Creek nodded, seeming reassured, and they rode the rest of the way back to Midnight in near silence. “I’m just worried about the darn pictures,” she said, when they got close to town.

Were the Lovells in the witness protection program or something? Fiji wondered. What was the deal with the Lovell family and pictures? With being noticed? But there was absolutely nothing she could do about the pictures that were surely all over the Internet now, and she was a bit tired of Creek’s company; plus, there was the Midnight habit of respecting secrets. So she made no response.

27

The next afternoon, Bobo retraced Fiji’s route to Buffalo Plain. He’d talked to Fiji that morning in her yard: she’d finally made a start at getting out all her Halloween decorations. She’d climbed down from a ladder to tell him about the funeral.

She’d looked preoccupied, and cold, wrapped up in the battered zip-up jacket she wore for yard work. He himself was wearing his old brown corduroy coat with the toggle fastenings, a relic from his college days. Fall had declared itself overnight. The sky was a brilliant blue with a cloud scattered here and there to emphasize how radiant the day was, but the chilling wind blew steadily from the west. It tossed the leaves through the air, forcing them to somersault before drifting to the ground.

Bobo stopped to fill up his tank and get a cup of coffee in Marthasville, and the grackles in the trees around the gas station were full of noisy conversation. One strutted on the ground by his truck and cast a bright eye up at him, as if wondering if he were a source of food.

“Not today, bird,” he said, and the grackle flew away to tell its comrades. Most people hated grackles, but Bobo had enjoyed them since he’d moved to Texas. They seemed to tell each other everything.

Bobo’s old Garmin got him to the cemetery with only a moment of uncertainty. He spotted the fresh grave right away; it was covered with withering flowers. To his dismay, he was not alone. There was another mourner. Since the cemetery was a dead end (Yeah, pretty ironic, huh?), there was no way for him to leave unobtrusively. He decided to accept whatever was going to happen. He got out of his truck. The small form beside the grave turned to face him, and he saw it was a woman. After a second, Bobo recognized her as Aubrey’s mother. Aubrey had kept a picture of her parents on her side of the bed.

Though Bobo dreaded this encounter, it was impossible to back down. He walked toward her, doing his best to look as nonthreatening as a big strange man in an isolated spot possibly could appear to a lone woman.