Chapters (65)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty–one
- Twenty–two
- Twenty–three
- Twenty–four
- Twenty–five
- Twenty–six
- Twenty–seven
- Twenty–eight
- Twenty–nine
- Thirty
- Thirty–one
- Thirty–two
- Thirty–three
- Thirty–four
- Thirty–five
- Thirty–six
- Thirty–seven
- Thirty–eight
- Thirty–nine
- Forty
- Forty–one
- Forty–two
- Forty–three
- Forty–four
- Forty–five
- Forty–six
- Forty–seven
- Forty–eight
- Forty–nine
- Fifty
- Fifty–one
- Fifty–two
- Fifty–three
- Fifty–four
- Fifty–five
- Fifty–six
- Fifty–seven
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Also by Becky Masterman
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
Maybe I doze off some, but I’m awake to see the sky lightening out the window over Todd’s crib in his room. I go in there. Short for my age, I can’t reach over the top of the bars, but I can put my hand through them to touch Todd’s stomach and feel it go up and down as he breathes. The combination of the dawn and Todd alive and dry tells me everything is okay for now. My vigil is over. I get back into bed by the time Mom opens her bedroom door to come wake us up for mass. She scolds me for my dirty hair, but that’s overshadowed by Todd taking an unscheduled dump in his diaper and we’re running late.
More than fifty years from now, that killing will touch me again, and with more than childish terror. Cold cases, they call them, as if they’re frozen harmlessly in the past without any power to wreak new havoc. Open at your own risk.
Two
I felt Carlo’s hand find mine in the dark, and held it just tightly enough to remind myself that Brigid Theresa Quinn was past grown up now. This was the present, not 1959. And home was Arizona, not Florida. And we were safe in bed just telling the stories of our lives. So I felt more indignation than horror when I said, “Mom didn’t come get me, she just kept working on that damn needlepoint, the big needle pulling that damn Virgin Mary blue thread up and down through the holes of the canvas. Why did she do that? Why didn’t she save me?”
“You told me once that she had given up on your father influencing you,” Carlo said. “Could it have been that early in your life?”
“I thought she gave up when I was about ten. I don’t know, it all gets vague.”
“You understand that was abusive, don’t you? Psychological abuse.”
“These days it’s child abuse. In the fifties, it was just home.”
“Oh, those wonderful fifties.”
“Remember how we always went to eight o’clock mass because you couldn’t have anything to eat before you received communion? Remember those days?”
“Pre–Vatican Two. So that case. The Walkers.”
“I suppose I’ve been fascinated by the Walker family murder ever since that night. Of course, way before I grew up it had stopped terrifying me. Since then I’ve known other cases, some worse. But that case and its connection to the Clutters, that’s the closest I’ve come to a cold case obsession.”
Silence, but I could tell Carlo was thinking about what I had and hadn’t said, keeping his breathing light so as not to shift my memory. I imagined I could feel his pulse pumping in his hand.