Robin wasn’t anything like what Summer had expected. She was tanned and easygoing and didn’t seem traumatized at all. Grief hit everyone in different ways, Summer supposed. And when the people you’re mourning are as complicated as Robin’s parents, moving three thousand miles away from the scene of the crime is probably the healthiest thing you can do. Robin was smiling now, a perfect California girl, her big sunglasses glinting. “I have a dog—a yellow lab that used to belong to my aunt. I think that’s pretty much all the family I need.”

“What about your mom?” Summer said. “How do you feel about her now?”

“I feel like she was someone who did a lot of bad things. But she knew it. And she spent her whole life trying to make up for them. I mean, you compare that to my ex-husband, who . . . okay, he didn’t kill anybody but he did a really shitty thing. And all he says is, ‘I’m going to quit my job soon.’ You think that poor woman who lost her entire livelihood because of him gives a shit whether or not he’s adding to his 401(k)?” Robin took a breath. “Wow. Let’s make that last bit off the record.”

“Sure.” Summer took a swig from her thermos of water, and Robin did the same, composing herself. “After she married my dad,” she said, “my mom spent close to ten years, and with two different private investigators, trying to track down her little sister. Did it without his knowledge, apparently. And when she finally found her—a deeply unhappy kid, on her third or fourth foster home—she flew her out to New York, took her in, and tried to convince my dad to let her live with us.”

“But he said no,” Summer said.

“Dad was a shrink,” she said. “Apparently, he knew crazy when he saw it.”

“Yes.”

“Still, though. He paid Jenny’s rent for more than five years out in Los Angeles. Recommended her to the Police Academy out there.” She picked at a nail. “Jenny never told me that.”

“They did some good things, your parents.”

She nodded.

“People are complicated.”

“Families are complicated.”