“What was?” I asked.

“Love,” Jenny said. “He loved her.”

It should have eased something in me, the knowledge that Junie’d had a father who loved her after all. Junie, who’d never once voiced a complaint about being fatherless, but whose eyes always followed men carrying babies, men with kids balanced on their shoulders. But all I felt was sorrow. My heart ached for my daughter, for Zach, for all of us. For the secrets we’d kept from each other, for the chances we’d never had. I’d thought I was doing the right thing for Junie all those years ago, but maybe I had robbed her without meaning to.

“What will you tell Zach about tonight?” I asked. “We need to have our stories straight.”

“That we went to talk to Cal, but we couldn’t find him. Spent half the night tracking him down, but came up empty. I’ll tell him that during that time we hashed it out and we’re not even sure anymore he had anything to do with it.”

“And he’ll believe that?”

Jenny slid into her seat and put her key in the ignition. “Sure he will. Because he’ll want to. Because he’ll need to. He wasn’t lying earlier. He’s not equipped for this kind of thing. But he needs to believe we aren’t, either.”

“I didn’t think you were,” I told her. Which wasn’t entirely true. I remembered her expression when she’d spoken about Matt and Izzy in her kitchen. The death wish written on her face. And I knew this place, this patch of land. It didn’t breed many weaklings. She might have grown up in an actual house and never seriously wondered where her next meal was coming from, but here you got strong fast or you didn’t make it.

Jenny smiled, white teeth in a dirt-streaked face, all bite and no joy. “I’m capable of anything, I guess. When someone pushes me far enough.” She tapped her steering wheel with both hands. “You and your mama can handle Land?”

“Yeah, Mama has his number start to finish. I think she’s the only person he’s scared of, other than maybe Jimmy Ray. But she’s gonna leave Cal’s car at her place, let it sit there. If Land comes sniffing around, she’ll tell him Cal showed up today, all antsy, told her he had somewhere to be, and then some guy in a dark gray truck came and picked him up. Last she’s seen or heard from him.”

“That’ll probably be good enough for Land. His lazy ass isn’t going to waste time looking for Cal, especially if you and your mama aren’t squawking about him being gone.”

“I thought you liked Land,” I said, surprised.

“No one likes Land,” Jenny said. “But we needed him, or thought we did, so I played nice. It about killed me, though. I’ve hated him since I was a teenager. When I was sixteen, he caught me sneaking out of my house. Told me if I gave him a blow job he wouldn’t tell my parents.”