Willa forced herself to look at the photos of Edward and Jiminy for a full second. They were battered. They didn’t look like themselves, much less each other, which was always the thing Willa naturally looked for. She wished she had more photos of them unharmed and alive, to help her shape happier memories.

She moved on to the others. There was her daughter standing on the porch, holding a kitten. Willa hadn’t let her keep the kitten in the house. She’d banished it to the barn, and it wasn’t long before it disappeared. It was still alive in this photograph, but her daughter’s seven-year-old face was creased and crinkled in concern. She looked precious and wounded, and this was what made Willa question her assumption that she’d been oblivious and resilient. This was the evidence that proved her wrong—that showed a soul in quiet crisis. Had Henry left it for her, to help her know their daughter better, as a parting gift?

The next photo was of Lyn, the only one Willa had ever seen that was taken with Lyn’s knowledge and presumed cooperation. In any of the others, Lyn was always in the background or on the periphery, engaged in some other task, unattuned to the camera’s presence. But in this one, she was facing the lens head-on, aware exactly of what was going on.

She was wearing an old overcoat that had belonged to Edward. She was simply standing, arms at her side, staring into the camera. And her face was blank. There was no evident emotion—no fury or sadness or irritation. None of the tension that usually appeared when she was in close proximity to Henry. In its place was a hollowness that hinted at a level of pain unknown to most. Her whole presence gave the impression that her heart had an open wound.

The last photograph in this final group was a self-portrait of Henry. Henry never let anyone else touch his camera, so he must’ve set the camera on some surface across from him. It had been cold out, to judge by the flush in his cheeks and at the tip of his nose. He, too, stared straight into the camera, unsmiling, a questioning expression on his prematurely aged face. He looked as though he’d just asked the camera something and had been waiting, hoping, for an answer. And that the timer had gone off at the exact second he’d realized he wasn’t going to get one.

Willa stared at this last photo the longest, her head filled with her own questions. In the final round of pictures Henry shot before he died, he hadn’t taken one of her. Was this because they were all for her? Had he intended her to be the viewer, and thus purposely trained his camera on those she’d need to understand? Willa wanted to think of it this way. She didn’t want to contemplate the alternative, that she just hadn’t made his final cut. That none of the moments he’d felt compelled to capture and memorialize had involved her.

Of course he hadn’t known he was going to die. Maybe she’d been next on his list.

Chapter 12

Lyn gazed across her kitchen table at the stranger sitting calmly in one of the chairs that Edward had carved. Jiminy hovered nearby, leaning in and out of the doorway like she was caught up in a current. The sheaf of onionskin paper lay on the table, flimsy against the wood.

“Do you recognize that report?” the man asked Lyn.

His name was Carlos, Lyn knew, and he was from Texas. Willa’s granddaughter had explained why she’d wanted to get him involved, touting his history of successful prosecution of unsolved civil rights crimes. Before the run-in with Roy and Randy Tomlins near the interstate junction, Lyn never would have been persuaded to cooperate. But that night had proven that the hatred that had stolen her husband and daughter was now actively threatening another loved one in the here and now. It wasn’t just about Lyn and her painful past. It was now about Bo—who looked so much like Edward—and a still-forming future. As the force of that realization struck her, Lyn had felt something stirring within, almost as though she was shifting out of neutral and into gear. She’d understood clearly that what had happened so long ago lived on, and she’d suddenly decided that she’d be damned if it outlived her. For the first time in forty years, she’d felt a compelling reason to stick around.

“No, I never saw this,” Lyn answered.

“Does it seem accurate, though?”

Lyn looked again at the first page of the onionskin pile. It was a yellowed transcript of her visit to the police station on June 24, 1966. She’d gone in two weeks previous to this visit in order to report that her husband and daughter were missing, but she’d been told that they’d probably just run off without her, and that it wasn’t the practice of the Fayeville sheriff’s office to get caught up in domestic disagreements.

Fourteen days later, the bodies of Edward and Jiminy were found, and Lyn returned to report their murder. The sheriff was dismissive, telling her that he didn’t have resources to waste on a silly woman’s delusions. According to him, it seemed likely that Edward and Jiminy had stopped to cool off in the river and gotten in over their heads. They didn’t know how to swim that well, did they? Did they? He pressed Lyn. He raised his voice to intimidate her, suggesting with his jabbing finger that she might be getting in over her head herself.

Lyn had stayed very calm and pointed out that bruises and bullet wounds suggested something other than drowning. She said they had been driving home from a town upstate, and someone had run them down and killed them. But the sheriff waved her off, lamenting her “overhyperactive imagination.”

Lyn remembered all this as she read the transcript in front of her:

Lyn Waters made unsubstantiated claim that her husband, Edward Waters, and her daughter, Jiminy Waters, were murdered. All evidence points to accidental drowning. No charges will be filed.

Lyn looked up at the man across her table.

“Does it seem accurate?” she repeated. “That’s what you asked?”

“I meant, does it accurately describe their attitude. Did you try to talk to the sheriff and was he that dismissive.”

“Yes,” Lyn answered.

Carlos nodded. Lyn reminded him of an olive tree, stately and gnarled. He was used to the resignation she emanated. He had seen her brand of empty expression on others, in previous cases. So much of the time the surviving relatives he encountered seemed defined less by the presence of ongoing life than by the absence of loved ones whose lives were cut too short.

“Do you remember it well? Do you mind talking about it?”

Lyn looked past him at Willa’s granddaughter, who stared back, suddenly self-conscious.

“I’ll just wait outside,” she said, slipping out the screen door.

Lyn was glad of this. She didn’t want her around while she talked about the real Jiminy.

“You have something against her?” Carlos asked.

His tone was completely dispassionate, suggesting it was fine by him if Lyn did. That he was just there to observe.

Lyn shook her head dishonestly.

“She shares your daughter’s name,” Carlos noted.

“Mmmmhmmm,” Lyn replied.

“Why does she?” he asked. “What’s the story there?”

Lyn took her time answering, silently remembering the day she’d first found out.

Willa’s daughter, Margaret, had called to let Willa know she was a grandmother. Lyn had been washing dishes, content to let the running water drown out the conversation. By the time Willa had hung up the phone and turned toward her, Lyn was drying plates with a freshly laundered towel. She couldn’t remember the year or the season, but because she was at Willa’s, it must have been a Tuesday or Thursday.