Nestor nodded at Gaines. “ ’S up Sheriff?”

“Little business here, Roy. You know where Judith is at?”

The eyes. The eyes always gave it away. That immediate dimming of the light.

“Wha’s happening?”

“Can’t say nothing, Roy. You know that. Where’s Judith at?”

Gaines took a step forward. Nestor moved to the right, and all of a sudden there was a tension and a threat in the air.

“Roy,” Gaines said patiently.

“Somethin’ happen?” Nestor asked. “You don’t come down here unless it’s bad news, eh? Never come down here to give up somethin’ good, right?”

“Roy . . . please. This is personal business—”

“Personal? What could be personal that d’ain’t have somethin’ to do with her best friend now . . .”

“If you’re her best friend, then you will let me deal with what I have to deal with here, Roy, and not be interfering.”

“Did somethin’ bad happen here, She’ff?”

“Roy, I’m telling you now, and I’ll tell you again, this is Judith’s personal business and I don’t want you involved. Matters that involve her and her family—”

“Her family?”

“Roy . . . I mean it.”

“You said her family, She’ff. You said her family. She ain’t got no family, you know? I’m her family, you see? I’m the only—”

And then Roy Nestor stopped. His eyes widened, and he looked at Gaines with an expression that said everything that needed to be said, but he still didn’t believe it.

“The girl?”

Gaines did not respond.

“You found her? You found her girl? Tell me you found her girl . . .”

Gaines said nothing, but the answer was so obvious in his eyes.

“You found her, didn’t you, She’ff? You done found the girl.”

Gaines nodded.

“Oh, Lord have mercy . . . Oh, Lord almighty have mercy . . .”

“I have to go and speak to Judith, Roy.”

“She done for, ain’t she? Tell me she ain’t done for . . . Oh, this is so bad . . . It can’t be anything else, can it? She’s dead, ain’t she?”

Once again, Gaines did not reply, but whatever words he did not utter were right there in his expression.

“Oh, man,” Nestor said. “This had to happen, didn’t it? This day had to come. Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord . . .”

“Roy . . . I need to get by now. I don’t have an ID as yet, but it looks that way, and I’m trusting you not to say a word—”

“Think I should be the one to tell her, She’ff,” Nestor said, and there was something sympathetic in his expression, something so human, it was hard for Gaines to ignore it. “I knowed that girl, and I knowed Judith ever since. Man, she waited for that girl all these years. She done waited for here, thinkin’ she gon’ come on back, and now she gon’ find out she dead. I listened to her cry too many times to let her deal with this ’un on her own.”

Gaines looked at the man, his raggedy clothes, his weatherworn face, and he saw real humanity there in his eyes. Roy Nestor cared, and right now Judith Denton would perhaps need a friend more than at any other time in her life. Gaines placed his hand on Nestor’s shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly. “Okay, Roy. I’m sure she would appreciate it if you were there for her. Think she’s gonna need all the good people she can find right now.”

Nestor shook his head slowly. He sighed deeply. “Shee-it, damned in hell we’ll all be—”

Gaines frowned. “Why’d you say that?”

“Says a great deal about us when we can’t take care of our own, doesn’t it?”

“Does indeed, Roy.”

Gaines, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, started walking, and Roy Nestor followed on behind.

It would come in stages, and the stages were like waves, and once the waves came, there would be nothing at all that could be done to stop them. There would be disbelief, shock, a sense of paralysis and utter terror, and then following on, close as shadows, there would be guilt, more disbelief, a vague and disorienting attempt to locate the last thing you said, the last thing you did . . . the last words that passed between you . . .

Twenty years of waiting, and all the while knowing that when the news came, it would not be good. But still believing that there might have been a chance, just a small chance, the slimmest splinter of a chance that there was a rational explanation for her disappearance, her absence for all these years, and now they would be reunited and it would be as if never a day had passed . . .

And once the mind started to get a grip on what it all meant, it was then that the pain would arrive, a pain so deep it would feel as if the world had closed its fist around you, and there would be nails and spikes and blades inside that fist, and they would be driven through you with such force.

And then it would seem that all the shattered parts of your mind had slipped their moorings, and you would be left with nothing but a vast abyss ahead of you, and you would fall in, and there would be no one beneath you and no one behind, and as you fell, there would be nothing on either side to hold on to, nothing to slow the fall, nothing to give you certainty that your drop would cease . . .

It was this that confronted Judith Denton in the moment she saw Sheriff John Gaines walking down the path toward her house, Roy Nestor walking on behind him, his head bowed, his eyes brimmed with tears and full of despair. They may as well have worn their church suits. There was a darkness about them that communicated everything without the need for words.

When Gaines arrived at the screen door, he was carrying his hat. This merely served to confirm that the message he brought was of the worst kind.

It really was as if she had been waiting on this day for twenty years.

Judith Denton smiled, a faint ghost of a smile, for she knew Sheriff Gaines. She understood his place in the scheme of things, and he understood hers, and though their places were worlds apart, he didn’t take that as license to be anything less than courteous and respectful.

So Judith Denton saw John Gaines coming down toward the house, and she saw Roy Nestor, too, and she stood there for some seconds with an awkward expression on her face. The light hadn’t dimmed yet. She was convincing herself it was something else, something unrelated, and despite the fact that Gaines was looking right at her, despite the fact that Roy Nestor, the very man she’d spoken to of this day so many times, was walking beside him, and despite the fact that neither of them were smiling, despite knowing that this wasn’t any kind of social call . . .

Despite all these things, it was nothing less than human nature to try and convince herself that it wasn’t bad news.

But she knew.

She’d known from the moment they appeared.

In her expression was everything—the simple, unfailing certainty that now she would never be short of things to regret.

And when Gaines was within ten feet of the screen door, Judith coming forward to greet him, she raised her eyebrows with a question, and the question was right there on her lips without her ever having to utter a word. It was then that Sheriff Gaines slowly shook his head, and she knew for certain. A mother would always know.

He opened the screen door, and he stood there without words. “Judith.”

“Sheriff.”

“We believe we may have found the body of your daughter . . .”

And then it was simply a question of whether a mistake had been made. How could they know it was her? I mean, how could they know for sure? If she herself—Judith, Nancy’s own mother—could have walked by Nancy on the street and not recognized her, then how could John Gaines, a man who had never known her, be so certain that this girl they had found was her?

And then it was, how bad it could be? How had she died? How terrible had it been? And when? That same day she vanished? Or a later day? Two days, three days, a week, a year, a decade? Had she been beaten? Had she been raped . . . ?