“She fought depression, and it was worse in the winter.” For the first time, she really heard those words. “I thought that someday it would simply consume me, and I’d be lost to myself.”

That, probably, Echo could understand.

“That’s why she left?”

“I guess. And she had a dream she wanted to pursue. Dad wanted to stay, so she made the choice for him.”

It felt a little rough to say it that way, but in the end, that was the easy math. “Funny, I always told myself it was an accident, as if she didn’t want to leave me. That maybe Dad or I did something to make her go.”

“And you feared making that same mistake, doing something that would cause someone you loved to leave.”

She looked up at Barry. “I did do that, if you recall.”

“Dodge made his own choices. Sure, he was hurt, but don’t you blame yourself for his mistakes or . . . your mother’s.”

“Maybe they weren’t mistakes. She’s won awards and is the head of her department down in Anchorage.”

“Oh?”

She didn’t know what it was about Barry Kingston, but she could never lie to him. “I saw her. Yesterday. When Dodge and I brought in that Jane Doe.”

“You saw your mother?”

“Spoke to her.”

He crouched and began building a fire in the hearth. “Hmm.”

“I know.” She handed him some tinder from the woodbox. “I don’t know why—I just suddenly found myself in her office. She had a picture I’d taken hanging on her wall. She was just as surprised to see me.”

“Really?”

“She apologized—sorta. Asked me to forgive her.”

He said nothing, just kept building the fire.

“I probably already have. I mean, I’m an adult now. I don’t need my mother anymore.”

“You don’t?” He added paper, the tinder, the kindling. Just like Dodge had done it at the cabin, of course.

She handed him a long match from a box on the mantel. “No. I have my dad, and . . . myself. I don’t need anybody.”

The fire lit, crackled. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need anyone.”

Probably, that was true.

“Forgiveness isn’t for the person you’re forgiving, Echo. It’s for yourself. It’s what you do to be set free.”

“I’m free—”

“Are you? Anger is like a virus. It steals hope, tells you lies, makes you vulnerable to more anger. It keeps burrowing deeper until it burns into your soul. But forgiveness is the cure. It’s how you start to heal.”

“She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Nope. But that’s not the point,” he said.

“I was nine years old.”