Matt ambled back along the road to the Hub. He stopped in the grass at the center, the moon peeking out from the clouds, providing a sliver of light. He half expected to see the back of his brother’s letterman jacket—PINE in yellow letters above the shoulder blades—pushing a wheelbarrow toward the creek. All at once, he had another memory that had eluded him: the figure stopping in shadows, head pivoting toward Matt. The darkness concealed his face. Yet there was no question: he was staring directly at Matt.

CHAPTER 39

OLIVIA PINE

BEFORE

Liv tipped the bottle so the rest of the pinot noir dripped into her glass. She’d already dispatched a text to Noah, apologizing that she couldn’t make it to dinner. After the encounter with Detective Ron Sampson’s former partner and widow, she’d had her fill of the past. Of this town. She’d have time to lobby Noah to grant the pardon after he was appointed governor. So she’d resorted to every parent’s secret weapon to get out of an engagement: Tommy’s not feeling well.

The truth was that Cindy took Tommy out to dinner. Liv didn’t know if it was because her sister really wanted auntie time with Tommy before they left tomorrow, like she’d said, or if she’d sensed that Liv needed some alone time. Cindy had left not one but two bottles of pinot on the counter, so Liv thought it was the latter. Liv was twisting the corkscrew into the second bottle when her cell phone chimed.

She was going to ignore it, but ever since that morning with Danny when she’d let her calls go to voicemail on her race home from the hotel, she never ignored calls.

Certain things made her superstitious, irrationally so. She’d been taking a nap in the middle of the day when her mom died, and she never napped during the day again. It brought bad things. It had been a lazy winter afternoon when she’d snuggled up with the family dog and gone to sleep, then awoken to Cindy shaking her shoulders, bawling, the last time she’d seen her big sister cry. So no matter how tired she was, she never napped. Even in college, and even when the kids were babies and she was dead on her feet, she never, ever took a midday snooze. Similarly, after she missed Maggie’s call saying the police had taken Danny—correction, after she’d ignored Maggie’s call—she never let a phone go unanswered.

“Hello,” she said expecting a telemarketer or robocall.

“Mrs. Pine, this is Alvita from Twilight Meadows,” the woman said in a Jamaican accent. “I’m afraid your father is missing.”