“There are some kids in Hen’s class who are awful,” Doug told me. “This one girl? The lies come so easily to her, even when she’s talking to adults, that she convinced us she had a brand-new baby sister, even made up a birth date and name. It was bullshit, every word. You can imagine what happened when Josie congratulated the girl’s mom.”

I gawked at him. Doug went on.

“As messed up as that girl is, Abe was worse. Something was missing with him. Innocence, maybe? I don’t know. But after Brett left—or was killed, I guess—it only got worse.”

I thought he was done with the booze for the night. When Doug’s stare landed on my scar, he reached for the bottle again.

It happened at Abe’s house, in the small garden shed at the back of the yard. That shed could have been lovely, a place to nurture seeds and trim away rot, but it overflowed with paint cans and rusted lawn furniture, piles of termite-ridden wood. Abe had asked me to meet him. He wanted to talk. It had been a while since we did that, and I knew he wasn’t taking it well. Even Mom noticed the change, and chided me for my behavior. I told her it was nothing, hoping that by dismissing it, she’d do the same. In response, she reassured me that a friendship as strong as ours could survive anything.

When I approached Abe that day, there was a second when I wondered if Mom might be right. The spirit of our past bond seemed to hover expectantly between us. Maybe there was some way we could mend our broken ties. If anyone could change Abraham Skilton, I thought, it was me.

No, Shay. You can’t change this.

For our little symposium he’d set up two old aluminum lawn chairs, the green-and-white-striped pattern of the seats black with mildew stains. Abe sat in one of them, his arms crossed over his chest. I lowered myself into the other and waited to hear what he had to say.

The questions came quickly. Why don’t you want to hang out anymore? What did I do wrong? You were always into it before. Why not now? I tried to make him see he’d taken things too far. I needed him to understand I wasn’t the dumb kid I’d been, that I knew about the cat now, the torched tree house and stolen money. I was seventeen by then, with my sights set on a career in law enforcement. I’d taken some psychology classes in school and was actively researching criminal behavior. Armed with the power of distance and retrospection, I’d looked at our childhood through fresh eyes and seen a lot of red flags. Abe deceived me. He’d done horrible, beastly things. Bottom line? I didn’t trust him. And I was afraid.

For me, that meeting in the shed was a courtesy. I would be leaving for college soon, and in spite of everything, I wanted us to part on good terms. Abe thought we shouldn’t part at all. He tried to convince me to stay in Swanton. We can apply for jobs clerking at the police station right here, he said. You don’t have to go away. But I did have to go, because now when I looked at him, I saw a juvenile delinquent and felt a bone-deep sense of foreboding. Like Doug said, his childhood was fucked up, and with Brett gone and Crissy rarely at home, Abe had to contend with Aunt Fee himself. It wasn’t right, but neither was the intensity in his eyes. I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out.