We finished up, and Laney saw me to the door. I waved, a strange tingling in my chest as I climbed into the car. I put the feeling down to nerves. It was only a matter of time before this woman found out who I was, and most likely that realization would come swiftly, when an employee asked about the bird, perhaps, and she described me. She had run my credit card and failed to notice the different surname, but that was a lucky break. In a couple of days, if Peeper survived, I’d come back in to pick the bird up and find Dr. Bass’s warm smile had soured into the uncomfortable grimace I was used to seeing on the faces of most people I dealt with.

A heavy heart is best lightened by work. Though the sun was only just rising over the tips of the blue mountains across the lake, I parked beside my house and went right out the back. The birds marched out of their coop like they weren’t missing one of their number. I took the grain container from the edge of the porch and poured out a handful, settling among the birds as they stabbed hungrily at my palm with their beaks, spilling grain everywhere. Woman, the mother of the geese and the only pure white bird, stood at the back and eyed me without reducing herself to the indignity of hand-feeding.

In fact, I’d already cleaned out my goose coop and their water trays with a pressure cleaner the day before, because this was an important day, one I had been counting down to.

My daughter Lillian, who was almost three, was coming to visit me in my home for the first time.

My cleaning efforts had not been so much inspired by a desire to impress her as to impress her mother, my ex-wife, Kelly. After my arrest our marriage had dissolved, and she’d since taken up with a man who worked in the fitness industry, like her. Things were serious between them, and had been for some time. I didn’t know if Jett, the boyfriend, really believed the accusation against me, or if he was just a territorial dick, but I did know he was completely against leaving Lillian with me for several nights. The house needed to be clean, orderly, safe, welcoming. That meant fungus-free. I went around the side of the house to grab the pressure cleaner for a second round and stopped dead at the sight of the police car in my driveway.

I stared at the two officers as they exited the vehicle and headed toward me.