It was now two o’clock in the afternoon. It had taken the better part of four hours to release the girl’s body from the mud.

In a little while, once her body had been handed over to the coroner, Gaines would begin the onerous task of identifying whose child this was. And once identified, the task would be to find her parents and deliver the truth. There would be no triangled stars and stripes. There would be no telegram. There would be John Gaines, sheriff of Whytesburg, lately of the nine circles of hell that was Vietnam, standing on a mother’s porch with his eyes cast down and his hat in his hands.

2

I remember it like my own name.

That day.

That Thursday.

I remember waking with a sense of urgency, of excitement, anticipation.

I remember the light through the window beside my bed, the way it glowed through the curtain. I remember the texture of the fabric, the motes of dust illuminated like microscopic fireflies.

It was as if I had slept for a thousand years, but sleep had let me go without any effort at all. I felt as if I could just burst with energy.

I rose and washed and dressed. I tied my laces and hurried downstairs.

“Maryanne!” my mother called when she heard my footsteps in the hall. “You come on here and get some breakfast before you go out playing!”

I was not hungry, but I ate. I ate quickly, like a child with endless siblings, hurrying through the food before one of them could snatch it away.

“Now, I need you back before dark,” my mother said. “I said you could go today, but I don’t want a repeat of last time. I’m not coming out looking for you at ten o’clock at night, young lady. You hear me?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And that Wade boy . . . You remember that they’re different from us, Maryanne. Don’t you go falling in love with a Wade, now.”

“Mom—”

She smiled. She was teasing me.

“And Nancy will be with you, right?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And Michael Webster?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Okay, well, I don’t want to hear that you’ve been giving him any trouble, either. He’s the oldest one among you, and if you cause trouble, he’ll be the one to get a harsh word from Sheriff Bicklow.”

“Mom, we’re not going to cause any trouble. I promise. And Michael is not going to have to speak to Sheriff Bicklow. And I don’t love Matthias, and I don’t love Eugene—”

“Well, that’s good to hear, young lady. Even if you fell head over heels for either one of those Wade boys—” She hesitated mid-sentence. A curious expression appeared and was gone just as quickly.

“Okay,” she said. “Enjoy yourself. But back before dark, and if I have to come looking for you . . .”

“I’ll be back before dark, Mom.”

“And I suppose Matthias Wade will be providing food for everyone, as usual . . .”

“He’ll bring a basket, I’m sure. He always does.”

“Well, as long as you understand that this sort of special treatment won’t go on forever. He’s a young man, Maryanne. He’s all of twenty years old, and I am not so sure that I approve of this friendship . . .”

“We’re just friends, Mom. Me and Nancy and the others. We’re just friends, okay?”

“And there’s the other Wade girl . . . the youngest one. What’s her name?”

“Della.”

“Well, make sure that you don’t leave her out of your plans. Nothing worse for a child than to feel that they’re the odd one out.”

“I won’t, Mom. I promise. Now, can I go, pleeease . . . ?”

My mother smiled then, and there was such warmth and love and care in her smile that I could do nothing but smile back.

I reached the door, and she snapped me back with a single “Maryanne,” as if I was tied by elastic.

“Your room?”

“Tonight, Mom. I promise. I promise I’ll clean it tonight. Really, I will.”

“Be gone,” she said, and flicked the dish towel toward me as if shooing a fly.

I was gone like a rocket, like a thunderbolt, haring out of the house and down the path, turning left at the end of the road and running until I felt my legs would fall right off.

I knew my mother was right. However much I might think about Matthias Wade, or think I loved him, or even wish that Eugene Wade would get his head out of his books every once in a while and kiss me, the fact still remained that the Wade family was the Wade family, and—to me—they seemed to be the richest and most powerful family in the world. And their daddy, Earl Wade, well, he scared me ever such a little. I mean, I knew he must be lonely and maybe even a bit crazy perhaps, but still he scared me. The way he stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at us. The way it seemed to take some Herculean effort to crack his face with a smile. The way he referred to us as “incorrigible” and “wearisome” and “vexatious.” Seemed to me that a man like that, a man who seemed to have no friends, would appreciate some noise and laughter in the house, but no, apparently not.

I mean, with everything that happened with his wife, I could sort of understand what he might have gone through. Well, no, perhaps not. I am looking at this in hindsight, as an adult, and I can appreciate what might have happened to him, but then—all of fourteen years old—what could I have known? He was a scary man. That was all he was to me. He was Earl Wade—businessman, landowner, involved in politics, always engaged in serious discussions with serious men that could not be disturbed. You tiptoed in the Wade house—that’s if you ever got inside. The few occasions I did go in, creeping around like a church mouse with Della and Eugene and Catherine and Matthias, I could sense that even they were wary of upsetting his humor. He had a temper. I knew that much. I heard him hollering at Matthias one time.

“You think you can just waltz in and out of this house as if you own it? Is that what you think? You might be my eldest son, Matthias, but that does not mean you can freeload off of me for the rest of your life. You may have done well in your studies, and you may have earned yourself a place at one of the best colleges in the country, but that does not mean that you can spend the entirety of your summers lazing around like some sort of superficial Hollywood playboy. You are not Jay Gatsby, young man . . .”

I did not know who Jay Gatsby was, but it sounded like he wasn’t the sort of person Earl Wade wished his son to be.

And so it was, in some narrow place between the wealth and power of the Wades and the simple reality of my friendship with Nancy Denton, that we found a handful of years that would influence all of our lives for the rest of our lives. It could have been different—so very, very different—but the cruel reality of life is that the things we hope for and the things we have are rarely, if ever, the same.

There are small truths and big truths, just as there are small lies and big lies, and alongside those truths and lies run the questions that were never asked and those that were never answered.

The worst of all is the latter. What happened? What really happened? Why did something so good become something so awfully, terribly bad?

Was it us? Did we make it happen? Did those seven human beings—myself, Nancy Denton, the four Wade children, and Michael Webster—just by circumstance and coincidence, just because we were all in the same place at the same time, conjure up some dreadful enchantment that captured our hearts and souls and directed them toward tragedy?

Is that what happened?

It was a long, long time before I understood that there might never be an answer to that question.

It was the not knowing that killed us all, if not physically, then in our hearts and minds.

A little something in all of us died that day, and perhaps we will never know why.

3

Whytesburg coroner, Victor Powell, was present in the doorway as the pickup and two squad cars drew to a halt ahead of the squat building. He merely nodded as Gaines exited the vehicle, waited in silence as the men lifted the girl’s body from the bed of the truck and carried it around toward him.