thought of her father, probably for the fiftieth time since the attack in the parking lot. Thought of how differently she would feel right now, pulling up outside his house instead. The whole way down from Oregon, all night and all morning, nice little memories of him had drifted into her thoughts, like fireflies over a calm summer field.

Her father had been a protector—and not just of her. He had kept in touch with people he served with in the military, especially those who’d ended up needing help later on. The one Danica most remembered was a guy named Russell Moss. He’d left the service around the same time as her father, and ended up homeless almost immediately. Her father had tried over and over to help him get back on track—to get a job and some kind of roof over his head. It hadn’t really worked, but his persistence had eventually gotten Moss away from the drugs and criminal contacts that would have taken his life. In the end, Moss had settled down in a kind of outcast community in the mountains near Flagstaff, Arizona—off the grid, mostly out of trouble. He was probably still there now, living out his life, able to do so because he’d known someone who genuinely cared about people. The world needed more of those.

“You’re stalling,” Danica whispered.

The green wind chimes swayed, tinking softly.