“You didn’t see her, at the end,” Peter said. “Right before she shot him, she smiled like she was having the time of her life.” He looked into his cup as if trying to read something in the grounds. “What if Roy was right? What if Helene is just like him? And now she knows it?”

June stopped typing and looked up. “Peter, there’s a world of difference between Roy and Helene. He killed cops and innocents. She killed a murderer. Trust me, that woman’s a survivor.”

73

HELENE

I’m worried about you,” Bobbie said. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to live here.”

They stood in the kitchen of the home place, cleaning up after the potluck supper. The last of the church’s weekend volunteers had left, and the house smelled of the fresh paint they had rolled over the cracked plaster walls. They’d also brought secondhand furniture to replace Roy’s things, which they set alight in a pyre in the yard, adding the planks removed from the windows and downed deadfall from the woods until the fire blazed hot enough to burn even the stained old mattress down to a fine gray ash.

Like an exorcism, Bobbie had said. To get rid of the memories.

After staying in Bobbie’s guest room for six months, Helene knew those memories would be with her until the day she died, if not beyond. No matter where she lived.

“I’m fine,” she told Bobbie now, as the smoke swirled outside. “Really.”

And most days, she was, especially with her daughter to care for.

She’d named the baby Celeste, after her mother. Any concerns about how much she might love the little girl evaporated once she held her daughter in her arms. It overwhelmed her, that love, despite how Celeste stole her sleep and sometimes gnawed on her nipples while breastfeeding. She would do anything to protect her daughter from the pain of the world. As it turned out, Helene was more capable than she’d ever imagined.

She had already driven Lisa’s pickup back to Bogaloosa’s farm, where she’d retrieved the plastic bag of cash that she’d kicked under a bush along the fence line. It held a hundred and eight thousand dollars, which went a long way when you didn’t have to pay rent or taxes.

Her lawyer, a firecracker from Denver, had forged agreements with prosecutors in eleven states. In exchange for Helene’s full cooperation with investigators, she would not be charged with any crimes. The authorities had confiscated Roy’s truck and trailer and anything else that might be connected to the murders or the burglaries. They had even taken Helene’s diamond ring, which turned out to be quite real and valued at almost a quarter million dollars.