You hear stories of cases messing with detectives’ heads. Searches for serials can last for years as investigators work themselves to death looking for something, anything that will bring them closer to their man. Those cases can start to get personal. A suspect can become a detective’s white whale. That was nothing compared to what was going on between me and Bram. Pulling Trey’s tooth was psychotic behavior, a sadistic act meant to curdle my blood, but Bram’s intent was also to leave me feeling sick with guilt.

Nobody knocked or called my name until almost six o’clock, and only then did I realize some of the pain I’d been feeling was due to hunger. When I heard Doug’s voice, my whole body relaxed. What I needed was a psychological escape. Obsessing over Bram wasn’t good for me. I’d learned that the hard way on Tern Island. What’s more, hiding from my mother in my room was childish. Everything would look brighter after dinner with my family, a good meal and some of my brother’s stories to send us into fits of laughter and reboot my relationship with Mom. All of that would imbue me with the comfort and strength I needed to buck up and revisit my family’s dark side.

When I got to the kitchen, I found my parents and Doug sitting at the table.

The chair that had been mine since childhood was occupied by Felicia.

“Hello, poppet,” Dad said when he saw me, and reflexively, I cringed. I’d looked it up, that word, when I was younger, and found it described an object used in witchcraft, the British equivalent of a voodoo doll. It had bothered me ever since, but I couldn’t find it in me to tell my father. I was a grown woman in my thirties, an accomplished criminal investigator, yet standing before my family with nowhere to sit and a pet name I hated, I felt like a child on the verge of tears. When Doug offered me his seat, I declined and crossed the room to pour a glass of wine. A big one.

“Fee stopped by,” Mom said pointlessly as my aunt, picking up on my discontent, lowered her gaze to her glass of juice. Felicia was wearing lipstick and blush in warm shades that made her look like she’d spent the day sunning herself at a posh resort. My mother was a mess by comparison, hollow-eyed with her gray-blond hair hastily thrown into a ponytail. I found the contrast disquieting. It had always been Felicia who needed a hairbrush or to be talked off a ledge. When had that changed?

From the corner of my eye, I saw Dad nudge Doug with his toe. “We’ll leave you ladies to it,” he said. Once the men had replenished their beers and vacated the room, I finally took a seat and turned an inquisitive gaze on my aunt.

I still couldn’t get over how different Felicia was now, nothing at all like the woman who’d terrorized Crissy and Abe. Her husband was a pile of bones, her daughter wouldn’t speak to her, and her son was a violent runaway. How could she sip juice in my parents’ kitchen as though she lived an untroubled life? Was it all an act? If she killed her husband all those years ago, reinventing herself might have seemed like a good defense. Anyone who came around asking questions would have a hard time imagining Felicia as anything but the level-headed woman she now was.