Helen: And the baby. But there’s also footage of the murders. Now the police have plenty of evidence to charge Brady with a dozen murders, and Lena’s right there helping him.

Julia: But no one knows that yet.

Helen: Right. They’re only sure about Brady and the multiple homicides. At least, that’s what the district attorney says during his press conference. What they don’t have is any idea what happened to Lena. They process the entire house, every vehicle in the fleet of vans. Nothing. Not a drop of blood, not a scrap of evidence. The only things they find are Lena’s fingerprints, hair—

Julia: Stuff they would expect to be there.

Helen: Now they have this story that Lena was going to visit her aunt. And they have the texts from Lena to her friend. The aunt doesn’t know anything about this alleged visit. And then they find Lena’s car under an overpass by the Brazos River. Her phone, her keys, everything’s right there.

Julia: So maybe that’s proof that she didn’t send the texts?

Helen: Not really strong proof. Did she kill herself or stage her death? Did Brady abandon that stuff there? I mean, the two of them had dumped a body in a tributary of the Brazos once before.

Julia: I could buy the story that she was dead and her husband did it, but I don’t see how anyone would believe she killed herself. Plus, the whole thing looked totally staged.

Helen: But if she wasn’t dead, where was she? And what was she planning to do?

CHAPTER

21

AFTER I PUT Grace down for her nap, I pulled the sheaf of mail out from under the stroller and dropped it on the kitchen table. Between my art books, I had a folder of Aimee’s postcards, and I brought it over and sat down. I fanned them out, the mean-girl comments in angular marker on one side, photos of special exhibitions and opening events on the other. They didn’t have the sting they used to. In the back of my mind, I had been turning over ideas to reuse them, to create something beautiful from something spiteful. I thought I’d saved them all, but now I didn’t see the one with the picture of the modern take on Winged Victory. I’d wanted to compare it to my dream, but the memory of dream-Michael’s smirk made me sweep all the postcards up and flip the folder shut.