“Oh, I know that all too well. She still worships him.”

Mia squeezes my hand, then releases it. “Listen . . . your mom thinks you blame your father for Caitlin’s death. And she’s right, isn’t she?”

“Yes, to a point. But to tell you the truth . . . right now I’m worried about his sanity. I’m thinking of asking Drew to go talk to him. Evaluate him.”

Mia folds her arms across her chest and looks at me with a familiarity I haven’t experienced since Caitlin was alive. “I’m going to go out on a limb here,” she says, “because somebody needs to.”

“What do you want to say?”

“Do you think Caitlin blamed your father for her death?”

“What?” I ask, unsure whether I’ve heard her correctly.

“I mean out there in the swamp, when she was dying. Did she blame him?”

A blast of anger surges through me, and I want to snap back at her. But then I remember Caitlin’s voice during her Treo memo, telling me not to blame anyone but her for her solo trip to the Bone Tree. An electric tingle races along my arms. It’s not as if any of this is new information, but—

“Stop blaming your father,” Mia advises. “At least until you know all the facts. Caitlin and I weren’t exactly BFF, but the lady had her shit together. She was the closest thing to a role model I could find in this town. And I think that’s what she would say to you now, if she could. Cut your father some slack.”

The ring of my cell phone spares me from having to respond to Mia’s plea—which in truth sounds like Caitlin speaking from the grave.

I’m half expecting the caller to be Serenity, but the phone says unknown number. Usually I don’t answer such calls, but with the situation this fluid and the stakes so high, I can’t afford to ignore this one.

“Penn Cage,” I answer.

“Penn, it’s Doris Avery.”

A premonition of danger moves through me. “Is everything all right?”

“There’s no emergency, if that’s what you mean. But I was wondering if you could come by for a brief talk.”

“With Quentin?”

“Quentin’s asleep.”

I look away from Mia’s questioning eyes and try to guess what has prompted this call. “Are you at Edelweiss?”

“Yes. I’m out on the gallery.”

“I’m only a few blocks away. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Hurry, Penn. Please.”

Chapter 34

Edelweiss has two staircases that ascend to the gallery like the legs of a capital A. As I climb the right staircase in search of Doris Avery, the orange eye of a cigarette appears from the darkness under the north gallery above me. I smelled the tobacco smoke from half a block away, but the overhead lights are off, so I didn’t see Doris. Even now, her coffee-colored skin seems to drift in and out of the dark. Only her eyes, which catch the light from the streetlamp on the bluff, remain constant in the gloom.