“No,” I said to Bear. It felt like a dam giving way. There was something—love, guilt, relief—flooding from my heart.

“Who else?” he said.

“My baby sister,” I said. It came out in a whisper. I had never said it to another person other than my mom. The baby. Birdie. My sister.

“Your mom doesn’t work?” Bear asked. The revelation of the baby was no big deal to him. Lots of people have siblings.

“No,” I said. “My mom’s on disability. She has been, since I was little.”

“Did she have an accident?” Bear asked.

“We had a fire,” I said. “She was injured getting out.”

“Yikes,” Bear said.

“And then she went on pain meds,” I said. “And never stopped.”

He nodded in silent understanding.

“And your dad?” he asked.

“Started the fire,” I said.

I shrugged. I’d practiced my whole life at looking tough, at appearing as though I just didn’t give a fuck about the whole thing.

“Where’s he?” Bear asked.

“Dannemora,” I said.

“Did anyone die?” Bear asked.

“No.”

“Were you there?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Then, “He tried to kill you both,” he said.

I nodded.

“And your sister?” Bear asked. It felt like a blessing from his mouth, just the word sister, said aloud, in recognition.

“She’s five,” I said. “She’s not his.” I couldn’t say any more. I thought this flood of truth was going to wash me away and kill me.

He waited while I swallowed it down, while I didn’t elaborate. In the dimmed light, his eyes took on a gold glow.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen,” I answered without thinking, and then wished I’d said twenty-one.

“That’s a lot,” Bear said.

I looked into the fire, at the flame closest to the wood, the hottest blaze, like white gold. I listened to the rush of it, burning up.

“I don’t have a choice,” I said.

Bear frowned. “Everyone has choices,” he said.

I remembered, on the way home, how much I had wanted to tell people about her, not because I wanted to threaten my mother’s safety but because I was in awe of her. I wanted to walk her around town, show her off, take her to the farmers’ market and out for pancakes. She should go trick-or-treating and see the Christmas tree in the middle of town. Not just the black-and-white surveillance video on the huge screen in our living room. Not just my mother’s bed. And never the inside of a closet.

I needed to make these things happen. For her. And for me.

It didn’t feel like a choice.

THIRTEEN: KATERI

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19

It’s not like TV. Nothing in her career has been like TV—not her cubicle in Syracuse, not the slow drive through the rural suburbs at night in a patrol car, not what’s happening now in this remote mountain town, in an unassuming brick building with a small parking lot. In some other districts up north, the police stations are no more than a trailer.