“I should’ve listened to you,” he said. “You were right about Garrett. I was wrong. I looked at the evidence and got it dead wrong.”

“But I didn’t know I was right. I didn’t know anything. I just had a hunch and I acted.”

Rhyme said, “Whatever happens, Sachs, I’m not going anywhere.” He nodded down at the Storm Arrow and laughed. “I couldn’t get very far even if I wanted to. You do some time, I’ll be there when you get out.”

“Words, Rhyme,” she said. “Only words…. My father said he wasn’t going anywhere either. That was a week before the cancer shut him down.”

“I’m too ornery to die.”

But you’re not too ornery to get better, she thought, to meet someone else. To move on and leave me behind.

The door to the interrogation room opened. Garrett stood in the doorway, Mason behind him. The boy’s hands, no longer in shackles, were cupped in front of him.

“Hey,” Garrett said in greeting. “Check out what I found. It was in my cell.” He opened his fist and a small insect flew out. “It’s a sphinx moth. They like to forage in valerian flowers. You don’t see ’em much inside. Pretty cool.”

She smiled faintly, taking pleasure in his enthusiastic eyes. “Garrett, there’s one thing I want you to know.”

He walked closer, looked down at her.

“You remember what you said in the trailer? When you were talking to your father in the empty chair?”

He nodded uncertainly.

“You were saying how bad you felt that he didn’t want you in the car that night.”

“I remember.”

“But you know why he didn’t want you. … He was trying to save your life. He knew there was poison in the car and that they were going to die. If you got in the car with them you’d die too. And he didn’t want that to happen.”

“I guess I know that,” he said. His voice was uncertain and Amelia Sachs supposed that rewriting one’s history was a daunting task.

“You keep remembering it.”

“I will.”

Sachs looked at the tiny, beige moth, flying around the interrogation room. “You leave anybody in the cell for me? For company?”

“Yeah, I did. There’s a couple of ladybugs—their real name is ladybird beetles. And a leafhopper and syrphus fly. It’s cool the way they fly. You can watch ’em for hours.” He paused. “Like, I’m sorry I lied to you. The thing is, if I hadn’t I never would’ve got out and I couldn’t’ve saved Mary Beth.”

“That’s all right, Garrett.”

He looked at Mason. “I can go now?”

“You can go.”

He walked to the door, turned and said to Sachs, “I’ll come and, like, hang out. If that’s okay.” “I’d like that.”