“Your whole fucked-up family’s better off dead.” His arm was wrapped around my shoulders, his breath hot on my ear. “It’s pathetic. There were three of you out there, and it took you twenty fucking years to figure this out.”

“Three,” I croaked. “What are you talking about?”

“That weird little freak,” said Robbie. “He showed up on his bike when I was in the woods with Brett. A few minutes sooner, and he would have seen everything.”

This was it, the reason I was in Swanton. Abe saw Crissy and Doug and Robbie on Hook Road that night. Abe knew Brett wouldn’t leave him and his sister behind with Felicia—not after she hit him—and Abe needed me to figure out what happened next. I’d tapped away at the town’s armor for days, desperate to hit upon a chink, and I’d finally found it. I was done.

The idea played out so beautifully in my mind I knew it couldn’t fail. Just as I could have—should have—done in the dojo with Sam, I dropped to one knee. The movement put Robbie off balance, and for a moment he slackened his grip on my arms and was forced to lean forward. With my back to him, I summoned all my strength and thrust my fist upward toward his chin. His teeth slammed together with a sickening clack.

“Robbie.”

Cheryl stood in the doorway, holding a sleeping Erynn against her chest. “Stop this. Stop this now.”

Robbie’s eyes alighted on his tiny daughter, and a look of horror washed over his face. Cheryl’s chin quivered where she held it against the crown of the child’s head.

“I called him,” she said in a small voice. “The police chief. He’s coming.”

As I wiped saliva and blood from my mouth, Erynn opened her brilliant blue eyes.

From where he swayed in the living room, Robbie Copely closed his.

THIRTY-SIX

After Fraser Harmison arrived, made his arrest, and took my statement, I went home. I’d come to think of my parents’ house that way again. It wasn’t my only home, but my roots slinked under its foundation just as surely as those belonging to the maples in the yard. As always, Mac was right. Concealing Bram’s crimes didn’t magic them away. I could hide from my past in Swanton all I wanted, but it wouldn’t cease to exist.

I slept fitfully that night, and when the alarm on my phone sounded at 4:00 a.m., I slipped into my jeans and flannel shirt in the dark and tiptoed out of the house to take the well-traveled road west once more. Before dawn the highway was eerily quiet, and I sped the whole way, imbued with a ham-handed dose of verve that I found profoundly satisfying until I remembered I wasn’t done yet. I’d done what Bram had asked me to do. In this game, there was just one move left.

Tim’s cottage sits on Goose Bay. I hadn’t seen it in person, but I knew he’d topped out his budget on a 900-square-foot shack with no heating, and had done most of the renovation work himself. I arrived just as he was getting up, and Mac joined us soon after. Hot coffees in hand, we sat in the living room around the fire Tim had built in the potbellied stove. He’d cooked a batch of pancakes, and the house smelled like a sugar shack. I liked everything about his place, from the knotty pine walls to the stacks of books that didn’t fit on his overstuffed shelves and the heavy wool blankets draped over the couch. The tiny house was Tim, through and through.