“But in three weeks,” he went on, “they gonna move him back here to the Adams County jail—to that cracker Sheriff Billy Byrd’s jail. Then ol’ Pop’s gonna get a taste of real prison life. Yes, sir. It’s gonna be sweet. Karma sho’ is a bitch. You think about that, my brother from a different mother.” Lincoln stabbed a thick forefinger at me. “And you have a blessed day.”

He reached out and waved at Tim Weathers with mock friendliness, then put the truck in gear and peeled out of the parking lot with a shriek of rubber.

I don’t remember what Tim said when he walked up to check on me. Even now, sitting at my kitchen table with an empty cereal bowl staring up at me, I’m not sure why this confrontation returned with such vividness. Maybe because I know that the message I was given by the VK biker will have to be transmitted to my father. And the only person who can do that is me. If I’m going to visit Dad tomorrow, after not speaking to him since before Caitlin’s death, a lot of memories like this are going to boil up out of the darkness at the bottom of my mind. I suppose Lincoln Turner came up first because he’s the living symbol of my father’s sin. His sin, yes, and perhaps also his crime. It was Lincoln who set in motion the murder investigation that ultimately led Shadrach Johnson to charge my father with first-degree murder. And now Lincoln haunts my city—and my family—like some dark, retributive spirit.

“Penn? Are you okay?”

I look up to see Mia Burke pad into the kitchen wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt that falls to midthigh.

“I heard somebody moving around a while ago,” she says. “I thought it might be Tim or one of the guys.”

“No. I just couldn’t sleep.”

She gives me a knowing look. “How could you, after what happened tonight?”

When I don’t answer, she picks up my bowl, takes it to the sink, and begins washing it. In the half light she reminds me of my wife, though Mia looks nothing like Sarah did. Mia is dark-haired, compact, and muscular, where Sarah was light-haired, lithe, and tall, just as Annie is growing to be.

“You been watching that movie?” Mia says, not looking around.

“Not really.”

“There’s hardly any of the original Hemingway story left in it. But Faulkner wrote a lot of the script, I think. It’s kind of a poor man’s Casablanca.”

This is typical Mia, who often sounds thirty rather than twenty, and sometimes a lot older than that. I cannot imagine how I would have handled Annie’s crisis without her.