“Have you ever heard of Munchausen by proxy?”

Cara shakes her head.

“I’d only heard of it at work a couple of times, but I did some reading last night. It’s a mental-health problem where a caregiver fabricates and induces illness. I don’t think Grace was ill, Cara. I think Meg was.”

As my words land, Cara’s face twists with confusion. She starts shaking her head. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

“Meg stole, bought, or got drugs through blackmailing people. She forced the drugs on Grace, to give her the symptoms for epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, heart problems—all of it. Her illnesses were fabricated by Meg. That’s why Grace could run away in the graveyard. Her legs always worked, they were just forced not to.”

“Why, why would she do that?” Cara’s voice is a whisper. Her eyes flit about my face, desperate for an answer, an answer that will make everything I just said less horrifying. But I can’t give her one.

“Cara, maybe we should talk about—”

“Just tell me! Why did she do it?” Cara’s almost shouting. She won’t be fobbed off, she needs answers.

“Partly money maybe—think about all the fundraisers and support they received—but I think the real reason was deeper. Like everyone, I think Meg just wanted to be loved. She wanted people’s attention, their admiration, their respect. Maybe she thought she deserved it after Danny died. Maybe she was so delusional, her illness so entrenched, that she even believed Grace really was sick. I don’t know yet.”

I’ve said enough. I don’t mention how this revelation totally reframes Meg’s murder because, next to me, Cara has gone very still. She’s staring at something only she can see, her face full of a private horror and deep sadness, a place only for her and Grace. She opens the car door.

“Cara, please don’t—”

“I just need a minute on my own.”

I nod. I understand some things shouldn’t be shared. She disappears behind the car and in the rearview mirror I watch as she walks into a field and, hidden behind a hedgerow, drops to her knees on the sun-hardened earth. She covers her head with her hands and she starts to shake with sorrow and rage before I look away.

She comes back to the car a few minutes later, her face puffed and her eyes red and raw, but her expression is hard, set. I ask if she’s all right and she just nods and says, “I’m fine.” We drive the rest of the way in silence, the unsettled kind of silence that seems to hum with thoughts. Neither of us knows how this is going to play out, neither of us even wants to guess.

As we near Rainstead, Cara starts to move around in her seat.

“You all right?” I ask again, turning my head to look at her. She nods, looks at me for a moment, and I know that, for now at least, the shock has passed and she’s as determined as me to find out how this will end.