She ran her hands over the comforter. It was silk and cool to the touch. Smooth. When she put her hands down to lift herself up, she felt something under the hand closest to the headboard.

It was a small notebook, spiral bound, with a unicorn sticker on its purple cover.

Ellie was still at that spot in life that teeters, sometimes unsteadily, toward adulthood.

She smiled, thinking of the girl that had been a joy until the past year. Ellie, Laurna knew, would have been her favorite niece forever, even if she had a thousand nieces. Carrie had complained a little and said that she wondered if she’d make it through dealing with a teenage daughter.

“Mom did,” Laurna had reminded her.

Carrie gave her a knowing smile. “Touché.”

That was the week before the accident.

It was the last time they spoke… Sisterhood is one of the world’s most impenetrable bonds. It can only break if a husband’s mother has something to say about it.

I get up and give Ms. Volkmann some water from a small table behind us. She takes it and starts drinking. I know she’s weighing what she’s about to tell me.

“Honestly,” she goes on, lingering on the word that liars have the hardest time saying with any volition, “I didn’t think much of what she wrote. It was the same kind of teenage angst Carrie and I reveled in when we were her age.”

“What did she write?”

“The usual. I wish my mom or dad would die in a car crash. That kind of thing.”

Her eyes widen some. She wants to say more. I want her to, too.

“All right, it seemed more like a list of ways to get rid of her folks. Not just I hate the world. I made a photocopy. Gave the entire book to the detectives in Port Angeles.”

She pulls a piece of paper from her purse and hands it to me.

She’s right. It is a list.

There are a dozen methods listed, detailing the different ways that Ellie could get rid of her parents. Some have stars against them. Some have been crossed out. It’s like she was trying to decide the best way. Her thought process, fantasy or not, seemed to err on the side of less violent murders. Poison was a possibility. It had a star. Overdosing on drugs also was underlined.

Drowning in a boating accident was the clear favorite. Two stars and two underlines.

She drew an arrow to combine the overdosing and the boating accident.

“It’s what happened,” Laurna says.