“Yes. She arrived half an hour after you left.”

“Hunter won’t stop Win.”

“No, I don’t think he will,” Nancy said. “Can’t you please drive faster?”

“And Tamryn Rogers?”

“Patrick’s girlfriend at school. I thought that he could give her up when he got home. But you know teens. Your nephew was right, wasn’t he? Teens get lonely. They reach out. So yes, he snuck out. It would have been no big deal, except of course you followed him.”

They crossed the Dingmans Ferry Bridge. The app said they were eight minutes away.

“It’s over now,” Myron said.

“Yes, I guess it is. But I just need to save my son. That’s what this is all about. Then, well, we all move on, don’t we? The police will be able to bring up Rhys’s body from the ravine. They can bury him properly. I checked with an attorney before I started on this journey. Guess when the statute of limitations runs out on the crime of hiding a body?”

Myron gripped the wheel tighter.

“Ten years. And think about it. In the end, I hid a body and tampered with some evidence. I told a few lies to the police. Hunter is wracked with guilt. He’ll take the fall, but we will plead him out and he’ll serve very little, if any, time. So yes, Myron, if we can save my boy, it will all be over.”

“Cold,” Myron said.

“Have to be.”

“None of this had to be.”

“Rhys was dead. I couldn’t save him.”

“And you think you’ve saved Patrick? What do you think it did to a six-year-old boy, making him lie like that?”

“He was only six.”

“So you just stuffed it away. Your husband became a drunk. Your daughter had to deal with losing a brother. Vada, I don’t even know what a mess you made of her life. And Brooke and Chick and Clark. Do you have any idea what you did to all of them?”

“I don’t need to justify myself to you. A mother protects her child. That’s just how it is. So now I get my boy back. We get him help. It’s all going to be okay. I’ll take him back home. Once he’s home, he’ll be fine again.”

Myron made the turn onto Old Oak Road. There were four police cars parked at the end of the drive. Sheriff Yiannikos introduced himself. “We’ve kept back. He wants his mother.”

“That’s me,” Nancy said. She started sprinting toward the woods. Myron followed. “No,” she said to him. “Stay back.”

She trekked into the woods. Myron turned to Sheriff Yiannikos. “I can’t go into it, but we can’t leave her alone. I need to follow her.”

“I’ll go with,” he said.

Myron nodded. They hurried in, following her trail up a hill. A bird cawed in the distance. They kept moving. Nancy glanced behind her, still running, but she didn’t stop or yell back. She wanted to reach Patrick as soon as possible.