We did, and it was long and strange, almost incantatory, a hint of music to the whole thing, like she was chanting at us.

“Amen,” said Grandma. “Now eat up, kids. We got us a whole day ahead.”

Two bites into my food I heard the sound of an engine, tires crunching up the gravel driveway. I dropped my fork.

“Horace,” I said.

He had found us. We were too late. We should have gone to the police days ago. We should have gone the moment we got to Grandma’s house.

I jumped up and ran to the window.

A police cruiser. Oh shit.

But no, it wasn’t Horace’s, it was a different make and model. This one was older, dustier, like something out of a cop movie from the ’70s.

“Ah,” said Grandma behind me at the window. “That’ll be Sheriff Bearden.” Any trace of fear or surprise had fallen from her face, and she seemed calm and contented. “Told y’all he would be coming sooner or later. I’ve known Sheriff Bearden for a long time, and he is a man of his word.”

Sheriff Bearden was a lanky guy in his sixties with a beer belly and a leery eye. He climbed out of the car and walked up the drive with the slow, wide-legged strut that comes with years of unchallenged authority. He even wore a fucking cowboy hat.

“Y’all go sit on back down now,” said Grandma. “I’ll let Sheriff Bearden in.”

Murphy and I sat at the table and waited. Soon Sheriff Bearden sauntered into the kitchen, Grandma following close behind.

“Howdy, y’all,” he said. “Lee, is it? And Murphy?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. We shook hands. He dead-fished me, hand limp and damp. Man, Mom would have broken his hand if he had tried to pull that shit on her.

“Sorry about your momma,” said Sheriff Bearden. “Always did like her. Fine-looking girl.”

“Thanks,” said Murphy, gritting her teeth. “I’m sure she would have loved hearing that from you.”

I shot Murphy a look like Cool it already. She rolled her eyes at me.

“Hungry, Sheriff?” said Grandma.

“Why, I could take a pancake or two,” he said, and winked.

He sat down, took off his hat, and placed it on the table. Grandma set a plate before him, and we waited while Sheriff Bearden ate. And oh man, did he ever eat. That guy drowned everything, even his sausage, in syrup until his plate looked like a stew. And the way he chewed—big gobbing mouthfuls of food, the biggest bites you ever saw. He didn’t just eat his breakfast, he massacred it.

“Now, kids,” he said, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “I already heard it from your grandmother over there, but I want to hear the story from y’all. Every bit of it, from the beginning.”

So I told him everything that had happened, Murphy hopping in on the details. We started with Mom’s weird behavior, the fight, her death, and the adoption papers we found in Horace’s car. The whole time Sheriff Bearden stared squint-eyed at me and didn’t blink or make a sound or even really move much. It was like talking to a switched-off robot of a man.