You may not see it yet, but you have a home and home means something. You have a chance for a different life. You can give your son all that I couldn’t give you, but it takes courage. And courage is something you have. All you have to do is go back to Alaska and give the police my confession letter. Tell them I’m a murderer and let the crime finally end as it should have, with you excused from its taint. They’ll close the case and you’ll be free. Take your name and your life back.

Go home. Scatter my ashes on our beach.

I’ll be watching out for you. Always.

You have a child, so you know. You are my heart, baby girl. You are everything I did right. And I want you to know I would do it all again, every wonderful terrible second of it. I would do years and years of it again for one minute with you.

Inside the envelope, she found two one-way tickets to Alaska.

*   *   *

ALL UP AND DOWN the well-manicured street of Queen Anne Hill, life clattered along on this last Saturday in July. Her grandparents’ neighbors were gathered around Weber barbecues grilling store-bought meat, and making designer margaritas in blenders, their kids playing on swing sets that cost as much as a used car. Had any of them noticed the drawn shades in the Golliher house? Could they somehow sense grief emanating through stone and glass? This sorrow couldn’t be talked about in public. How could they express grief for the loss of a woman—Evelyn Grant—who had never really existed?

Leni climbed out her bedroom window and sat on the roof, the wooden shakes worn smooth by years of people sitting in this spot. Here more than anywhere else, she felt Mama beside her. Sometimes the feeling was so strong Leni thought she heard her Mama breathing, but it was just the breeze, whispering through the maple leaves on the tree out front.

“I used to catch your mother out here smoking cigarettes when she was thirteen years old,” Grandma said quietly. “She thought a closed window and a breath mint could fool me.”

Leni couldn’t help smiling. Those few words were like an incantation that brought Mama back for a beautiful, exquisite second. A flame of blond hair, a laugh in the wind. Leni glanced behind her, saw her grandmother standing at the upstairs bedroom’s open window. A cool evening breeze plucked at her black blouse, ruffled the trim at her throat. Leni had a fleeting, surprising thought that her grandmother would wear black for the rest of her life; maybe she would put on a green dress and regret and loss would eke from her pores and change the fabric to black.

“May I join you?”

“I’ll come in.” Leni started to back up.