Fingerprints. Mug shots. Turn to the right, please. Hands patting her down.

“This is fun!” MJ said, banging his hands along the cell bars, running from side to side. “I sound like a helicopter. Listen.” He ran again, as fast as he could, his hand hitting the bars.

Leni couldn’t manage a smile. She couldn’t look at him but she couldn’t look away. It had taken endless pleading on her part to get them to let him be in here with her. Thank God she was in Homer, not Anchorage, where she was pretty sure the rules would be more strictly enforced. Apparently there still wasn’t much crime in the area. Mostly this cell was used to house drunks on the weekends.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

“MJ,” Leni said sharply. It wasn’t until she saw his face—the worried green eyes, the gaped mouth—that she realize she’d screamed it.

“Sorry,” she said. “Come here, kiddo.”

MJ’s moods were like the sea; one glance told you all you needed to know. She’d hurt his feelings, maybe even frightened him with her outburst.

Something else to feel bad about.

MJ shuffled across the small cell, purposely scuffling his rubber-soled tennis shoes. “I’m ice-skating,” he said.

Leni managed a smile as she patted the empty place beside her on the cement bench. He sat down next to her. The cell was so small the lidless toilet was practically touching his knee. Through the metal bars, Leni could see most of the police station—the front desk, the waiting area. The door to Chief Ward’s office.

She had to force herself not to take MJ into her arms and hold him tightly. “I have to talk to you,” she said. “You know how we’re always talking about your dad?”

“He’s brain damaged, but he would love me anyway. That’s a gross toilet.”

“And he lives in a facility where they take care of people like him. That’s why he doesn’t visit us.”

MJ nodded. “He can’t talk anyway. He fell down a hole and broke his head.”

“Uh-huh. And he lives up here. In Alaska. Where Mommy grew up.”

“I know that, silly. It’s why we’re here. Can he walk?”

“I don’t think so. But … you also have a grandfather who lives here. And an aunt named Alyeska.”

MJ finally stopped banging his plastic triceratops on the bench and looked at her. “Another grandpa? Jason has three grandpas.”

“And you have two now, isn’t that cool?”

She heard the station door open. Through it, the sound of a truck rumbling past outside, tires crunching on gravel. A horn honking.