“She stole another woman’s baby and passed him off as her own,” Terry said. “Go ahead, ask her.”

Winnie screamed against her gag, her rage channeling a demon-like cry. They both turned to look at her. Her brother’s face was impassive as he looked at her.

“That true, Win…? You steal someone’s kid…?”

Winnie yelled around her gag until her throat was burning, but Dakota seemed to be done looking at her for now; he was focused again on Terry with rapt attention.

“That sounds like something you’d do, Win. Remember when we were little, and you stole the puppy from the neighbor’s yard and brought it home?”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. That had happened over twenty-five years ago. The story had been told over and over by her siblings, each version painting Winnie like some sort of remorseless sociopath. She’d just been a kid, seen a puppy launching itself at the side of the fence to get to her, and had…taken it. She’d made a mistake. Dakota wasn’t being serious, he couldn’t be.

She tried to yell at him, but she couldn’t form words. “The kid’s not here,” Dakota said, still looking at Terry. “But even if he were, what would make me believe a wild story like that, even if it does sound like Winnie?” His voice had the tone of a man speaking to a misbehaving child. The hairs on the back of Winnie’s neck stood at attention. That didn’t sound like Dakota at all.

Over Dakota’s shoulder, she could see Terry’s eyes ticking back and forth like a metronome. She was working on an angle, Winnie realized, and before she could blink a second time, Terry was spinning it.

“Did you ever see her pregnant? Your…sister?”

Winnie froze. When Terry continued, she sounded breathless, winded by her lies.

“She wanted a baby very much, didn’t she? She was probably jealous when everyone else her age started having them.”

Dakota stood up suddenly, towering over Terry Russel and rolling his neck from side to side like he had the world’s largest crick. He considered her for a moment and then said, “Now that you mention it…”

Terry’s face transformed from hopeful to triumphant, while Winnie’s tears began a slow leak down her face. Her throat was raw from screaming against the gag, and there was an ache in her chest that was paralyzing in its enormity. Terry told Dakota her story in a clear, calm voice, painting herself as the distraught, concerned mother whose daughter had gotten involved with the wrong crowd, the crowd that had eventually swept her away from Akron, Ohio, toward greener grass in Washington. Her sweet Josalyn had landed pregnant and destitute in Seattle. Enter Winnie.