“Blueberry muffin,” he said, and his face registered such joy when he held the treat in his own two hands that Leah nearly laughed out loud. She ordered a latte and was feeling a sense of accomplishment until she saw Bobby Jackson and his dad, Elmer, staring at her from a corner table, and then the days and days of rain, rain near impossible for Colorado, rain like three monsoon seasons, seemed to dampen the whole café, everyone suddenly on edge. I could grab Tyler and run. I could just go and never ever come back. But Bobby was walking toward her, his face unreadable, and her body, gone stiff, did not respond to her brain's frantic flight signals.

“Haven't seen you around, Leah.” She found it unsettling, Bobby's calm, like there was nothing difficult between them.

“Can't imagine you saw the front page this morning.” Elmer joined them, handing her a copy of the local newspaper. “Can't imagine you'd be out in town today if you had.”

“Dad,” Bobby said, but he didn't make eye contact, not with Leah, not with Elmer.

“Can I have a donut?” Tyler's face was sticky, his shirt covered in crumbs.

Leah lifted him onto a nearby chair. “Eat your muffin, buddy.” She looked at the newspaper and rubbed both her eyes. The feeling was familiar, half shame, half anger, an ache in her gut like a battered funny bone, a pain she couldn't keep herself from coming back to, over and over, even when she was alone. The article was an exposé of the case, a year ago, that had sent her now ex-husband, Andy, a police officer, to prison. Andy had become convinced that Bobby, an old friend of theirs from high school, a friend to everyone in town, was cooking meth in the abandoned sugar mill that Elmer had bought cheap at the auction after the bankruptcy. There had been months of surveillance before Andy finally called in the SWAT team, who'd found nothing but some old Mason jars full of suspicious powder and a room full of flea-bitten jackrabbit pelts.