After my disappointing check-in with Tim, my attention returned to Brett. I spent ten minutes cleaning up my notes on Russell Loming and transcribing what I’d learned from Police Chief Harmison. If Loming wasn’t lying, and assuming I could locate her, Cheryl might have some valuable insights to share. It was Harmison’s report vis-à-vis Brett’s autopsy that had me feeling cautiously optimistic. Blunt force trauma. The killer left him where he fell. Those factors deepened the pool of suspects. Anyone could attack somebody from behind. A man.

A woman.

A kid.

It felt good to puzzle over a case again. It was also a convenient avoidance tactic. The dread I’d felt about sinking helplessly into my past was back, but I could only delay it for so long. Today was about reconnecting with long-lost family, and that meant it was time to pay a visit to Aunt Fee.

The house stood less than a block from Crissy’s, and I cruised up the road at a snail’s pace, shocked all over again that this embittered mother and daughter shared the very same street. My memories of the Skilton family converged on a split-level from the sixties that wore its age like a curse—rotten siding on the outside, smelly carpets within, and a porch railing forever caked in dank green algae. Felicia’s new place was nothing like that. Its white trim hadn’t been left to yellow like Crissy’s, and the driveway I turned into looked newly repaved.

After parking, I paused at the door, puffing out white plumes of breath and staring at the water. Felicia had the same spectacular bay view and easy access to the wildlife refuge as Crissy, and there was a motorboat tied to her dock. From what I could remember, neither my aunt nor my cousin had a history of boating. Despite living so close to Lake Champlain, my family was always more comfortable with our feet on the ground.

“Shana, my God,” Felicia said when she opened the door, her gaze alighting on my scar and flitting away just as quickly. “It’s been too long.”

As she ushered me inside, I got a timid hug and a chance to feel her ribs move under her loose skin. She was layered in scarves, a tunic, and a celery-green cardigan that made her pale blue eyes look yellow in a way that was unnerving. This was something else that distinguished mother from daughter: Felicia had shed a few pounds. Her fine, flowing hair was completely gray, and so long the ends tickled her elbows. I found her new look perplexing. Was she a mystic now? Had my aunt given herself heart and soul to Crock-Pot yogurt and transcendental meditation retreats? She was thin, but she looked healthy. More cheerful than I remembered, too.

Too cheerful to be grieving.

It was the strangest thing, seeing Felicia now that I knew the atrocities her son had committed, crimes to which she remained oblivious. So much of my job involves tracing bad people to their kin, not just because I’m following a lead, but because I need to know the life they came from, walk their path backward from criminal to harmless kid. I’d seen the volatility that surrounded Bram firsthand, and while I was determined to keep an open mind, facing Felicia now made me realize I took it as a given that my aunt shouldered some of the blame.