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“I should hope not,” Millie snapped. “What you need to do is drag that jackal out behind the barn and shoot him in the head. Let a bunch of crows peck out his eyeballs.”

“Aunt Millie,” Emmy tried to redirect her, “it’s not a bunch of crows. It’s a murder of crows.”

“No,” Myrna chimed in. “It can’t be murder without probable caws.”

Emmy gave a stunned laugh, then she had to look away to hide her tears.

After six years of grueling, relentless decline, there were so few moments lately that Myrna was truly herself.

These tiny sparks of personality were starting to feel more like callous reminders of all that had been lost. Emmy opened the drawer and found a packet of tissues. She blew her nose.

“What happened now?” Myrna sounded annoyed. “For god-sakes, Martha. Stop crying.”

Emmy bit her lip, begging the tears not to flow. This wasn’t the first time Myrna had confused her children. It was like holding onto a wrecking ball as her mother’s mind arced between comprehension and confusion.

“Myrna Louise Clifton!” Millie shouted, her tone firm. “That’s not Martha. That’s Emmy Lou, your baby daughter.”

Myrna’s confusion did not abate. “What happened to Martha?”

Even Millie didn’t have the heart to tell her that Martha had died over four decades ago.

“You remember when you told me you were pregnant with Emmy Lou? We were on that trip visiting the Coleman cousins up in Maryland, and you slipped on that sheet of ice in Beulah’s driveway and broke your leg in two places. Remember?”

Myrna’s slow nod made it clear that she didn’t buy the story.

“Never been so cold in my life,” Millie continued. “And the doctor said you needed to stay up there for a few months while you healed, but then Gerald came to fetch you. Said you could recover at home. You missed an entire school year. Don’t you remember?”

Myrna kept nodding, but she was obviously still dubious. “Yes, I remember.”

Emmy was saved further pain by Cole walking down the stairs.

He was already dressed in his deputy uniform.

The green cargo pants and light khaki shirt were far more flattering than the previous brown, which had resembled a hot dog left out too long in the sun.

Gone too were the heavy equipment belts that could herniate a disc.

Cole’s ballistic duty vest was hanging beside Emmy’s on the hooks by the door.

She never looked at it without remembering the tiny pajama sets she used to pack when Cole went on sleepovers.

Now he was nearly a foot taller than her, and packed solid with muscle.

“Morning, ladies.” Cole had the same charming, easy grin as his father with none of Jonah’s bullshit. He kissed Millie on the head, flashed a smile at Myrna, then bumped his arm against Emmy’s as he poured a cup of coffee. “All good?”

He was referring to Myrna’s night terrors. Emmy had to get her son out of here. A twenty-three-year-old man shouldn’t be living like this. “All good.”

“I thought I’d drive up to Atlanta for the Dogwood Festival this weekend.”

“Are you telling your mother or asking your boss?”

“Depends.” He turned up the full wattage of his smile. “Was it my mom or my chief who told me that I need to develop interests outside the job?”

“Both of them were right, but let’s see how today goes. Papa’s waiting for us in his office.”

Cole slurped a mouthful of scalding coffee, then rinsed out his cup in the sink. Millie opened the phone book to start the morning. Emmy was closing the screen door when she heard her mother’s faint voice ask, “Who was that handsome young man?”

Her jaw clenched again. She tried to make it release as she walked down the stairs.

Myrna probably wouldn’t eat breakfast. In the last week, she had stopped recognizing food, lost the hunger mechanism that compelled her to eat.

The doctor had said it was only a matter of time, but that was what all the doctors said when they had no idea how long it would take.

Cole said, “Bad night.”

“Yep.”

Emmy headed across the driveway toward her father’s home office.

She silently focused her thoughts on what her day would look like.

There were assignments to be made and roll call to get through and all the other administrative duties, but Adam Huntsinger had to be dealt with first. Millie was right that the town was riled up.

Emmy had read a lot of angry comments under the Herald story.

She had found herself agreeing with some of the sentiments.

The thought of Madison and Cheyenne’s killer being in North Falls again sent a familiar knot of stress twisting inside her stomach.

Fortunately, Adam was not completely free.

He was technically on parole, which limited his rights considerably.

He was living at his parents’ house in Elsinore Meadows.

The green Chevy truck was still his registered vehicle.

According to his terms of parole, he would have to find a job soon, submit to random searches, and comply with drug screening.

But hoping and praying and waiting for Adam to violate one of those conditions so that he was sent back to prison was not going to make the town any safer.

Emmy’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She tapped open the notifications.

The cousins had started to coalesce around a time and date for the baby shower.

She scrolled down, only now admitting to herself that she had been secretly hoping for a text from Hannah.

Not a mending of fences or an opening for reconciliation, but an opportunity for Emmy to be useful, to tell Hannah that she wasn’t giving up, that this wasn’t the end, that she would find a way to send Adam Huntsinger back to prison if it killed her.

But there was no text from Hannah and no way for Emmy to make the first move.

She had stuck by Hannah’s wishes over the last twelve years.

They hadn’t had a real conversation since that harrowing day that Emmy had found the girls in the water.

They occasionally nodded if they saw each other out at a restaurant or the bar.

Once, they both happened to be in the produce aisle at the grocery store, and Hannah had said, “Peaches are good this year.” Another time, Emmy had been waiting for a prescription at the Good Dollar and realized that both she and Hannah were humming along with the muzak version of “Complicated”.

If Hannah was thinking of the hours they had spent trying to smudge their eyeliner like Avril Lavigne, she didn’t say.

“Mom, you sure you’re okay?” Cole asked. “No offense, but you look like shit.”

“That’s real sweet, baby. Why don’t you needlepoint that onto a pillow for me next Mother’s Day?” Emmy caught his grin when she bumped him with her hip. “Did you have a chance to look at that apartment complex over in Verona? Your uncle Penley said he’d give you a good deal.”

“It’s on my list.”

Emmy knew there was no list. She also knew that everything that irritated her about her son—his stubbornness, his dogged loyalty, his blind sense of duty—were things that irritated her about herself.

She reached for the door to Gerald’s office, telling him, “Button your collar.”

Her father looked up from his desk when they entered.

He was writing on a sheet of lined notebook paper.

Sunlight sliced through the narrow windows behind him.

He’d converted the old equipment shed into an office when Emmy and Cole had moved in after the divorce.

Filing cabinets lined one wall. Two framed photographs of his children were by the window, one of Emmy as a toddler holding a kitten, another of her nearly grown siblings standing at the bottom of the Falls three years before she’d been born.

Two years before Henry had died. One year before Martha was gone.

Tommy looked tall and lanky in his bathing trunks.

He was a freshman in college. His hair had been nearly as long as Martha’s.

“Mornin’ boss,” Cole said.

“Deputy.” Gerald capped his pen, slid the paper into a folder. He looked up at Emmy. “How’s today?”

He was asking about Myrna. Gerald had walked the floors with her last night, too. There was a faint, red line across his cheek where Myrna’s fingernail had caught the skin when she’d slapped him.

This wasn’t the only visible mark of Myrna’s disease.

If her mother had been aged by her diagnosis, her father had been dragged to the edge of hell.

He was eighty-six now, but he looked ten years older than Millie.

His face was gaunt. He’d lost too much weight too quickly.

His uniform hung off his shoulders like a paper sack.

In many ways, it was harder for Emmy to watch her father deteriorate than her mother.

“It’s an okay day,” she said, because okay and bad were the only two options. “Millie will spend the morning with her, then Tommy will swing by at lunch, then the home health aid will come until you or I can leave the station.”

“I can help,” Cole said.

“No, you can’t.” Emmy looked at her father. “Run it down?”

Gerald nodded. “Okay.”

Emmy was relieved to move on to work. She pointed for Cole to sit down, then touched her own collar to remind him again to do the button.