on the floor. He loved carrots. Hannah wanted to make soup. Something to warm her from the inside. She didn’t know what she was doing anymore. She thought of Huck back at their condo in Virginia. The white, clean kitchen. Stainless steel appliances. Hardwood floors. Cream and neutral throw rugs. Everything modern and styled and bright and functional. It seemed like another life, belonging to another person. The shape of her had changed—she no longer fit in that house. She imagined herself there, dirty as a chimney sweep. Here felt better, like home. Damp and musty and dark.
Alice appeared in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She had a peculiar look on her face, questioning.
“Was that Detective McCarran again?” she asked, her voice strangled and reedy.
“Alice,” Hannah asked warily. “What do you know about Stuart’s truck?”
“What about it?”
“Who had access to it? Have you seen anyone drive it?” And then, even though she knew the answer, “Who it belonged to?”
“Fae told me once it belonged to her ex-husband,” Alice said, her bird nose starting to twitch. “And no, I have no idea who has driven it. I wouldn’t think it’s been moved since he got sick. I never saw Fae drive it. Why are you asking?”
“Her ex-husband,” Hannah repeated dumbly. “You mean Warren.”
“Is that his name?”
“You know it is, Alice. Do you know Warren?”
“I—I don’t.” Alice’s hand encircled her throat, fingers pulsing at the neck.
“I think that’s the truck that ran Fae off the road,” Hannah said, sliding the blade under the carrot slices and pushing them into a pot on the stove with her fingertip.
“Someone ran Fae off the road?” Alice asked in a pitchy tone. She moved her hand to the back of her head, pulled her hair off her neck, twisted it before letting it unwind like a serpent. The gesture felt familiar, and Hannah stopped chopping, watched her, interested.
Hannah met Alice’s eyes. Saw something hard flicker there. “Yes. That’s what I mean.”
In the dream, Hannah smelled the fire. It became part of the sequence—first she was running through the woods, away from the blaze, and then she was running toward it, the heft of a child on her hip. She couldn’t see the child’s face, just a blonde curl, a wisp that kept blowing across Hannah’s cheek. The girl’s shoes were patent leather, white. She squealed in Hannah’s ear.
Hannah sat up, her heart pounding, and for a moment, she was relieved to wake up in the same place she’d gone to sleep. Not in the forest or in the courtyard or thigh high in the Beaverkill. She thought, for a moment, she was still in bed.
Then the smoke.
She didn’t ask herself until later how or why she could smell the smoke before she felt the heat of the blaze, before she saw the flames lick from the bottom of the room to the top.
She just knew she was in the greenhouse, and now the greenhouse was on fire.
She pushed against the door, but the door seemed to be stuck or locked, the metal frame red hot to touch. The smoke was starting to fill the small space, crowd out the oxygen in her lungs, make her feel light headed, and sting her eyes. The upper windows, usually slanted open, had been shut.
Hannah slapped her pockets and blessedly found her cell phone in the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. She dialed 911 before she remembered that Rockwell had no 911, and then she just gave up and called Wyatt. When he answered in a husky, sleepy voice, she coughed into the phone that she was stuck in the blazing greenhouse. She realized then that the east-facing wall of windows was not burning. The wooden frame was blackened and crackling but not engulfed.
Through the window, backlit by moonlight, was Alice. Her normally slicked-back hair was wild around her face; her eyes seemed to glow from the firelight.
“Help!” Hannah screamed it through the window, but Alice didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.
Hannah picked up a large galvanized watering can and swung it hard against the glass, splintering it into pieces. She was barefoot, she realized, but she’d have to take her chances. She used the bottom of the aluminum watering can to clear the jagged edges from the frame as much as possible, then launched herself out the window.
Hannah landed on the broken glass, but her feet felt no pain. It wasn’t until