Dance was too far away to hear the conversation but there was no doubt about the messages in the body language: apology, regret and humor.

A heartfelt reconciliation was under way.

Bishop Towne stood and embraced them both.

Family is about love and affection but about friction and separation, too. Yet, with work and luck, the distances—geographic and emotional—can be shrunk, even made to vanish. What struck Dance at the moment was not what she was witnessing in this reunion, but a very different thought: about her and Jon Boling and the children … and what her mother had learned about Boling’s move to San Diego.

Once again, Kayleigh’s lyrics echoed, from the very verse that had inspired the attempt on Sheri Towne’s life.

One night there’s a call, and at first you don’t know

What the troopers are saying from the side of the road,

Then you see in an instant that your whole life has changed.

Everything gone, all the plans rearranged.

Is that what would happen to her? Was everything changed, the life she’d tacitly hoped for, for herself and her children, with Boling?

And where, she thought with some bitterness, is my shadow, someone looking out for me, someone to give me the answers?

Chapter 38

A PLEASANT, IF hot, September evening in Fresno.

It was a quiet time in the Tower District—featuring the famous Art Deco theater, at Olive and Wishon, which boasted an actual, if modest, tower (though the neighborhood had probably been named for another tower some distance away).

Tonight, locals were returning from early suppers at Mexican taquerias or boutiquey cafés or were visiting art galleries, tattoo parlors, discount stores, ethnic bakeries. Maybe headed for the movies or an improv comedy club or community theater. It wasn’t San Francisco but you weren’t in Fresno for art, music or literature. You were here to raise a family and work and you took what culture was offered.

Tonight, teenage boys had come to the District to cruise the streets in their pimped-out Subarus and Saturns, enjoying the last few evenings free from homework.

Tonight, girls had come here to gossip and sneak cigarettes and to look toward, but not at, boys and sit over sodas for hours and talk about clothes and looming classes.

And tonight Kayleigh Towne had come to the District to kill a man.

She’d formulated this plan because of one person: Mary-Gordon Sanchez, the little girl Edwin Sharp had—whatever the police said—kidnapped.

Oh, God, she was furious.

Kayleigh had always looked forward to being a mother but those plans had been delayed by her own father, who felt that a career wasn’t compatible with a home life.

“Hell, KT, you’re a child yourself. Wait a few years. What’s the hurry?”

Kayleigh had gone along but the maternal urge within her only grew.

And to think that Mary-Gordon had been in danger—and might be in the future—well, no, that wasn’t acceptable.

Edwin Sharp was going down.

The sheriff’s office wasn’t going to do it. So Kayleigh would, all by herself.