I need a minute, she thought, feeling woozy. But she didn’t have one; Terry was waiting for her to say something on the other end of the line. She could see the reflection of her own face in Winnie’s framed photographs across from her. A deep groove cut down the center of her forehead. It had been there since she was twenty-five. Kregger called it her Mariana Trench. Try to come at this from Terry’s angle, she told herself.

She remembered the obituary: “Died unexpectedly.” It wasn’t a lie, just a cover-up. Terry was disappointed in the product she’d put out into the world and hardened her heart against her own flesh and blood. So did Juno really want to alert her to the possibility of a grandson? Well—yes, because if Sam was Josalyn’s, telling Terry was the right thing to do. Sam was the one Juno cared about, and Sam deserved to know his real family.

“What?” Juno said.

“She was a very disturbed young woman. She thought a lot of things,” Terry replied.

“I raised two children myself,” Juno said. “You get what you get, and you try to help them as much as you can. They take the help or they don’t.”

Juno had finally poked the sore spot; Terry Russel began to cry. She could hear the muffled quality of it at first, and then she really let loose, gasping and sobbing into the receiver like it was her best friend’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Terry said after a minute, sniffing. Her voice lacked some of its refinement now that she had a stuffy nose. “You never stop grieving, but I suppose you know that, don’t you?”

She knew all too well that no matter how fresh the day was, the rot of the grief permeated through it. No day was safe, no hour, no minute; grief came and went as it pleased.

“No, but you find new things to be hopeful about as you move forward. Terry…” she said, switching to the woman’s first name without permission, “may I have your email address? I have something I want to share with you.”

26

JUNO

After hanging up with Terry, Juno bustled straight to the computer. Her mouth was puckered into a little bud as she sat down and swiveled toward the keyboard. As she touched the mouse gingerly, her mind was still going over the conversation she’d had with Josalyn Russel’s estranged mother.

Terry had been vague about the details of Josalyn’s death, but Juno was a stranger. She’d been surprised that Terry had told her as much as she had. So why had it felt like snide gossip? This time, Juno typed in “missing teen Lima/Seattle dead” and found three pages of results. The first that she opened was enough: a short clip from the Seattle Times.