With an hour to go and my brain in overdrive, I called my mother. She answered right away.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said. Dishes clattered in the background. She was cleaning up the kitchen. “I was hoping to see you before you left again. Blink and I miss you these days.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. My mother and I hadn’t talked one-on-one since that awkward conversation with Felicia, and I wasn’t sure she’d forgiven me for insinuating her sister’s guilt. “We had an emergency up at the river.”

“The river? But isn’t your evaluation today?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Good. That’s good.” I waited for her to ask how I was feeling, if I was ready, but she let it alone. “I owe you an apology,” she said instead. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry with you the other day when you asked those questions about Fee. It’s always been my job to defend her. I take it too seriously sometimes.”

I suspected that was true. I wasn’t sure I’d ever make sense of how much my mother overlooked about Felicia’s condition back then. Maybe she, like me with Abe, hadn’t wanted to see the ugliness we knew instinctively was there.

“I get it,” I said. “I was out of line—and way off base. I guess you heard about Russell Loming?”

She clicked her tongue. “Can you imagine? Russell was a miscreant, but he and Brett were friends. Inseparable.”

“That’s the thing about money,” I said. “It can come between anyone. How does Felicia feel?”

Her sigh was heavy, a full body release. “Grateful, I think. She’s just happy to put this behind her. We all are. Your father and I are helping her organize a memorial for Brett. You’ll come, won’t you?”

Where would things stand with Bram by then? When my family learned who he was, there would be no public gathering to celebrate Brett’s life. Shame and fear would send them into hiding from friends and neighbors. From him. I didn’t know how to answer my mother. It didn’t matter. In the background, voices spoke in low, urgent tones. “Hang on,” said Mom. “Something’s happening here.”

The line went quiet. Before me, the road stretched over a hill so steep I couldn’t see the other side. On the line, I heard my mother yip like a dog in pain.

“Mom?”

Like a camera coming into focus, my parents’ kitchen sharpened in my mind, and what I saw hit me like a bucket of icy water. Bram had left Trey’s tooth in my parents’ mailbox. In A-Bay, he’d gone a step further and broken into Mac’s cottage to take Whiskey. What if his need to violate the lives of the people closest to me had driven him back to my parents’ place?

What if he was in their house right now?

“Mom?”

Trembling, I slowed my speed and pulled over onto the shoulder. Doug and my father were with her, I recognized the pitch and pattern of their speech, but the inflection was off. What I picked up in their voices now was alarm. I was hours away from Swanton. If Bram was there, I’d never arrive in time. Not them. Not my family. The hysteria I felt was blinding. I was about to hang up and plead with Harmison for help when Doug came on the line.