“Still. We should find that name.” Iris stands. “I’m making Ned and Mike dinner tonight, but I’ll start on it after that.”

Francie takes a deep breath. “Let us try to find out who this couple is that scared her. You’ve got your hands full.”

Iris sits back down. Maybe the reason Danielle died has nothing to do with her family. The relief, the terrible guilty relief, hits her. She’s shaking, visibly quaking, and then the tears start, and Francie is murmuring apologies and holding her, and then they’re all holding her, crying, mistaking the reason for her tears.

21

Kyle

Iris has gone to have coffee with the Danielle Fan Club. Kyle is wrapping his head around the fact that the bloodied library bag he hid in the tree is now gone.

Taken. Someone has taken it.

He tries to convince himself that maybe some wild animal in the greenbelt smelled the blood and dragged it out of the tree.

Sure. That could be it. Right?

Maybe Grant is still using the tree. To hide stuff, and he found it. This is worse. Is his son going to take it to the police? It has Danielle’s name on it. It has blood (his) on it.

He goes up to his son’s room. Grant is lying on his bed, watching something on his iPad.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“Everything all right?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Grant says.

“Mom’s going to be home soon to cook dinner for Mike and Peter and Ned and his dad,” he says. “You want to help her? You could take food to Mike.” He knows his son admires Mike, enjoys spending time with him. It’s as if Kyle earned nothing with all the diaper changing and the sleepless nights. He started working so much when Grant turned six, he frittered all the good-dad karma away.

“Sure, I’ll help her,” Grant says.

Kyle has no way to ask him about the library bag. His gaze dances around the room, wondering where Grant would hide it. But then he thinks, This is ridiculous. Grant would tell us if he found something like that. Wouldn’t he? Of course he would.

“I have to run a quick errand,” he says. “I’ll be back before Mom is home. Will you all be OK here?”

Grant nods.

“Don’t answer the door,” Kyle says. “If it’s the press.”

“Yeah,” Grant says.

“Anything you want to tell me?”

Grant’s eyes widen slightly. “No, Dad,” he says.

*  *  *

Kyle has to push the library bag out of his mind. If someone has found it and taken it to the police, they have no way of knowing it’s his blood. No reason to test him for a match. Right?

But who would know to look in that tree? Grant and Iris, maybe Julia remembers it.

Or someone saw you hide the bag there and took it.