“I’m okay, Bro,” I say. “Let’s see what the police find out. They’re on it. One of them is Lee Husemann.”

“Kip’s little sis?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Small world.”

We talk a bit more, and I hang up and go back to my whiskey.

I make my way to the sauna and turn on the thermostat. I think of my dad and how he disparaged Sophie as though it was something that I’d wanted him to do. How my mom invoked God and then started to pray while my phone cut in and out. It didn’t matter. Saying her prayer was more important than God or anyone else hearing it.

The sauna is off the kitchen. It’s heated by a Swedish electric firebox and lined in knot-free cedar planking. Opening the door after turning it on is to invite a blast of hot air in the face. It’s a slap! It’s about right for how I feel at the moment. I’ve stripped off my clothes and grabbed a towel, which I wrap loosely around my waist. I sit on the wooden bench and let the heat make the sweat from my forehead roll down and catch up with my tears.

Despite what people think about me at the office or in my private life, I’m not heartless. I feel things. I truly do. I just don’t see the need to make a big deal out of my feelings. I’m allowed this. I am alone. My wife is gone. I know that whatever happens next will take a course all its own.

Can’t control the world. Can’t really regulate the people around you. Never could.

A half hour later, I pass out on the sofa, bottle in hand.

Next thing I know, my phone buzzes like a swarm of killer bees. It’s nine a.m. Shit. I overslept. How could I?

A text from my brother reads: Check your Facebook.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LEE

It’s nearly eleven, Saturday evening, when I leave the office, and I’m wired from seeing Adam and the trauma of what he’s going through. I catch the scent of the fireworks display that had just echoed over Oakland Bay Junior High’s field—one of the highlights of Shelton’s annual Forest Festival. I breathe it in. To the outsider, such a celebration is corny, I’m sure. I don’t care. This is who we are. Logging competitions and a Paul Bunyan parade compete for our town’s attention with one of those rickety traveling carnivals every Memorial Day weekend. The logging competition with springboard, hot-saw, and standing-blade categories is the biggest crowd pleaser in a place that was built on sawdust-strewn ground. I ran for Queen of the Forest when I was seventeen but didn’t make it. Most every girl in town tries out.

Even today.

I still have my grandmother’s pretty emerald-green and silver-embroidered sash from her reign in 1948. After she died, my mom was going to throw it out, but I saved it from the trash bin. I loved my grandma more than anything. She never let me forget that after everything that happened to me, I was going to be all right.