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“I’m sure,” he replied, a half-smile flickering its way across his lips. “I’ll pay, get your leftovers, and then go wait for you. Call me if you need anything. Anything ,” he repeated, with emphasis. “Okay?”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I told him. “I love you.”

The half-smile made a quick re-appearance. “I love you,” he replied.

I went.

I’d assumed that they’d put us in some sort of weird visitation area where I’d see Noah through Plexiglass, talk on a phone, that sort of thing.

But they brought me to what looked like an interrogation room—not one I’d been in before, since I’d spent my one night behind bars in the holding cells at the Sheriff’s Office, not at the actual jail.

They’d searched me, taking pretty much everything off me—a pen shoved in one pocket, my keys, my phone, my wallet—and gave me a receipt that documented all of it.

I hated giving it all up, especially the phone, but I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to see Noah.

And I was willing to do a lot if it meant I could see Noah.

After a few minutes sitting alone in an uncomfortably cold air conditioned room with painful plastic chairs, they brought Noah to me—under guard—and they even let him hug me without protest.

It felt so good to just hold him, real and solid, in my arms. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas, and I’d been terrified of what was happening to him in jail over the last week. “You okay, Nono?” I whispered into his hair.

He let out a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he replied, and the answer explained without any more words that while he wasn’t okay, they hadn’t hurt him or assaulted him. That he was whole, just scared and tired and worried.

The guard cleared his throat, and we stepped apart, then sat down at the table, one of us on each side.

I held out my hands, and Noah took them.

The guard remained silent, so I figured this was acceptable.

“They have me on my own most of the time,” Noah said.

“I get to walk the yard every day, but they mostly have me in a cell away from the other guys.”

I let out a long breath. “That’s good, right?”

He nodded, his face tight. “Yeah, probably. Are you okay? Have you learned anything?”

“I’m fine,” I replied. “I’m not sure what all I can tell you,” I said, glancing over at the guard, although he didn’t move, his gaze fixed high on the wall.

“Do you have any ideas about who did it?” he whispered.

I blinked. “Father,” I replied.

Noah sucked in a breath. “Are—are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” I confirmed, my tone dark.

“Are they—going to arrest him?” he asked, and I knew the hope in his voice was because he wanted to get out—wanted this nightmare to be over.

“They’d have to find him,” I replied grimly.

“Oh.” Noah’s fingers tightened on mine. “Sethy…”

“Yeah?”

“They’re protecting him, aren’t they?”

He’d just voiced the thing I’d been thinking for the last thirty hours or so.

That the Community was hiding our father because they’d sanctioned—for some fucked-up reason—our mother’s death.

Maybe she’d been sick. Maybe they’d found out she went to Humbolt.

Maybe they found out she’d reached out to Noah.

Maybe it was something entirely different, although I hadn’t seen anything else in the house that might explain it.

Which reminded me that Noah hadn’t told me he’d come to meet our mother. “Nono?”

“Yeah?”

I kept my voice very low, hoping the guard was human and wouldn’t be able to hear. But I had to know. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out here to see Momma?”

His face flushed, neck first, the same way mine did. “Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it,” he whispered.

“Of course I would have!” I hissed back. “Why would you even want to?”

He sighed. “I guess I hoped that maybe…” He swallowed, eyes too bright. “Maybe I could convince her to love me . Not her image of me, but me . And if I could do that…”

“What? Rebuild your relationship?”

He shifted in his uncomfortable prison chair. “I was always closer to her than you were, Sethy.”

He wasn’t wrong. “I know,” I replied. “But I still don’t get it. They did nothing but torment us our entire childhoods.”

“She wasn’t like Father,” Noah said. “She tried to be nice. When she could.”

“When she knew he wouldn’t find out, you mean,” I retorted.

Noah nodded, cheeks still flushed.

“She still let them,” I hissed.

Noah’s expression was pleading. “But she didn’t want to,” he insisted.

I didn’t want to argue with him, but I couldn’t help but think that if she hadn’t wanted to, then she should have left and taken us with her. Or told us to run. Or done anything at all except let it happen. Which brought me back to the question of why she’d reached out now.

Rachael, maybe?

“Did she tell you we had a sister?”

“What?” He was genuinely shocked. “No!”

I explained, watching his eyes, wide and as blue as mine, as they filled with tears.

“She died?”

“She got Arcana,” I replied. “Last year.”

“Jesus,” Noah breathed. “Is that why Momma wanted to talk to me?” he asked. “Because she died?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “Maybe. She didn’t tell Humbolt—her lawyer, now my lawyer—what made her want to make a separate will.”

“She made a separate will?”

I nodded. “She left you some jewelry. A brooch. Grandma’s pearls. The good tablecloth.”

“Did she leave you anything?” he asked.

“Grandpa’s toolbox and the bedspread.”

“Lu might like the pearls,” he said softly.

“They might,” I agreed. I squeezed his hands. “We’re going to figure this out, Noah,” I promised. “And get you out of here.”

I’d been able to spend just over three hours with Noah, and it went a long way to making me feel less guilty about the fact that he was still in jail.

He was scared and lonely and uncomfortable, but he wasn’t being tormented or beaten, and that was a huge relief.

Lulu had also been allowed to see him, as well as the high-priced lawyer, who at least appeared to be earning her fees.

Noah had insisted that she would be getting in touch with both me and Humbolt, and he seemed convinced—although I wasn’t—that I was somehow going to solve this case and get him out.

I was going to try, and that would mean having to go back out to the house.

To do a better job of going through everything, looking for evidence that the Augusta County Sheriff’s Department missed because they were convinced they had their man.

Or because they were being pressured into having him, regardless of the truth.

I’d decided to stop and pick up dinner—Elliot had been in charge of feeding us for the entire rest of this trip so far, and I felt like getting him something he would never get himself from somewhere I couldn’t eat would at least help to show how grateful I was that he was here with me.

I had leftover dinner from the night before and about two-thirds of my fajitas from lunch, so I didn’t need anything more.

I did some quick googling to look for a really good place and found a restaurant with a pimento cheese burger, called a Ballard Burger, another called an Oklahoma Onion Burger, and added an order of bacon cheese fries for Elliot.

I got some regular fries for myself, then gave in and also ordered a chicken sandwich.

I’d eat the leftovers eventually. Or Elliot would.

I placed the order through my phone, then drove downtown and parked a few blocks away from the restaurant. I got out, hissing as my knee protested. I sighed, then closed the car door and headed to pick up dinner.

I was not expecting someone to recognize me. Not at six-three with a full beard, given that I’d been five-ten, skinny, without even a wisp of facial hair when I’d last spent any time this close to home.

The woman in front of me as I stopped to let her walk past—because I didn’t recognize her, not at first—gasped, her eyes going wide.

She was fair-skinned, although her face and forearms were tanned from exposure to the sun.

She wore a simple cotton dress, blue with tiny flowers, modeled after the same modest style Momma had always worn and had started making for Noah in the last few years we’d been at home.

“Mr. Mays—” She broke off, her pale eyes getting even wider. “ Seth Mays?”

She’d clearly thought at first that I was my father. It wasn’t a welcome reminder that I shared genetics with the man who’d killed my mother. I searched back through my memories, tried aging the faces that flickered through my mind.

“Mrs. Tabbard?” Iris Tabbard was around my mother’s age.

She’d had a daughter, Leah, who had been a year or two older than Noah and I.

Momma had always tried to convince both of us to spend time with Leah.

Leah also had three other sisters—Martha, Ruth, and Anne—one older, the other two younger.

We’d all gone to the same schoolhouse together, played together, and sometimes did community chores together.

Iris Tabbard beamed. Even with the smile on her face, she looked a good decade older than I knew she was. Clearly, the last sixteen years in the Community had not been kind to her.

“You’ve come home,” she said, holding out her hands.

“Because of Momma,” I replied, not taking her hands. “I’m not staying.” The words were clipped.

The smile faded, and she swallowed, then nodded, folding her hands in front of her. “Yes, of course. Of course that’s why you’re here. I am sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Did your sister come back with you?” she asked.

“No, Noah did not,” I replied sharply.

Mrs. Tabbard pursed her lips, but said nothing to that. Her eyes flicked around, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then, suddenly, she reached out and squeezed my hands. “Don’t go up there at night,” she all but blurted. “To the house. It’s not safe.”

I blinked. The Appalachian forest wasn’t a particularly dangerous place at night as long as you could see where you were going.

The moon had been almost new when Momma had died, and we were nearly at a quarter moon—it would be dark, but not so dark that a shifter couldn’t find their way.

Not that Mrs. Tabbard knew I was a shifter now.

“I know how to navigate the woods, Mrs. Tabbard,” I reminded her.

“That’s—that’s not why,” she whispered. “Your momma wanted you to have a life,” she said, stepping very close to me and hissing the words. “Don’t you waste it by going up there at night.” She looked around us one more time, then hurried away, leaving me gaping after her.