Nancy Moore rose and started back toward the house. Myron followed her.

“So Hunter pulls a gun on you. Did you realize Francesca was the one who hid it? That would also explain why you kept this all a secret from her. Or maybe you realized that she was just a kid. She could never keep a secret this big. Maybe you didn’t want her to blame herself. If she had just left Daddy’s gun where it was. If she had just not worried about what Hunter might do with it.”

Nancy stopped by the back door. She closed her eyes.

“So she hid the gun in her room and Patrick found the gun,” Myron said. “I’m not sure when. Francesca didn’t know either. A few days later. Maybe a week. Did Hunter forget about it—or was he scared to bring it up? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter much. Patrick finds it. You and Hunter have been fighting a lot. Maybe Patrick knows that. Maybe he even knows why. Maybe he blames Chick Baldwin or that whole family.”

“No,” Nancy said. “Nothing like that.”

“Doesn’t really matter. He’s a six-year-old boy. He has his father’s loaded gun. He keeps it in his backpack. He takes it to school with him. One day—maybe even the day he first finds the gun, I don’t know—he has a playdate with Rhys Baldwin. They’re playing in that wooded area in the back. That’s what you told Francesca anyway. The au pair, Vada Linna, she isn’t watching too closely. Or maybe she is. I don’t know. She’s a scared kid in a foreign country. What does she know?”

Nancy Moore stood perfectly still. Myron didn’t even think she was breathing.

“I don’t know if they were playing a game. I don’t know if the gun just went off by accident. I don’t know if Patrick was angry about his father. I don’t know any of that. But I know that one six-year-old boy shot and killed another.”

“It was an accident,” Nancy said.

“Maybe.”

“It was.”

“How about what happened next?”

“You don’t understand,” Nancy said.

“Oh, I think I do. You showed up at the Baldwin house to pick up your son. My guess would be that Patrick shot Rhys right before you got there. Within seconds. Because if he had shot him, say, ten minutes before, Vada would have dialed nine-one-one.”

“I heard the gun go off,” Nancy said. “I parked my car and . . .”

Myron nodded. That made sense. “You rushed around back.”

“Vada and I . . . We both started running for him. But it was too late. The bullet . . . Rhys was shot in the head. There was nothing we could do.”

Silence.

“Why didn’t you just call the police?” Myron asked.

“You know why. It was our gun. Mine really. I bought it. Hunter and I—we’d be charged. There are cases. I read about a father who kept his loaded gun under his bed. His six-year-old found it. He started playing cowboys and Indians with his four-year-old sister. Shot her dead. The father got convicted of manslaughter and spent eight years in prison. I thought about that. And I thought about Patrick. Yes, he knew we were fighting. He had overheard that. So even though he was six, suppose someone made something of that? Suppose someone said he didn’t do it accidentally, that he killed him on purpose. Patrick would be tainted for life—the kid who murdered another kid. And then you have Chick and Brooke. Do either of them hit you as the forgiving type?”