coffee, seemed to settle. Your eyes stayed on that crystal heart.
“What are you going to do, Hank?” you asked.
I told you that, too. You didn’t leave, did you? You stayed and listened.
You always want to paint yourself as the healthy one, the innocent who has managed to move on in spite of the awful things that have happened. I am the broken one. The one who cracked under the weight of it and couldn’t put myself back together.
But there’s another side of you, too, Lara. And I’m the only one who knows it.
THIRTY-ONE
Hands shaking, breath shallow—she was practically vibrating. Sitting in Greta’s drive, she dialed Mitzi, who answered on the first ring.
“Hi, there,” she said, voice low. “Lily’s napping, and we’ve had a lovely time.”
Rain drew a breath, released it. The sound of Mitzi’s voice somehow managed to both energize and calm; a mother’s voice. Someone who knew the world, understood its steep hills and treacherous valleys, who knew the way. She’d missed that most of all, just the sound of her mother on the phone.
“That’s—wonderful.” She meant it. It was wonderful to be able to count on someone. “Thank you.”
She almost mentioned that she’d watched them on the camera, then realized she’d never actually told Mitzi about it. Was that a violation of her rights, of the unspoken trust between them? Wasn’t there something just south of creepy about it? They’d have to discuss it when she got home.
“I’ll just be another hour or so,” said Rain. “Is that all right?”
“That’s totally fine.” Not a note of impatience or judgment. “You take your time.”
Ending the call, she clicked back to the camera. Mitzi sat at the kitchen table with an open book and her own thermos of tea. Lily, on the monitor app, napped peacefully.
She clicked off and picked up the photos Greta had let her keep. Two people there that night, masked, a man and a woman. The back of her throat was so dry it ached. She saw Greta standing in the window, watching. Rain lifted her hand in a wave and drove away.
Yes, just like Greta said, the earth would cover it all. It would take back the land and integrate every dark thing that ever happened there.
Why couldn’t she let that just happen?
“You owe me this much, Lara,” Hank said.
The café was dim and mostly empty on that Wednesday afternoon. Outside it was winter gray, the air heavy with cold, threatening snow. Greg lingered on the street: she watched him pretend to read the paper, glancing up at the café window every few minutes, then down at his watch.
He had been angry with her—that look on his face, so hurt and disappointed. She’d lied to him, cheated on him. But he wasn’t about to let her confront Hank alone.
I’ll just be outside, in case you need me. That was the moment when she realized what kind of man he was. How deep, how faithful and good. And she was grateful for his friendship even if she’d fried everything else they might have been.
“I don’t owe you anything,” she told Hank.
She took cash from her wallet, put it on the table, was about to rise. The heart rested between them, glinting like an accusation. All the ways she’d failed him, let him down, didn’t love him the way he loved her.
“He’s going to kill someone else,” he said, voice almost a snarl. “You know that.”
She almost said, There’s nothing I can do about that. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? She sank back down.
“Another Lara, another Hank,” he said. “Another Tess.”
She felt the drop of dread in her belly. “He’s being supervised,” she said. She’d had a call from Detective Harper, also from her father. They’d promised her that she was safe.
We’re on him, Harper had promised. We won’t let him out of our sight.
“Not well enough,” said Hank grimly.
“How would you know that?”
He looked down at his hands. She knew them to be calloused and rough, but tender on her body. There was something deeply wrong with the man in front of her; why was she so drawn to him?
“I’ve been watching him,” he said. “At night. After classes I head back out there.”
“Who does?” she asked. “You or the—other side of you.”
“He does,” he said, shaking his head. “I do. I don’t know how to explain it.”
You’re batshit crazy, she thought. That’s how you explain it.
“What do you want from me?” she asked. It was more of a rhetorical question. But he had