When Lee only nodded and started in about the beautiful autumn weather, Gabe directed the conversation where he wanted it to go. “Listen, I told Tess for safety’s sake when she sold the house she’d have to tell the buyers to get all the locks rekeyed. But for now, do either of you still have keys you could give her, or does anyone else have them? She’ll need some extras if she decides to use a Realtor so she can get back home to Michigan.”

“Oh, dear,” Grace said. “If she’s having trouble selling, I hope she doesn’t leave early. I...I know she feels she hasn’t had enough time with us, the children, especially. We probably do have an extra key, just in case she needed me again to clean, or whatever. I know I lost one once, but we had another one made. Lee must still have his.”

“I think I threw it away when we left. After all, you gave her your set of keys. As for someone else—don’t think so,” Lee said.

Gabe sensed he wasn’t going to get any further than that with them. And he wasn’t sure he believed them. They were edging back toward the market, so he strolled along. He wondered if one of them had been asked to give a key to Monson. If so, they’d protect him at any price—maybe even before worrying about Tess’s safety.

“I see Brice Monson’s here himself today,” Gabe said, still trying to sound conversational. “I never figured someone who chose the name Bright Star would be an early-morning person, unless he’s the Hollywood kind of star instead of the night one.”

Grace giggled until Lee glared at her. “He’s someone who is available at any time if we have questions or need guidance. He prays and watches over us day or night,” Lee said.

“But he takes his night walks alone when he prays for us all,” Grace put in, and this time Lee nodded.

“Walks down by the creek?” Gabe asked, his mind spinning with possibilities of Monson taking walks at night. The Lockwood house was only about four miles down the road, fewer with cut-throughs across the fields.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lee admitted. “No one goes but him, under the stars, communing with the Great Star whose name he bears. We’ve got to get back now, Sheriff. Good to see you. Come on over to our tables and buy something.”

They scurried off. Gabe leaned against a tree, thinking that if Dane didn’t pan out, weirdo Brice “Bright Star” Monson deserved to be in a dead heat with Reese Owens for the next suspect. Tess said she’d heard a young girl scream at the compound, but where could Monson be stashing kidnap victims? Where could anyone be kept hidden in this tight-knit area, even if there were lots of hills and hollers and abandoned buildings? He’d been checking such places over the years, around and around, until he was dizzy with it all. He couldn’t even find that damn floating meth lab.

Like a kid who’d been punished for something he didn’t do, he kicked the tree, then walked back into the crowd.

* * *

As Tess and Vic walked down the busy street toward the pub, she noticed a table she hadn’t seen before, maybe because she’d skirted around the mayor. Neither he nor his bench was there now, so had he spirited it and himself away? More likely, he’d hired a couple of guys to move it for him so he could hold court somewhere else in the market. Or maybe the buyers there were so thick she just hadn’t seen it. The table she was surprised she hadn’t noticed had piles of Halloween costumes, with others hanging from racks. The table also had decorations for sale under a sign that read Creekside Gifts.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m surprised the Kentons came.”

“They didn’t. Friends offered to take care of it for them. Mrs. Kenton’s not doing well, and the father, Win, is understandably mad as heck.”

“I think that’s how my father must have reacted, and at my mother.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

Tess noticed they’d also displayed baseball caps with bills that looked like tombstones. She suddenly imagined herself looking out a window, down at a small cemetery, the stones gray in the day or at dusk....

She must have been looking out a high window, maybe from the attic in Dane’s house at the animal graves. And hadn’t she had some nightmare about seeing people in open graves, maybe ones crying like in the drawing she’d done? Could Dane have threatened her by saying he’d bury her out there if she didn’t behave, didn’t stop being a bad girl? Had he terrorized her so that she, amnesia drugs aside, couldn’t clearly recall much else?

“Sometimes I think I do remember Dane’s house,” she told Vic as they passed the police station. “I hope Gabe gets that search warrant soon. But the thing is, since Dane seemed the obvious culprit before, I don’t want that to influence my memories. That can happen, you know. A child’s memories become warped to fit something not understood. The big, noisy reaping machine turns into a monster, for example. I read about displacement in a book from the library here.”

He held the pub door for her and waited until they were seated to answer her. “So the cemetery of your buried—pardon the pun—memory would be of a cemetery much smaller than what Dane Thompson has now, since he’s really expanded over the years.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly. I picture a smaller one.”

“Then maybe we’re getting somewhere, the beginning of a breakthrough. But Gabe and I’d better find something in his place like drugs that cause amnesia—or something like Rohypnol or Scopolamine, the so-called date rape drugs. I call them predator drugs, and that’s exactly what we’re dealing with in these abductions—a predator. Still, I don’t think an interrogation and especially a court case can turn on vague, traumatic memories buried this long.

“But listen,” he went on, after they’d ordered Reuben sandwiches and soft drinks, “you haven’t phoned your father yet, have you?”

“No, but Reese Owens told me to and gave me Dad’s phone number, which I didn’t have before. Their connection over the years strikes me as strange. So you’re thinking I should call him?”

“Well, yeah, maybe with Gabe or me on the line in case he says something about Reese we can use.”

“Or about himself? Vic, his phone number is burning not only a hole in my pocket but a hole in my heart.”

“It’s hard to forgive someone for desertion on top of unfaithfulness.”

“Yes, he was unfaithful to leave us like that.”

“I’ll bet your mother partly blamed herself.”

“For not watching me better that day. He accused her of that.”

“He should have blamed himself for being gone so much for their marital troubles. Your dad must have thought your mother or Rod McCord wouldn’t find out about the affair between him and the sheriff’s wife.”

Her stomach cartwheeled. And then all the missing pieces of things Gabe had said—and mostly hadn’t said—slammed into place for her. He’d come so close to telling her more than once but had always changed the subject. Her mother had begun to tell her once that there was another reason her dad had left besides Tess’s abduction. No doubt it was the elephant in the room her sisters knew about but never explained.

Now Tess understood some things. That her mother had tried to protect her too much. That Vic had assumed she knew about the affair because he felt she should be treated like an adult and not some child to be coddled. But Gabe didn’t. He could not be trusted to tell her the truth she needed to know even if it hurt. It was almost as if he’d lied to her. She was going to tell him off and then go it alone. And if it came to it, she’d just sell the property long-distance.

“Vic, I’m sorry to be rude, but I need to go find Gabe and talk to him right now. I’ll cancel my order on the way out.”

“Tell him about the memory of looking out at Dane’s pet cemetery?”

“Yes. Those little tombstone hats back at the gift shop table...”

She was afraid she wasn’t making sense, that he would see the hurt and anger on her face, but maybe she looked like that all the time. Except now she’d been betrayed not by a stranger, not even by her long-gone father, but by Mom, Kate, Char and the man she’d stupidly imagined she loved.