Mel looked beyond me, past my brother, away from his leader, his victim’s sister and cousin. He seemed to be focused on the winter-bare limbs of the trees around the still, brown pond. “I love Jason,” he said. “I love him. And she abused him and his child. Then she taunted me. She came here that day. . . . I’d stopped off to get Jason to help me build some shelves at the shop, but he wasn’t here. She drove up while I was out in the yard writing Jason a note. She began to say . . . she said awful things. Then she told me I had to have sex with her, that if I did, she’d tell them at Hotshot and I’d be able to go back to live there, and Jason could come live with me. She said, ‘His baby’s inside me; doesn’t that get you all hot?’ And it got worse and worse. The bed of the truck was down because the wood I’d bought was sticking out, and she kind of backed up to it and lay down, and I could see her. It was . . . she was . . . she kept telling me what a pussy I was and that Jason would never care about me . . . and I slapped her as hard as I could.”

Dawn Norris turned to one side as though she was going to throw up. But she pressed her lips together in a hard line and straightened up. Jacky wasn’t that tough.

“She wasn’t dead, though.” My brother forced the words between his clenched teeth. “She bled all down the cross. She lost the baby after she’d been hung up.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Mel said. His gaze returned from the pond and the trees and focused on my brother. “I thought the blow had killed her—I really did. I would never have left her to go in the house if I’d thought she was still alive. I would never have let someone else get her. What I did was bad enough, because I intended for her to die. But I didn’t crucify her. Please believe me. No matter what you think of me for hurting her, I would never have done that. I thought if I took her somewhere else, no one would think you did it. I knew you were going out that night, and I figured if I put her somewhere else, you’d have an alibi. I figured you’d end up spending the night with Michele.” Mel smiled at Jason, and it was such a tender look that my heart ached. “So I left her in the back of the truck, and I came in the house to have a drink. And when I came back out, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it. I thought she’d gotten up and walked away. But there wasn’t any blood, and the wood was gone, too.”