“Okay, Mitch. I know you’re upset, and you have a right to be. I know you’ve had a burning desire to learn the answer to these questions, and I have a great deal to tell you about what happened that night, and I will tell you soon, but I ask that you slow down and do one thing first.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to finally forgive yourself.” The instant she said the word “forgive,” she reached across the table and gently touched the middle of his forehead with two fingers.

Mitch felt a jolt at her touch. In the time it took for a single beat of a pulse, the blame, guilt, and shame he’d been carrying about the murders seemed to be lifted. He instinctively reached out to touch Carolyn.

“So, Carolyn, do you have any of the same thoughts Mitch has had? Do you think that in some way you are to blame?”

Carolyn nodded, and could hardly speak at first, but finally blurted out, “Rachel didn’t tell me everything, but she told me enough. I just didn’t try hard enough. I was going to have dinner with her that night, but I didn’t even bother to call her back after she left her last message.”

“Carolyn, would you like to know what Rachel has to say about that?”

She gasped, put her hand to her mouth, and nodded.

“She wants both of you to know that Danny did what he did because he was betrayed by the Devil, and that neither of you are to blame, and neither is Danny. But in order to understand that, I have to explain what happened that night. Do you want me to continue?”

“Okay,” they answered in unison. Mitch couldn’t comprehend why Danny was not to blame, but he certainly could not stop Joanna at this point, though nothing could prepare him for what he was about to learn.

Joanna took a deep breath and appeared to be listening to a distant voice. She rolled her head slightly and began. Mitch started to ask a question, but she quickly shook her palm toward him to warn him off. Her demeanor had completely changed.

“Danny’s easygoing nature was a mask for passivity and was the result of deep-seated fears … fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, and, in the end, fear of not being loved. That’s what drove him always to be ‘nice’ so that he would always be liked. But Danny, as we all do, had plenty of anger. The fact that he wore a mask to disguise it didn’t make it any less powerful or real; in fact, keeping it hidden only made it all the more explosive when it finally came out, which anger always, inevitably will. You might say he was like a volcano that finally erupted.