More words began to appear on the screen. “She’s typing it right now from another computer. The schoolhouse. The computers must be connected.”

“There’s a light on at the school,” he said, opening the front door. “I’m going up there. Stay here.”

Before she could stop him, he was gone, the door closing behind him. She looked down at the computer screen.

It’s hard to admit, isn’t it? This secret you’ve been keeping all these years. You wanted her dead. You wished it that night on the creek. Loving her was so hard. Sometimes you hated her.

You wanted to be with your sister, with your grandparents in their nice house your mother told you about.

Dulcie had to stop reading to rub her eyes to clear them of tears.

You wanted to be the chosen one who got to leave your mother and didn’t have to listen to her crying at night and laughing with men and that horrible squeak of the bed springs when she told you to go play at the creek.

She’s dead because you

Dulcie stared at the screen. Why had she stopped typing? Russell couldn’t have reached the school yet.

The night was black. Earlier the wind had been hot and stinging. Now as Russell walked up the road, he sensed something had changed.

He looked to the west, past what was left of Old Town Whitehorse, and thought he saw something glitter behind the Little Rockies. Lightning? A low, distant rumble followed.

The air around him suddenly felt cooler, the wind in his face smelling of rain. He couldn’t believe it. Rain? Finally this horrible hot, dry weather would end.

As he neared the schoolhouse, he told himself a lot of things would end tonight. The thought scared him. Dulcie and her sister had been through so much. They were strong, but were they strong enough to face this?

He glanced back, wishing now he hadn’t left Dulcie alone in the house. But bringing her with him was out of the question. He had no idea what he would find at the schoolhouse.

Was there any doubt now that Jolene was the author of the murder story? Was she even aware of it? He could see that, like tonight, she might have gotten up in the middle of the night to write it and then taken the story to the schoolhouse to leave it for her conscious self to find.

How disturbed was Jolene? They’d all thought that her being unable to remember was because she’d seen her mother’s murderer. But what if they’d been wrong? What if she’d killed her mother? That could explain why she’d buried the memory so deep that it could only surface as if someone else was telling the story—and why the town had banned together to protect her.