“That wasn’t an act.” She looked into Myron’s eyes, hoping to find solace or kindness maybe. “You did save his life. I messed up. I messed up from the start. You’ll ask, why didn’t you do it this way or why didn’t you do it that way. I don’t know. I looked at each situation and I did what I thought was best for my son. And at first, it was the right call. Patrick forgot what happened. My sister lives in France. He stayed with her a lot. He loved that school. He was happy. Sure, he missed us. And he missed his sister. And yes, that was one of the tough calls—not telling Francesca the truth. But she wouldn’t be able to keep the secret—not when you’re only ten years old. We tried to comfort her, tried to tell her that her brother really was okay, but of course she suffered. It was a tough choice.”

She tilted her head. “Would you have told her?”

Myron wanted to say that he would never have started down this path, but he figured that was obvious. “I don’t know,” he said. “But you destroyed them all, didn’t you? Your husband couldn’t live with it. Brooke, Chick, Clark—what you did to them, what you made them suffer through.”

“Rhys was dead,” she said. “Don’t you get that? Nothing was going to bring him back. I couldn’t save him. I could only save my own boy.”

Myron felt Nancy’s phone vibrate in his hand. He looked at the number and read it to her.

“It’s Patrick!” Nancy grabbed it from him and put it to her ear. “Hello? Patrick?”

Myron could hear him crying. “Mommy?”

He sounded so much younger than sixteen.

“I’m right here, baby.”

“They know what I did. I . . . I want to die.”

Nancy gave Myron a baleful eye. “No, no, listen to Mommy. It’s all going to be okay. Just tell Mommy where you are.”

“You know where I am.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Help me, Mommy.”

“Where are you, Patrick?”

“I want to kill myself. I want to kill myself so I can be with Rhys.”

“No, honey, listen to me.”

“Good-bye, Mommy.”

He hung up.

“Oh my God.”

The phone dropped from her hand.

“Be with Rhys,” Myron repeated to himself. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Where did you dump Rhys’s body?”

She suddenly broke away from him and ran toward her car. Myron followed, overtaking her.

“I’ll drive,” he said. “Where is he?”

Nancy hesitated.

Myron flashed back to Patrick sitting at the kitchen table. His words had been stilted, monotone, because he was lying. But at the end, Patrick’s voice changed, become more emotional . . .

“I saw it . . . I was there . . . they just . . . just dumped his body into this ravine. Like it was nothing. Like Rhys was nothing . . .”

Because he was telling the truth.

“Do you want your son to live or die?” Myron shouted. “Where is that ravine, Nancy?”