Entering Tom’s study, Roxy could see the aging desktop computer was humming with no fewer than twenty open internet searches and a Word document. She fought the urge to peek at it, but remembered the time Lynn had caught her flipping through files when she was supposed to be looking for the remote to the TV in the den.

“Never, ever, are you to know what I’m doing,” Lynn had said. “You’re already at risk and have been unfairly scrutinized because of me. I can’t drag you down further. Promise me, Roxy. Promise me.”

Roxy had begun to protest and accidentally hit the side of the desk. It was like pouring gasoline on the fire of the nagging pain in her hip from where that Colorado thug had struck her and tossed her into the snow. She’d grimaced and said something about being tougher than old rawhide—with the skin to match—but she’d grudgingly vowed.

She’d felt better knowing that Lynn wasn’t alone in her work, that after some significant time and discussions shared only between them, Tom turned over his study to his wife. Even after a lifetime seeing the wrinkles on his forehead deepen from handling crisis after crisis, domestic and international, she’d never seen him look as grim as he did after Lynn allowed him to join in her research. It was no wonder he made the decision he did, as much as it shocked the country and, ultimately, fractured his family.

Roxy’s attention was caught by a small video in the corner of the screen, playing on a continuous loop that reset every few moments. Roxy looked closer, putting on her glasses, which hung from a multicolored lanyard around her neck. The video was from an entertainment news show. It had a broad, dramatic headline beneath the image of a handsome, redheaded young man: “WHERE IS WILLIAM NOW?”

Roxy sighed and turned away. She knew exactly where Lynn was.

Through the house she marched, out the porch door, and into the garden once again. She swept past the Rose Peddler, hoping Lynn’s oldest daughter, Anne, would be late in arriving this morning to open the garden shop at ten. Especially fragile these days, it always made Anne nervous to see her mother emerge from the woods.

Roxy cleared her throat, to prepare to yell. It was her only option, given that her friend was deep within the trees, separated from the outside world by the sky-high iron fence. Not long after they’d returned from Colorado all those years ago, Lynn had the fence erected to surround the entire woods. No one, not even Tom, knew the pass code to enter through the hidden gate.