Leni settled MJ in a comfortable chair and opened a book for him. Her grandfather’s advice came back to her: It’s a bad idea, Leni, but if you’re going to do it, you have to be careful, smarter than your mother ever was. Say nothing. Just give them the letter. Tell them you didn’t even know your dad was dead until your mother gave you this letter. Tell them you were running from his abuse, hiding so that he wouldn’t find you. Everything you’ve done—the changed identities, the new town, the silence—it all fits in with a family hiding from a dangerous man.

“I wanna go, Mommy,” MJ said, bouncing on the seat. “I want to see my daddy.”

“Soon, kiddo.” She kissed his forehead and then went back to the chief’s desk. Between them was a wide swath of gray metal decorated with family photographs, studded with sloppy stacks of pink while-you-were-out messages, and cluttered with fishing magazines. A fishing reel with impossibly tangled line was being used as a paperweight.

She pulled the letter out of her purse. Her hand was shaking as she handed over her mother’s confession.

Chief Ward read through the letter. Sat down. Looked up. “You know what this says?”

Leni dragged a chair over and sat down facing him. She was afraid her legs would stop supporting her. “I do.”

“So your mother shot your dad and disposed of his body and you two ran away.”

“You have the letter.”

“And where is your mother?”

“She died last week. She gave the letter to me on her deathbed and asked me to deliver it to the police. It was the first I’d heard of it. The … killing, I mean. I thought we were running from my father’s abuse. He … was violent. Sometimes. He beat her really badly one night and we ran away while he slept.”

“I’m sorry about her death.”

Chief Ward stared at Leni for a long time, his eyes narrowed. The intensity of his gaze was unsettling. She fought the urge to fidget. Finally he got up, went to a file cabinet in the back of the room, riffled through a drawer, and pulled out a folder. He dropped it on his desk, sat down, and opened it. “So. Your mother, Cora Allbright, was five-foot-six. People described her as slight, fragile, thin. And your dad was nearly six feet tall.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“But she shot your father, dragged his body out of the house, and, what—strapped him onto a snow machine—and drove up to Glass Lake in the winter and cut a hole in the ice, loaded him with iron traps, and dropped him. Alone. Where were you?”