Hadn’t she thought there might be someone else, an accomplice to the murderer who had helped him or her stay free the past twenty-four years?

But she’d discarded the theory when Finnegan Amherst had been arrested for the murder. The rainmaker was a loner, an outsider. No one in this town would have helped him.

“You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that after reading this again...” He met her gaze. “The writer is too intimate with what happened.”

“Of course he is. The killer’s the only one who knows the whole story.”

“Except for Angel.”

Dulcie felt her breath rush from her lungs. “You think she’s writing it. That’s she’s always been the author.”

“I think it’s possible. Maybe more than possible. She repressed the past and yet she took this teaching job. What if her writing the murder story is Angel’s way of dealing with her past?”

She bit her lip to hold back the tears. “What happens if she writes an ending to the murder story and it’s on that empty desk in the morning where she found the others?”

“She’ll know the truth,” he said flatly.

Dulcie felt ice slide up her spine. “Russ, no. You can’t think... She was only five. She couldn’t—”

“I don’t want to believe it either, Dulcie. But—”

“No. It was the rainmaker. He had the locket—” She felt the tears on her cheeks. Not her sister.

Her fury at her grandparents gripped her heart like a fist. How could they have left Angel behind, left her in such an awful situation? It didn’t matter if Laura refused to give up Angel. They should have taken her anyway. They should never have separated her from her older sister.

“I’m going to call her,” Dulcie said.

“Be careful what you say,” Russell said behind her. “I’m afraid of what she might do when she remembers.”

Dulcie didn’t hear him as she listened to her sister’s message.

Jolene stared at the light through the trees. She felt the faint push of memory. The feel of the warm creek water on her bare feet. The night pitch-black. The scorching wind carrying the scent of dust and dry grass and the smell of desperation.

Crying on the bank of the creek, rubbing her eyes with her fists, her hands as dirty as her clothing. Her stomach aching because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. A bowl of cereal.

She’d gone home for lunch, but her mother had been napping and the refrigerator was empty. Was that when she’d first gotten really scared? She’d kept telling herself that her mommy would get better.

Jolene had a flash of memory: her mother sitting across from her, talking too fast, scary happy, eyes too bright just as she’d seen her before, too many times.