Spud didn’t understand. Pip was so small and scared. He had been plucked from his world and dropped into a shack in the middle of nowhere. A little kindness seemed warranted. So that night, as he had done every night since they arrived at the shack, Spud sat beside Pip’s bed and told him a story—the cobbler and the elves. And just as he had done every night, Spud stayed in Pip’s room, sleeping beside his bed, breaking the rule that Reed had laid down. But unlike the other nights, Spud didn’t stay there the whole night. He crept out of Pip’s room in the early morning hours, sneaking to his room and the cot before Reed returned to the shack.

Spud was still awake when Reed came home from his job at the bar, the man lumbering through the house like no one else lived there, slamming doors and kicking a chair in the kitchen. He heard Reed fling off his shoes and toss his clothes to the floor before plopping into the bed in Pip’s room.

Spud imagined Pip lying quietly in bed, pretending to be asleep so that his father would take no notice of him. Pip would know that Spud was gone, and in that moment, Spud knew he had let Pip down—a thought that kept him awake much of that night.

CHAPTER 12

Max did not sleep well that night, not with Lyle Voight hounding his thoughts. No matter how hard Max tried to clear his head, Lyle kept at him, pushing and pushing. Max argued back, but their clash always ended with Lyle saying, “He’s just a child, for God’s sake.”

Waking to that echo, Max again took his coffee out to the lake, this time sitting on a stump at the water’s edge, the autumn chill crisp in his lungs. A duck squawked somewhere down the shore, and the water lapped gently against the rocks. It was a beautiful morning, but Max couldn’t deny his anger. Lyle shouldn’t have come to him. He shouldn’t have heaved the weight of a missing woman and child onto Max’s shoulders. Sandy was probably sitting in the sun in California, or Florida, the boy playing in the surf. She wouldn’t be the first woman to feel penned in by a small town.

And what did Lyle offer as evidence? Nothing—other than his belief that he knew his daughter. Could anyone know another that well? Max thought of Jenni. Had he known her that well? He nodded to himself. Yeah, he had. If she had turned up missing, no one in the world would have convinced him that she had run off.

Max thought about the boy, his bashful smile, the touch of sadness in his eyes; he was the kind of child that you want to protect, so it made sense that Lyle would show up at Max’s cabin. But what could Max do?

That thought dangled as Max showered, brushed his hair into a neat ponytail, and put on his only white shirt. As much as he wanted to sit this one out, he needed to at least talk with Sheriff Bolger. If nothing else, Max might be able to get Bolger’s take, find a nugget of hope to take back to Lyle.