Felicia’s fingers unfolded themselves toward my face. I couldn’t help it; I recoiled as if I’d been slapped. She snatched her hand back and stared hard at her lap. “It was the idea of you planning to go off to college that pushed Abe over the edge. He couldn’t bear it, especially not after Brett abandoned him.”

Abandoned. Was that how Bram felt?

“I wanted to do right by you,” my aunt said. “I tried to set him straight. I told him he needed help. Therapy, maybe even medication. He called me a hypocrite. He called me all sorts of things. Everyone thinks he ran away, but we fought and fought that day, and in the end, I told him to go. I made him. But I never meant to drive him away for good, never imagined he wouldn’t come back. He was only sixteen.”

A chill shot through me. Only sixteen, and tossed out of the house. It was entirely possible Bram believed his mother had abandoned him, too. Despite what she said about their fight Felicia must have been relieved, in a way, to have him gone. After what he did to me, I didn’t know how else she would be able to look her sister in the eye again.

I opened my mouth to question her some more, and found I had no idea what to say. This was what I’d been hoping for, straight-from-the-source insight into Bram’s twisted mind, but Felicia wasn’t the only one feeling repentant.

Back in the East Village, when I was face-to-face with Bram and trying to identify the man who claimed to be from my hometown, I’d asked him why he left Swanton. “I had to,” he said. “My mother wouldn’t let me stay.” But if I hadn’t been so quick to move on from Swanton, he wouldn’t have attacked me. If he hadn’t attacked me, Felicia wouldn’t have kicked him out. And if she hadn’t kicked him out, would he still have become Blake Bram?

Felicia collected our empty mugs and brought them to the kitchen, where the digital clock on the oven caught her eye.

“Oh,” she said. “Hon, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve got a yoga class downtown in twenty minutes.”

“No problem.” I was happy to get going. The house and our history were suffocating. I was almost at the door before I remembered about Cheryl. “Felicia,” I said. “I talked to Brett’s friend Russell Loming, and he mentioned something about Brett having a girlfriend around the time he disappeared. A woman named Cheryl?”

I watched my aunt’s face for a reaction. She hadn’t alluded to a girlfriend, but now her mouth bent into a new shape. The haughty expression was reminiscent of Crissy’s, but different. Darker. “The only Cheryl I know is Cheryl Copely.”

“Cheryl Copely,” I repeated miserably. “As in Robbie Copely’s mother?”

She nodded. “Brett and I met her when Robbie and Crissy started dating.”

Please God, don’t let Brett’s killer be Suze’s mother-in-law. “But you aren’t aware of a relationship there?” I said, hopeful.