“You just knew her for so long. Friend and neighbor. And she made such an impact in your life with Grant.”

“I might not be able to keep my composure,” she says slowly.

“But you are a poet, with your songs. And you speak to groups of parents all the time.”

“It’s not the same. You should. She loved you.” Did Danielle love him? Iris doesn’t know. She hopes she did. That there was happiness, and contentment, between Danielle and this gentle bear of a man.

“I can’t do it,” Mike says. “I don’t want to lose it in front of Ned and Peter. If you cannot, then perhaps Kyle.”

This keeps getting worse. “Doesn’t Danielle have family?”

“Her dad left them when she was young, and her mother died about eight years ago. Cancer.”

“Oh. Yes.” She’d sent flowers; it was the decent thing to do.

“And she was an only child and not close to any other relatives. All of us here in Winding Creek were her family.”

“Of course,” Iris hears herself say.

“If you’ll talk to Kyle about the eulogy and about Ned’s situation, I would appreciate it.”

“Yes.”

“And, Iris?”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any idea who would have wanted to hurt her?” His voice is a low rumble, and she hears a cold threat in it. Not to her. But he’s mad. He’s hurt. He wants to hurt whoever did this. She understands.

She meets his gaze. She’s never been afraid of Mike, but now she is, a little. A smart, capable man with a good cause can be a dangerous thing. “I can’t think of anyone who wished her ill. Surely this has to be random. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I wonder,” he says. “The police questioned me. I understand why. I was fishing with Peter, yes, but she could have been killed before we went out on the lake. As if…as if I could kill her and then go spend time with my son.” Now she sees how close to losing it he is.

“Oh, Mike.”

“We did not spend the night together. I was at my house, since I was going to get up early to fish, and she was at hers.”

“Mike, I know you couldn’t hurt her,” she says, because it’s what one says, she supposes, in this situation.

“We don’t know what people are capable of. You, or me, or Kyle,” he says. “In Czechoslovakia, under the heel of the Soviets, children informed on their parents. Parents on each other.” He meets her gaze again. “People are good until they are not.”