He reached inside one of the boxes and extracted a leather-bound Bible, its cover rubbed and smooth. With a puff of his lips, he blew dust off it. Stride turned it over in his hands and then flipped through the tissue-thin pages. The corners were worn and well thumbed.

“Did that belong to Cindy?” Serena asked.

“Her father.”

He tried to remember a time when he had seen William Starr without this Bible in his hand. It was always there, propping him up like a crutch.

“Cindy was different after he died,” he said.

“We all are.”

Stride nodded, but he didn’t put the Bible down. “This was something else. I saw a change in her. Back then, I thought it was grief, but now I realize it was more than that. It was Tish.”

26
___________

Maggie stopped in the town of Gary on Saturday afternoon to visit Clark Biggs, but the house was empty. His truck was gone. She left a handwritten note wedged inside the screen door and used a cell phone to leave a message on his answering machine. She was worried about him. This was the worst time, in the days after a child died. More than once, she had witnessed a double tragedy, when a child was killed and a parent committed suicide soon after.

At the highway, she turned south toward Fond du Lac, rather than heading north to the city. It was her day off, but she wanted to go back to the park where Mary Biggs had died. There was nothing more she could learn from the scene, but she often returned to places where crimes had occurred, as if echoes of what had happened, or what the victim saw, could still make their way into her brain. It was superstition, but she believed in it. It was also the perfect day to wander on the trails near the St. Louis River.

The heat hadn’t broken. The afternoon sun blistered the pavement. She kept her Avalanche ice cold as she drove, shivering in her spaghetti-strap top and white shorts. Her small feet barely reached the pedals. As she neared the gold reflections of the river at Perch Lake Park, she could see a flotilla of multicolored sailboats squeezed into the narrow inlets. Motor-boats dragged teenagers through the waves in old tires. On the shore of the nearest island, she spied rows of near-naked bodies, their bare flesh baking on beach towels.

Maggie got out of her Avalanche and adjusted her burgundy sunglasses. She took a seat on the nearest bench, pulled her legs underneath her, and tilted her face to the sky, relishing the sunlight. When she opened her eyes, she realized that, like Mary, she was alone here. Everyone else had someone with them to share the day. Husbands had wives. Mothers had sons and daughters. Boys had brothers. Even the old men walking by themselves had dogs on a leash.

Maggie thought it again. She wanted a child. Someone to raise, take care of, and be with. It was easy to wish for something when you couldn’t have it.