“I know. Who do you think I should call first?”

“Who do you want to call first? I look at it this way. You have all their addresses. You don’t have to call unless you want to be socially correct. You can just pop in to say hello and wait to see what develops. For starters, first thing tomorrow morning, Lola has something she wants hand-delivered to the new police chief. You could do that for me, saving me a trip into town. That will then become your first contact. From there, I’d stop by Mr. Danson’s office. Hell, girl, I’d hit them all, one after the other. Surprise them! From that point on, the next move will be up to them. That’s when you sit back and wait to see what develops.”

“Okay, I think I can handle all that.”

“I don’t think you can, I know you can,” Mandy said.

“Do you think I should go out to the grove before I meet my old friends? Just thinking about that place gives me the jitters. I know I have to do it, and the sooner the better.”

Mandy patted Cady’s shoulders. “There’s no time like the present.”

Cady bit down on her lip. Her heart started to pound as soon as Mandy left the room. Atlas looked up at her as he nudged her leg. “I guess she’s right. There’s no time like the present. Let’s go, boy.”

The drive through town was uneventful until she came to the street where she’d lived as a child. She turned the corner at the last second and drove down the street until she came to the small Cape Cod house. She pulled to the side of the road and stared up at the house. The swing was still on the porch. The shrubbery looked the same, just bigger and thicker. She wasn’t sure, but she thought there was a new roof on the house. The cement driveway still had the crack up the middle, and the curb was still painted yellow.

Did children live in the house? She wished she knew. What did it look like inside? When she’d lived there it had had a temporary feeling to it. Everything in her and her parents’ lives had been temporary back then. She wished there were fond memories of this house for her to draw on, but there weren’t any. It was just a house. There was nothing special about it except maybe the swing and the old wooden screen door on the back porch. Maybe there were memories, and she just couldn’t remember them. Except mealtime. Those hellish hours when she had to sit with her hands folded in her lap while her father droned on and on about starving people, homeless people, sinful, wicked people like Lola. She always hated the part where, just as the food got cold, he’d stand up, wave his arms, stomp his feet, and shout to the heavens as he blessed everything and everyone, even his sinful mother. The words were always the same, his actions the same. Even her mother was the same. She’d stare at the calendar over the kitchen counter. She never blinked either. Cady wished now that she hadn’t come here, wished she hadn’t remembered those ugly mealtimes.