Eventually, her patience had paid off to the point where the birds would swoop down and perch on her hat as soon as they saw her coming.

Could she get this bird to come to her, too?

It might mean more than this case; it might mean the saving of a woman’s sanity and the salvation of her childrens’ lives. Jennie did not like the increasingly frightened look in Toni Calligan’s eyes whenever she thought she heard her husband’s car in the driveway.

It reminded her more and more of the look she had seen in the eyes of a trapped and helpless deer.

If the rest of her life had not been so hellish, the entrance of Jennie Talldeer into it would have been cause for celebration. For the first time since her marriage to Rod, Toni Calligan had a friend.

She used to have friends; she used to have a lot of them. But Rod had driven them away, one by one, with his sarcastic remarks and his constant badgering questions. Other women got tired of being interrogated about where they had been, where they were going, what they were going to do, and did their own husbands and fathers know about it. They didn’t like the way that Rod watched them when he was home—“As if he thinks I’m going to steal the silverware or turn you into a Moonie,” Frieda Miller had complained. They didn’t like the remarks that one of her former girlfriends had called “sexist.”

But Jennie Talldeer somehow had a sixth sense for when Rod was going to return, and she never visited when he was around, or left any signs that she had ever been there at all. Jennie was bright, fun to talk to, and didn’t seem much like a private investigator at all, just like “one of the girls.”

Best of all, Jennie understood. Even if some of the things she had to say—about husbands in general, admittedly, and never directly accusing Rod—made Toni acutely uncomfortable. Then again, maybe Jennie was simply telling Toni in a roundabout way why she was avoiding Rod. When Jennie was gone, and Toni sat alone over the coffee, she had to admit that what Jennie said made sense.

The things Rod did, to her and to Ryan and Jill—they just weren’t right. All those cruel taunts, and the way he kept trying to frighten Ryan under the guise of “making the boy tough.”

And the scolding sessions that had gone from words to blows. …

True, Toni’s father had never been a very warm or loving man, but he had never hit her mother. Although he had been just as sarcastic and cutting as Rod. He’d always known what to say to just devastate a person.

So did Rod.