Welcome heat blazed up my spine, and I twisted away from him. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about the Logans. I don’t even know them!”

Cal raised his eyebrows at me. “No, but you know the idea of them. Nice little ranch house, two cars, married, maybe some money in the bank.” I stared at him blankly, and he sighed, leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fishing rod almost touching his forehead. “Come on, Evie, you know what I’m saying. They’re the total opposite of how we grew up. Pretty much picture-perfect compared to our disaster.”

I crossed my arms and tucked my elbows in. A shield made of limbs. “The total opposite of how Junie grew up, too, is that what you’re saying?”

“See?” Cal said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about with the chip. I wasn’t even thinking about you and Junie, and your mind automatically goes there, comparing, and always assuming you’d come up short.”

“I did come up short,” I said. “My daughter is dead.”

“Yeah, well,” Cal said after a pause, “so is theirs.”

I didn’t want to have this conversation, to be reminded the Logans had suffered a loss equal to mine. I pointed at Cal’s line. “I think you’ve got something.”

He reeled the fish in with practiced ease, slid the hook from its gaping mouth, and set it next to the others in the cooler. I’d grown up killing things, threading wiggling worms onto barbed hooks, slitting open the stomachs of still gasping fish, pulling steaming guts from barely dead deer, twisting a chicken’s neck with my bare hands. It had never bothered me before. Animals were food, and food wasn’t always easy to come by. Squeamish meant hungry, and there wasn’t much worse than hungry. But today I had to turn away from the sight of that fish, its mouth still opening and closing as it lay on top of the ice. Had to put my hands under my thighs to resist the urge to throw it back into the water, to give it one more chance to live.

“I think maybe it was because of the guy,” I said as Cal dropped his line back into the water. “The one Izzy was involved with. Maybe that’s why they were killed.”

Cal gave a noncommittal grunt. “How’d you know about Izzy’s guy anyway? If Junie never told you?”

I kept my gaze on the water, watching it flow over rock. Thought about Junie’s diary, tucked now into my top dresser drawer. I wasn’t going to give it up, let strangers pore over Junie’s secret thoughts and feelings. It was one remaining link to my daughter that I didn’t have to share. “I didn’t really. Just heard a few rumors floating around recently and figured if they were true, Hallie would be the one to know.”

I could feel Cal’s eyes on me, probably trying to decide if I was telling him the truth. “Let me clean you a fish or two,” he said finally. “You’ve lost weight. You can take this home and fry it up for dinner.”