I never said a word. I was twelve—who would have believed me? Or if they did believe me, would I then be blamed for putting our family in danger? I got blamed for everything else, after all. And the truth was, some part of me didn’t want him to be caught. I had no idea what his crime was—he could have been a child murderer for all I knew—but on a basic, bone-deep level, I wanted everybody who was running from something to get away from it.

I don’t know if he ever got caught. I’d half convinced myself over the years that I’d imagined it. It was a different person. A coincidence.

In appearance, Hugh couldn’t have been more different from that man in the car, but there was something about him that brought that day in Florida to mind. He had a furtiveness. A haunted shade about him. He looked like a fugitive. And that same old instinct rose in me, the salute of a fellow survivor. I wished him a successful escape.

If I’d known all of this that night, I wonder if I’d have felt the same way.

I listen for voices around the house in the back garden but hear only the wind shaking the leaves above me.

A branch—not even, a twig—falls down a few feet in front of me, and I gasp, holding my chest to keep my frantic heart in place. It could have been a branch. It could have been farther back, or I could have been walking faster. Twigs fall all the time, but this feels like a warning.

I have to see my children. Now. I pick up the pace, away from the tree-lined drive, a beeline to the servants’ entrance.

Before I reach the kitchen door, Jo flies out to intercept me.

Her voice is carefully hushed. “Another.”

It takes me a second to meet her eyes and realize she’s scanning my face with worry—asking, not telling. Relief washes through me.

“Oh, I … No! Not that I know of. Not—” I can’t bring myself to say, “Not yet.” It doesn’t need saying.

“Thank God.” She squints past me, to where Matthew disappeared beyond the converging lines of wych elms. “You looked like something had happened. It’s all hitting you in waves, isn’t it?”

So much of it. Not all of it. Not yet.

2:30 P.M.

They’re coming now, the people of Lute, and the garden is filling with voices. Word has spread, and now my neighbors are gathering to help what can’t be helped while I watch, mute, knuckles pressed to my lips so hard my teeth cut into them. They’re dressing the body that was Avery mere hours ago, wrapping her in pure white bedsheets, lifting her with gentle care, and, four to a corner, bearing her away.