I managed to put on a smile. If Grant was a daily reminder of what had happened, then I could deal with Danielle. “I want Ned at Lakehaven High when the time comes,” she said. “And his father agrees it’ll be best for him.” But she couldn’t meet my gaze.

So that was how she could afford the house. Gordon, helping out. I had wondered.

“The schools are great,” I agreed. Grant moved on to go see the house’s interior and its backyard with Ned and Julia.

“Iced tea?” My tone made it sound like I was offering arsenic.

“Sure.”

We went inside my house and I closed the door. I kept my voice friendly but low. “There must be dozens of houses for sale in Lakehaven, yet you pick the one closest to us. Really?”

“It’s a great house. We each have our own lives. And…It. Never. Happened.”

I felt sick. Tired. “I dreamed about her the other night. It happens less often now, but I worry, what about when I’m old and losing my mind in the nursing home? What if I trip up and say something to Grant. What if he finds out?”

“You’re the only mother he’s ever known.”

“Because of what happened.” I shook my head. “Of all the cul-de-sacs in Lakehaven, she walks into mine.” I tried to make it light, ease the tension. It was wrong, thoughtless. There is no way to do that.

“I gave you this great life,” she said suddenly. “And you dare to stand there and judge me. To look down on me. If we hadn’t done what we did, then either we’d both be dead, or she’d have your son. And you’d be in a Russian prison.”

“We?”

“Both our hands were on the gun.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep well at night.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to raise that boy. You’ll never tell him the truth. Of what you did or who you are. You’re too scared he’d turn away from you.”

“You’ll never tell either.”

Were we testing each other, then? Wondering if either would tell? Nothing to be gained by it. It was mutually assured destruction.

“Was her body ever found?”

“No.”

“But we left her in that town.” The abandoned town, where no one apparently went, not even drug addicts looking for a place to rest and hide and shoot up. It wasn’t that far from Saint Petersburg. It made me wonder. “What was the name of the town?” There had been a sign but only in Russian. She knew enough Russian.

“Bukharin,” she said, as if reluctant to say the name aloud.

“You never told me,” I said.

“Why would you need to know? You were never there. None of us were.”

I had no answer to that. “I don’t think you moving here is a coincidence, Danielle.”