She turned to watch thunderheads gather on the horizon. One lone powerboat chugged in towards Elk Harbour, trying to outrun them.

When Abby got home, there was a police cruiser parked outside her house. A woman in a crisp blue police uniform was bobbing around outside her front door, leaning to get a look through the windows.

‘Do you have a warrant?’ Abby called out, startling her.

Bobbi laughed. ‘You bitch. You scared the shit out of me.’

They hugged. Abby and Bobbi used to work together at the Buy & Bye, where Bobbi would complain about having to wear shoes and a bra and would routinely remove both during the course of her shift. She’d left the supermarket years ago to join the police, but she and Abby had only become closer.

‘I’m here to pick up your disgusting baby stuff,’ Bobbi said. ‘Maggie sent me.’

‘It’s not disgusting, I swear.’

‘It’s fifteen years old.’

Bobbi’s partner, Maggie, was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She had been asking about Eddie and Lori’s old hand-me-downs since the foetus was the size of a peanut, but Abby had been slow to hand them over. She wasn’t sure exactly why. It wasn’t as if she and Ray were planning on pumping out a third kid, but the idea of giving away all those cute baby relics filled her with a mysterious sadness.

‘Follow me,’ Abby said.

She led Bobbi down the outdoor passage connecting the house to the garage. The rain had eased, but a clogged roof gutter was sending a torrent of water splashing down into the grass, turning dirt to mud. They had to step around it.

‘It’s like a fucking zoo in here,’ Bobbi said.

On the shelving unit that ran along the rear wall of the garage, were some taxidermy animals she hadn’t managed to give away. Small stuff, mostly: birds, mice, a marsupial rat and a fat grey toad that Abby had a hell of a time skinning.

‘I think I’m getting better,’ Abby said. ‘I might even be ready for the rabbit Whitley Higgins’s been keeping in his freezer for me. He found it on his back doorstep and thinks his cat dragged it over just for me. I’m still not entirely sure what I’ll do about the ears.’

‘Sometimes I don’t know why we’re friends,’ Bobbi said.

While Abby pulled out the crate of baby clothes, Bobbi picked up the worn and well-dog-eared paperback sitting on the workbench. On the cover was a landscape of dead trees, at the feet of which was a chalk outline depicting two dead bodies, entwined. The title, printed in bright red font, read: The Buck River Murders: A true story of family, revenge and betrayal.

‘I’m almost done with that if you want to borrow it,’ Abby said.

Bobbi turned the cover over in her hands, nodding. ‘Any good?’