“Juan Gonzalez. Rosa Gonzalez. Penelope Gonzalez. Maria Gonzalez. Paco Hernandez. Teresa Hernandez. Guillermo Lopez. Isabella Lopez.”

“These are real people,” Walton said behind him. “Juan and Rosa own this restaurant. Or they did.”

The place looked like it had been left in a hurry. Above the doorway to the kitchen, “Care of K.S.O.” had been spray-painted in large, red letters.

“Who are the others?” Carlos asked, waving his hand over the outlines of dozens of labeled bodies.

Walton shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

Carlos nodded. His stomach felt hollow.

“But they’re why I’m giving this to you,” Walton said, handing over the stack of papers he’d been carrying. “I have to. This can’t go on.”

Carlos was still staring around him at all the hypothetical bodies, unaware of the significance of Walton’s decision—oblivious that the horror around them had inspired a momentous atonement.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said sharply.

There was nothing Walton wanted to do more.

Chapter 18

In the hospital parking lot, Rosa balanced her baby on one hip while closing the car door with her other. She didn’t have much time, and she needed to be certain that Pen was healthy enough to undertake a long journey. Juan’s cousin who worked at the hospital had promised to help.

Rosa was surprised by Jiminy at the emergency room door—they nearly collided before engaging in the kind of pass-attempt shuffle dance that occasionally delays people for longer than seems reasonable. They kept choosing the same direction, only to simultaneously readjust to the same alternate one. Back and forth they went, in a box step of starts and stops.

“I’m sorry, you pass,” Jiminy said, stopping the shuffling before it reached a point of total ridiculousness.

Jiminy had come to the hospital to seek access to Travis Brayer, only to be informed that he’d been checked out by his family an hour before. Which meant he was back at Brayer Plantation, surrounded by guards and minders. Jiminy couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d missed an important window of opportunity, and this frustrated her. She could sense the clock running out, and for the first time, she wondered about the hubris of expecting a happy ending. She’d hoped at the very least that an investigation would bring some kind of clarity and redemption, but what if it didn’t? What if it did nothing? Or made everything worse?

As she stood back for Rosa to pass, her mind flashed to the empanada and beer night when Carlos had nearly kissed her, and she felt a yearning for Bo. She sighed without realizing it, causing Rosa to look at her.

“How’s the restaurant?” Jiminy asked, to cover up her foolishness.

Rosa glanced downward.

“We’re closed,” she replied.

Pen began howling, as if on cue. Rosa jiggled her up and down as she avoided Jiminy’s gaze.

“We’re leaving,” Rosa continued. “We have to leave.”

There was no reason to elaborate about why they were leaving, Rosa decided. No reason to describe how this place had become so ugly for them. Even after traveling all this way and laying down a foundation and starting a business and having a baby and carving out a better life than the one they’d left . . . in the end, it wasn’t enough. Once you’d been beaten in a town, you’d been beaten by a town. They had to go elsewhere. Juan had some relatives in North Carolina who were encouraging them to come east, so they were packing up and shipping out. Rosa still lived in fear of deportation, and she knew the risks involved in starting over in a new state, but she hoped luck would be on their side. She felt luck owed them.

She didn’t go into any of this with Jiminy, though she couldn’t help the catch in her voice.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jiminy said earnestly. “You’ll be missed.”

Rosa bit her tongue. Hardly. But Jiminy was an exception. Rosa was aware that Jiminy was trying to take some of Fayeville’s ugliness to task, and she admired her for it.

“Gracias, amiga,” Rosa replied, as she adjusted Pen on her hip. “I’m hoping for something better for her,” she continued, smoothing her baby’s hair back with one hand. “I’m afraid this world isn’t good enough. It’s just not good enough.”

Jiminy felt stricken by these words. It was only as Rosa was about to disappear through the hospital door that she found her voice again.

“Wait!” she exclaimed.

Rosa turned back, her hand still on her baby’s forehead.

“I want to give you something,” Jiminy declared. “It’s for your daughter, really.”

Rosa watched Jiminy rummage through her gigantic purse and wondered again why Americans felt the need for such large things. Big possessions, big promises, big illusions.

“Here,” Jiminy said.

She was holding out a little wooden doll. Rosa could tell it was old, and exquisitely crafted. She took it gently from Jiminy’s small hands and stared at it, charmed.

“It was carved to keep little girls company, when the world isn’t enough,” Jiminy said. “I hope your daughter will like it.”

Penelope was already gripping one of the wooden arms in her little fist.

“Muchas gracias,” Rosa began. “Thank you. But—”

Jiminy cut her off.

“Just take care of it, please,” she said. “And yourself. And your family. I’ll be rooting for you.”

Rosa stared a moment, then smiled for the first time in weeks.

“Bueno,” she said, and Jiminy felt the benediction wash over her like water.

Buoyed by a newfound sense of purpose, Jiminy resolved to forge ahead however possible. If she couldn’t get to Travis Brayer, she’d track down Roy Tomlins. It was only as she pulled up to the small house at the end of a deserted road that she questioned the wisdom of coming alone. But she shook off her fear and approached the door with determination.

A slight, sharp-featured woman answered her knock. The right side of the woman’s face was lashed with a mottled purple bruise, and there was a deep gash the length of her forehead. Jiminy couldn’t help but gasp.

“What do you want?” the woman barked fiercely.

It took some effort for Jiminy to stand her ground and not step back.

“I’m looking for Roy Tomlins,” she managed to respond. “Are you all right?”

“He ain’t here,” the woman spat. “And if I was you, I wouldn’t look too hard for him. I’d run the other direction, if I was you.”

Jiminy stared at her. The woman had a vein that bisected her bruise like a mountain range emerging from magma. It looked both fresh and ancient.

She slammed the door. Jiminy stood a moment, then turned and lifted her gaze to the sky. To the south, toward the river, she spotted buzzards flying high in their trademark loops. She wondered what dead or dying animal they were circling, and tried not to feel too perturbed that they seemed to be directly over Willa’s farm. She straightened her shoulders and hurried toward the car.

From his seat beneath the hickory tree in the courthouse square, Bo watched the cars rumble past. He’d spent the morning searching for Jiminy’s kitten, because he’d heard from Lyn how upset she was that it was missing. The search had been a masochistic impulse, and a fruitless one, though he was determined to resume it, despite Cole’s strong objections. He wondered about his reasons as he watched the cars go by. Had the potholes on Main Street been filled on schedule, their rides would have been smoother, but they hadn’t been fixed, so the slow-moving cars resembled lumbering animals migrating across Bo’s field of vision. None of them was as tiny as the creature he was looking for.