I locked myself in the bathroom and peeled out of my clothes, wincing as my shirt stuck to the gash on my shoulder. My face was streaked with soot, and I had a bruise starting on my left cheekbone, probably from where I hit the ground after the explosion. I held the edges of the porcelain sink to stop my hands from shaking, tried to wrap my brain around the last hour. Matt’s trailer blowing up just as I was coming to talk to him made no sense to me. If Matt had been the one to kill Izzy and Junie, then why would he blow himself up? Remorse didn’t seem like it would be a big concern to someone like Matt. Unlike Jimmy Ray himself, Matt, I suspected, didn’t live by any kind of code. Killing two preteen girls probably wouldn’t cost him a single second of sleep. And if he hadn’t killed them, then why would the killer care if I talked to Matt? If anything, that would give the police someone else to focus on. Matt alive and having to explain his relationship with Izzy could only be a good thing for the killer. All eyes focused in the wrong direction.

Something was nagging at me, some tidbit of information that floated out of my reach whenever my brain tried to clamp down on it. But my entire body hurt, my brain most of all, and I knew the harder I pushed, the more elusive it would be. I stood in the shower for a long time, until the water washing over my shoulder turned from red to pink to crystal clear. So long the hot water gave out to a lukewarm spray. And still the thought wouldn’t crystalize. Maybe a decent night’s sleep would send whatever it was to the surface. Or maybe it was nothing at all.

I wrapped myself in a towel, double-checked the gash in my shoulder to make sure the bleeding had slowed before I covered it with a patch of gauze and a couple of Band-Aids, and then stepped out into the hallway. A floorboard creaked to my left, and as I turned my head, something heavy hit me from the side, slammed me back into the wall, my head smacking against the doorjamb. A hand around my throat, fingers calloused and rough.

“What did you do?” Jimmy Ray said, breath hot in my face. “You stupid bitch.”

He expected me to cower, to plead, to placate. Because that was how this worked between us. Him winding tighter and tighter while I frantically tried to keep him calm, keep him contained, not wanting Junie to witness something that would scar her forever. But the world was a different place now, without my daughter in it. And I was a different woman.

I brought my knee up fast and hard, caught him right in the nuts because he wasn’t expecting it, hadn’t even thought to protect himself. Not from me. He let go of my neck, bent in half like someone had cut his strings, and fell to his knees. I shoved away from him, turned to run, and got two steps before his hand closed over my ankle and yanked. I hit the floor hard, landing on my hip, scrabbling for something to grab. My free leg shot out, foot slamming into his nose with an audible crunch, and he released my ankle, flopped onto his back, and cupped both hands over his face.