At the other end of the state, his daughter was packing up her things, getting in the car. He wanted to be there when she got home.

You have a kid. You have our kid. You have no backup.

And yet that was such bullshit. He knew his wife. The ghost he felt was nothing but his nerves. If Bets were really here? His bold and mighty wife? She would damn well go in there and get Bree’s boy.

He said a quick and silent prayer, then stood up straight, reaching for the glass.

22

I begged. I kept begging, long after I knew that it would do no good. She was unshiftable, but still I wept and groveled, trying to buy Marshall enough time to find the hidden cabin. It was a one-note role for me; it was Coral who changed as I pleaded and cried. She grew sadder and softer and more and more at peace. Almost relaxed. Or fatalistic. Her sweaty sheen had gone.

I begged until she held up her hand, silencing me. “You aren’t going to call him up. I understand. Deep down in you, you must know that he won’t come. He won’t walk up those steps and do what must be done.” Her voice was gentle, gentle with me, but I could hear scorn for Trey in her tone.

With a wild flash of hope, I thought, Maybe this is a test. If Trey comes up to face her, maybe that will be enough. Or he’ll have to actually drink the cup, to prove his courage, his goodness. It will turn out to be only English Breakfast, brewed strong and black and scary.

But I did not believe it. I was not in the after-school-special version of revenge, here to learn a valuable lesson and then go home with my son and my husband to live a more virtuous life. I’d woken up in the world my mother had always believed in, where strangers had the worst intentions and disaster crouched a breath away, waiting for me to blink.

Only two days had passed since I’d watched Spencer redden and heave and spew bloody foam onto the grass. This woman had engineered that death. She was genuinely sorry she hadn’t been there to see him buck and die in agony. This was a woman who had spoken with simple, sad authority about the difficulties of pushing a three-year-old under the water and holding him there.

I argued anyway, feeling each good second I was buying creep past. “You don’t know him. He will come, if I go to the edge and wave. He’ll come right up.”