Diane drops off our checks. We sit there in silence while I get my wallet from my purse and Dan fishes for his credit card.

“Just thought it was weird,” Dan says as we get up to pay.

“I can’t make sense of it,” I say.

“See you around,” he tells me as we head out the door.

“Welcome back home, Dan. And thank you. I think.”

He reaches over and gives me a quick hug.

“I always liked you, Lee,” Dan says. “Maybe we’ll run into each other soon.”

“Small town,” I say, stepping back, surprised. “I’m sure we will.”

The rest of the morning, I attempt to work through my completely manageable to-do list. The bedding plants that I put out in the spring have bolted with the recent hot weather, and I decide to swap them out with late-summer bachelor buttons and daisies. The white-and-blue combination was always my mother’s favorite, so it became mine. I pick up a flat of each at the Fred Meyer garden store and return home. I start ripping out the old stock and planting the new. I wave at the new neighbors across the street while their kids play in the sprinkler. I’m so preoccupied that I forget to smile. The air is heavy. The kids’ laughter only registers as an annoyance.

All the while, I think about what Dan told me at Sister’s. I can’t make sense of why Adam would want to put Aubrey up for adoption. He seemed to be a doting father. He was adamant about wanting to protect Aubrey from the Flynns.

When I go back inside, the letter sent to my home from Connor Moss draws me like a magnet. I opened it and set it aside, meaning to bring it into work for the case file, now closed. I fill a glass with tap water and sit down. Millicent is immediately on my lap and looking for some attention. The letter is dated a few weeks after Connor was processed and sent to the prison, all of which took a fraction of the time it usually does, like the system just couldn’t wait to welcome him in. His handwriting is a little shaky. I wonder about that. Was he nervous? Scared? Desperate? No doubt all three.

Dear Det. Husemann,