“You didn’t tell me about the animals, yet you were spooked enough to stake a note onto a maggot-ridden carcass. Most people I know wouldn’t have touched that pile of feathers with a barge pole.”

“I wore Marigolds.” He throws up both hands in an unmistakable gesture. “Okay, yes, I get your point! I was just worried you’d think I was some kind of neurotic mess.” Which I may be. “And anyway, it was more of an omission, really. I’m not lying now.” Except I am, about Fiona . . . I find I’m rubbing my temples with my fingers. “What did the vet say about the fox?”

“That it must have been transported deliberately to your property. With that dosage, it couldn’t have gone far from wherever it was poisoned.”

“Right,” I say after a moment when I can’t think of anything else to say.

“Whose idea was it that Carrie come up north with you?”

“Mine. I invited her.” But no, that’s not quite right. She didn’t invite herself, but it was more organic than a simple suggestion from me. “Why?”

He shrugs. “Families are complicated things.”

I laugh out loud. “You’ve got to be kidding. Carrie has nothing to do with all of this.”

“Maybe not, but you haven’t lived with her for years. How well do you really know her?”

“I know—” I stop. I can see her now, climbing into the jeep, her coat flaring out around her. “I know her,” I repeat stubbornly. She might be lying to me, but she’s not terrorizing me.

She didn’t believe me about the flies. Or she pretended not to.

This is ridiculous. Carrie has no grudge against me.

He puts his coffee back down on the table and his elbows on his knees again, leaning in earnestly. “Ailsa, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but any which way I look at it, you’re at the center of it. It just doesn’t make sense that you arrive and suddenly there’s dead animals on your doorstep and bones in your house—a house in which you had all the locks changed, let’s not forget. You have to be the catalyst—”

“I agree.”

“Then why are you keeping things from me? It’s written all over your face.”

“I’m not, and I can’t help it, this is just my face.”

He starts to say something but stops himself and takes a deep breath. His next words are down a few notches in pace and volume. “I’m trying to help you. Are you scared?”

I look out at the mountains. It’s not a landscape for reassurance. “Yes.” I look back at him, but then I have to look away again or the tears that are assaulting my throat might find a pathway out.

“What of?”