“It’s a girl,” Willa had said, her voice an odd, strained pitch.

Lyn looked up because of the tone. She wondered whether it meant that something was wrong with the baby, or if perhaps Willa was just being sensitive to the fact that Lyn would never have a grandchild of her own.

“Congratulations,” she said evenly.

Willa stood and took a few steps in Lyn’s direction. For a moment, Lyn thought she was going to touch her, and she braced herself. But Willa stopped, and rested one small hand on the counter.

“She named her . . .”

Lyn didn’t pause her drying. The fact that the baby had been named wasn’t earth-shattering news.

“She named her Jiminy,” Willa finished.

Lyn didn’t drop the towel, but it felt like something inside her was dropping things left and right.

“I don’t know why she did, Lyn. I didn’t even think she remembered. But she did love Jiminy, and I guess the name stuck in her brain.”

Lyn nodded, and kept drying. She set her posture and expression to communicate that she didn’t want to talk about it any further. Because Willa didn’t either, they’d never discussed it again.

Now, twenty-five years later, this brown-skinned out-of-state investigator was watching her, waiting for her to speak.

“Willa’s daughter loved Jiminy,” she finally offered. “And remembered her more than we thought she did.”

“Your daughter obviously left a deep and lasting impression,” Carlos replied. “Even on the mind of a child.”

“You have no idea,” Lyn replied.

She was frustrated that she couldn’t convey just what Jiminy had meant to anyone who came into contact with her. She’d been a miracle, really. She’d always been the most alive, interesting personality in any room. She’d been curious and bold, exceptionally smart and utterly charming. People had fallen for Jiminy whether they’d wanted to or not.

“Did you get along with Willa’s daughter, Margaret?” Carlos asked.

“For the first seven years of her life, we did. Then I lost interest.”

“After the murders.”

“There wasn’t much point.”

Carlos leaned back in his chair, so that its front two legs rose up in the air. Lyn winced, feeling the strain on the back two legs somewhere deep in her chest.

Carlos noticed and righted himself.

“Edward made them,” Lyn explained.

“They’re beautiful. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

Lyn nodded. She loved those chairs. She loved running her fingers over them. When she did, she felt almost like she was touching a part of Edward.

“How did Henry and Willa react to the murders?” Carlos asked.

Lyn closed her eyes for a moment. She saw Henry in the room with the doctor and the bodies. Saw him reaching for her, knew she’d stopped him with a stare. He and Willa might’ve wanted to give her comfort, but she’d moved beyond that by then.

She opened her eyes and stared at the wall.

“They were devastated, same as me,” she said. “They didn’t go with me to the police station, but they went separately. Equally,” she added with a wry half laugh. “They told the sheriff that there had been murders that needed to be prosecuted,” she finished, sober once more.

Carlos’s face remained still.

“Their report should be somewhere in here,” Lyn continued, shuffling the onionskin pile in front of her. “Find that one, too?”

Carlos shook his head.

“Not yet.”

Lyn stopped shuffling.

“It’s not in this pile?”

Carlos shook his head again. Lyn was silent for a moment.

“I see.”

“It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Carlos said. “Back then, people misplaced plenty they didn’t want to see the light of day. The sheriff might not’ve even had a report written in the first place, just to save him the trouble of tearing it up.”

“He had one written up of my visit,” Lyn said.

“He did,” Carlos agreed.

“So.”

“You said yourself Willa and Henry were devastated,” Carlos said. “I’m sure that they were. Didn’t Henry pass away not too long after?”

Lyn nodded. And she didn’t say it out loud, but that had probably been for the best.

Perched in his lifeguard station at the Fayeville pool, Walton Trawler heard all kinds of things people didn’t expect him to. They just forgot about him, sitting up in his chair, keeping his eyes on the water and his fishing hat on his head. They became accustomed to his steady alertness and grew to think of him as an object—as furniture that belonged with the pool, rather than a living, listening human. If they did remember his presence hovering just above them, they thought immediately of his age, and what they assumed was his poor hearing. They didn’t consider the possibility that all five of his senses worked as well as a twenty-year-old’s, and that he was consequently soaking up every interesting fragment of gossip that floated by. Sound carries over water, even the length of a swimming pool. Walton just sat and listened and learned even more about the town he already knew better than just about anyone. The truth was, his interest in gossip was one of the reasons he kept volunteering for this job, despite his age.

“Was she always trouble?” Gloria Travail was asking, with a flip of her frosted blond hair.

Walton had delivered Gloria twenty-four years ago. He’d taken out her tonsils when she was seven, and her appendix when she was nineteen. The sight of her tanned abdomen always reminded him that he hadn’t left a noticeable scar. Gloria flaunted her body for the other people at the pool, most of them women with children. She thrived on contentious relationships and delighted in being a friend one day, a foe the next. She had directed her question at Suze Connors, with whom she’d recently been fighting but had apparently made up. Suze was nursing her new baby under a towel. Walton double-checked to make sure the baby’s whole body was covered. He was there to save the lives of anyone who might otherwise drown, but sometimes he just felt like standing up on his chair and yelling at them all to get out of the sun. Wasn’t he failing at his duty by watching them slowly kill themselves with cancerous ultraviolet rays? He didn’t care as much about himself; he knew his days were numbered.

“I don’t know what she was like when she was in Illinois. It’s real different there,” Suze was saying. “But I never woulda expected something like this. I mean, can you imagine?”

“No, I absolutely cannot,” Gloria declared. “The thought of it makes me sick. Where’s her momma in all this? What’s her grandmomma doing? Though that Willa Hunt is an odd one, I’ve always thought.”

“I expect Willa’s just too old and tired and worn out to control her.” Suze shook her head sadly. “I told Jiminy to call me up. Told her I’d loveta see her. I wish she’d come to me first.”

Gloria patted her arm.

“Don’t blame yourself, now. You’ve had your hands full.”

Suze shrugged in a martyrish way and adjusted the towel covering her nursing baby. Her other three kids were playing Marco Polo in the shallow end of the pool, shouting and splashing. The youngest of them was outfitted in water wings that were blown up so tight they looked like they might pop.

“You’d never let one of your kids, would you?” Gloria asked.

“Are you joking?” Suze replied.

She sounded deeply offended.

“I wouldn’t, either,” Gloria agreed.

“This world’s hard enough,” Suze said sagely. “Life’ll bring you down if you let it, you don’t need to bring yourself down ahead of time. I just don’t know what she was thinking, I honestly don’t. He’s nice enough, apparently, but that’s not the point. He’s beneath her.”

“For real, sounds like,” Gloria said with a snort.

“You’re so bad,” Suze replied with a shake of her head.

“Maybe this isn’t even new for her,” Gloria continued. “Maybe he’s not her first.”

Suze shuddered.

“She should just move along and let Fayeville be.”