Now, in the bright sunshine of morning, something struck him about the lining. Usually, sweat discolored the lining of a baseball cap over time, especially along the forehead. But Bear’s looked hardly worn, despite the rest of the cap being beat to hell. The Phillies logo was scuffed and frayed. The stitching was coming loose from around the six eyelets, and the smartie—the button on top—was missing altogether. How do you do this kind of damage to a cap without wearing it?

Then there was the Polaroid picture. Billy had shown it to him last night, but it still didn’t look real. Maybe he just didn’t want it to be real. In the picture, Bear lay on the couch Gibson had slept on. Wrapped up in a fuzzy blue bathrobe, a book open across her belly. And it was a belly, because in the picture Bear was very pregnant. She looked tired but happier than in the picture Billy had taken the night she’d arrived. Gibson found it hard to look at for long. Seeing her pregnancy for himself made it real.

Billy shuffled sleepily downstairs and went into the kitchen for a glass of water.

“I’m going back to bed,” Billy said upon his return.

“Hey. Question. You ever see Suzanne wear this thing?”

“Other than the night I picked her up? No. Never. She wasn’t really a baseball cap kinda girl.”

“Then any idea how it got this beat up?”

“Oh, that was Suze. She’d sit and yank the stitching out like it was her job. You ever see a dog go to town on a stuffed toy? That was Suze with that hat.”

Billy left him alone with his thoughts.

Gibson furrowed his brow. What’s the story, Bear? What was a girl who, according to her parents, hated baseball doing with a Phillies cap that they both swore she didn’t own? Supposedly she’d bought the cap on the road to hide her face. That made sense, given it looked like it had never been worn. But if she only wore it that one time, why bother to write her initials into the brim? You did that to things you cared about losing.

What had Billy said about the security tape at the gas station? The way Bear had stared at the camera . . . a fuck-you to someone? Was the cap part of the message? It had been bothering Gibson for so long that he’d hoped seeing it, touching it, would jog something loose. But he was still drawing a blank.