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“Everything you’re saying is true,” Celia said. “They were terrible people. Terrible parents. How they treated you was unforgivable. It wasn’t your fault Henry went into the river that night. It could’ve just as easily been you. Myrna and Gerald practically chased you out of town themselves.”

Jude twisted open the tube of mascara. “And once I was gone, they turned into different people.”

“So did you.”

Jude laughed. “Well done. It took me thirty years of therapy to come to that same conclusion.”

“Shit, don’t let anybody know a Clifton went to therapy. The entire family tree will burst into flames.”

“If only.” Jude jammed the wand into the tube of mascara several times to load it up. She went over her lashes twice to make sure it was caked on, then she used the pointy end of the safety pin to pick the lashes apart. “I remember how furious Myrna used to get when we did this.”

“You’re going to give yourself pink eye!” Celia screeched. She’d always done a good Myrna. “Jesus, I can’t believe what’s happened to her. It’s terrifying to watch.”

Jude applied a liberal layer of lipstick. “I used to worry about my bad knees, but now all I can think is maybe I have the same genetic marker.”

“Aunt Millie can tell you which side it came from.”

“Fucking hell.” Jude had thought she was beyond being surprised. “Millie’s still alive?”

“Cole calls her Aunt Spoiler because she can tell you how everybody died.” Celia passed Jude a paper towel. “The old bitch gets around better than I do. You know those Clifton women are too stubborn to die.”

Jude blotted her lips with the paper towel, making sure to smear it outside the lines. She asked, “How did I do?”

“You did great,” Celia said. “I wish I could wear eyeshadow again. I get in front of the mirror and it’s like trying to draw crayon on a ballsac.”

The floorboard creaked at the top of the stairs. Cole was back. He’d changed into his uniform. He asked Jude, “Why do you look like that?”

“Like a washed-up old whore?” She smiled at his reaction. “I knew Adam Huntsinger back in the day, sweetheart. He won’t talk to me if I’m too cleaned up.”

“Is that like a boomer thing?”

Celia ruffled his hair. “Gen X you little twerp.”

Jude gathered from Cole’s grin that this was a game they played. She couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she packed her make-up back into her purse. She touched her hand to Celia’s shoulder on her way out the door.

Inside the cruiser, Cole rested his elbow on the console and drove with two fingers on the wheel, the same way Gerald had.

Jude felt an unexpected wave of sadness.

She had mourned the loss of her father so many times over the years that his actual death had felt like an afterthought as she flew across the country.

Now, sitting beside Cole, sharing his easy silence, she couldn’t help but be grateful that the things she had lost as a teenager had been returned in spades to the young man beside her.

She told him, “Go ahead. Ask me your questions.”

He was clearly ready. “Why did you join the FBI?”

Jude wasn’t going to tell him that she’d joined as a big fuck you to a father who’d told her she wasn’t built for the job, but she could cut close to the truth.

“As a criminal psychologist, my choices were to either teach or start seeing patients. I was sick of being in school and I didn’t want to set up shop in an office building or a hospital.

I thought I could put my degree to more practical use with the FBI. ”

“Did they recruit you?”

“That’s more the CIA’s thing.” She could tell from the flash of excitement in his eyes that he’d seen too many movies. “You’ve been told about your uncle Henry?”

“A little bit. It’s hard for Uncle Tommy to talk about anything. Like, at all.”

Jude knew that was not an exaggeration. “Gerald wanted Henry to take over as sheriff one day. From the moment he was born, Dad passed down all his wisdom, his techniques, his approaches. And I was right there listening alongside Henry. It gave me a head start when I joined the agency.”

“Papa taught Mom how to be a cop.” Cole had clearly picked up on the things Jude hadn’t said. “And he was teaching me. Or at least trying to. I didn’t listen like I should’ve.”

She watched his eyes glisten with tears. His jawbone jutted out from his cheek. Jude reached for his arm, but Cole moved his hand to the top of the steering wheel to put himself out of reach.

He asked, “Why did you stop drinking?”

“The reason most people do. I got tired of it. It stops being fun real quick, and then it’s just hangovers and feeling like shit and being terrible to people you love and doing all kinds of nasty things that you know you shouldn’t do, so you drink more to forget and start the cycle all over again.”

Cole was nodding. “That’s kind of what Papa said. That he got tired of it. And that he didn’t want to miss Mom and me growing up.”

Jude nodded, too, but his words threatened to reopen a very old wound. “What did you think of the Misguided Angel podcast?”

“That it was wrong to go after my mom like that. She wasn’t in charge of the case. Papa was. And they had a lot of evidence. The jury heard it and agreed with what they found.”

Jude caught the undertone of anger. She also thought it was interesting that Cole wasn’t insisting that Gerald had gotten it right. “The podcast raised an alternate suspect, Dale Loudermilk.”

“He was the choral director at school. They found a bunch of child porn on his computer, but he was ruled out as a suspect in the abduction.”

“Based on?”

“Based on Adam being more likely because of the preponderance of evidence. Adam had contact with Madison on the day she disappeared. He admitted to selling her the bag of weed that was found in her pocket. Aunt Millie saw them sitting together at her pond that morning. Plus, Adam dropped Cheyenne’s necklace outside his house.

Plus, all the stuff with his father’s Jetta, and he wore a size eleven boot and didn’t have an alibi, and stuff like that. ”

“Where is Dale Loudermilk now?”

“Mom checked yesterday when Paisley Walker went missing. He’s still in prison. He’s not eligible for parole for another four years.” Cole reached down and flashed his lights to slow down a speeder. “What did you think about the podcast?”

“I think for the most part that podcasters don’t have all the information that the police have, so it’s easy to latch onto an alternate theory.

I’m not saying they’re always wrong, but they’re selling a story.

Good and bad. Heroes and villains. Most of them are trying to make a name for themselves.

They tend to forget the victims. They focus on the bad guy instead of the people he hurt. ”

“This bad guy really hurt a lot of people,” Cole said.

“My mom and Hannah used to be best friends. Like sisters, practically. Then that stuff happened with Madison, and they never talked to each other again.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“It’s weird, like they’re not mean or anything, but they stay out of each other’s way. ”

“Did you ask your mom what happened?”

“She told me I’d understand one day, but that’s what she usually says when she doesn’t want to talk about stuff.”

Jude could tell by his tone that the rift bothered him. He was still so young. He hadn’t fully developed that hard Clifton shell. “I assume you didn’t see who was holding the gun yesterday when Gerald was shot?”

“Nope.” Cole’s jaw clenched a few times. “You got any more questions about the podcast?”

Jude let the silence stretch until it threatened to turn awkward. “I thought it was strange Jack called it Misguided Angel , but he never mentions or plays the song.”

“There’s a song?”

“There’s a beautiful song by the Cowboy Junkies.” Jude cleared her throat, singing the soft ballad. “ Misguided angel hangin’ over me … heart like Gabriel, pure and white like ivory … soul like Lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead … misguided angel, love you ’til I’m dead.”

Cole was grinning by the time she’d finished. “You’ve got a pretty voice.”

“Good enough for grad school.” Jude tried to be careful. “Some people think the song is about a woman who’s trapped in an abusive relationship.”

All expression left Cole’s face. Maybe his shell was thicker than she’d thought. The podcast had skirted around the dissolution of Emmy and Jonah’s marriage, but even four decades on, Jude was still attuned to the coded language of North Falls people.

“Look.” Cole’s voice was hard. He was North Falls people, too. “I’m not a suspect, and I’m not gonna let you interrogate me about my mother.”

“Fair enough.” Jude looked out the window, trying to find a way to change the subject. “Are those Uncle Penley’s apartments?”

Cole cleared his throat. He was obviously still bristly. “Yeah, Mom wants me to move in, but since Grandma’s out of the house, I don’t know.”

“You’re too young to turn into Miss Havisham.”

He gave her a classic Myrna side-eye. “Grandma cleaned her stuff out before she got bad. Said she didn’t want us to have to go through everything. And Papa didn’t have much stuff anyway. Just his fishing poles and his albums.”

“Photo albums?”

“He made me show him how to print out pictures on his own.” Cole had a wistful smile on his face. “Only took him six tries to figure it out.”