The Woman in the Water

by Kelly Heard

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

'How do I keep my family safe, when I don't know why we're in danger?'When Felicity Wheeler gets the call that her sister has drowned near the old boardwalk in their hometown, she realizes that she is the only person able to take care of her two nieces. Returning home, Felicity discovers that the town she once left is still haunted by the memories of her past: former friends, heartbreaks and secrets. Secrets that might reveal whether Holly's death was an accident or not.Felicity knows that Holly wouldn't just have let the water take her. Something or someone else had to be part of the equation. Had someone else discovered the truth about what happened all those years ago? Was Holly's death payback for it? Would Felicity's two nieces and even herself be next?An absolutely gripping, twisty psychological thriller that will keep you turning the pages late into the night. Perfect for fans of "The Girl on the Train", "The Woman in the Window" and "The Silent Patient".What readers are saying about "The Woman in the Water." "OMG what a story!... Twisty, fast paced... Sure to keep you guessing from page one! Full of mystery, tension and suspense... Had my heart pounding... The best thriller I've read this year." Goodreads reviewer"WOW!!!... brilliant... The intrigue builds and builds until BAM that ending!!... as soon as I read it, I thought OH MY GOD, OF COURSE!... Miss this one and miss out." Goodreads reviewer "I'm speechless... This book blew my mind. I can't stop thinking about it... Gripping until you were on the edge of your seat... The book was that good." Reviews by Bee The Girl I Thought I Knew is an AUS top 50 bestsellerReaders love Kelly Heard: "WOW!!!!... Gripped me so hard that I simply couldn't put the book down!!... The ending left me breathless... So good and unputdownable... Will take your breath away!!" Tropical Girl Reads ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"OMG what a story!... Twisty, fast paced... Sure to keep you guessing from page one! Full of mystery, tension and suspense... Had my heart pounding... The best thriller I've read this year." Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"WOW!!!... brilliant... The intrigue builds and builds until BAM that ending!!... as soon as I read it, I thought OH MY GOD, OF COURSE!... Miss this one and miss out." Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"I'm speechless... This book blew my mind. I can't stop thinking about it... Gripping until you were on the edge of your seat... The book was that good." Reviews by Bee ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"Ooh... fabulous... I never knew what to expect... Kept me guessing...The ending was full on nail-biting...I couldn't put it down." Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"A stellar read that gripped me from the first page! The twists were amazing... I could not put it down." Kit Kaboodle & Family ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"Had me gripped and on the edge of my seat reading it, I really struggled to put it down... Very thrilling." NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"One of my books of the year!... So gripping... Seriously, pick this up!!" Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"Gripping... Addictive... I loved every single second." Little Miss Book Lover 87 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"I was hooked... Glued to my eReader until the end... A must read." Steph and Chris's Book Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"Breath-taking... Had me hooked... A thrilling conclusion that I did not see coming." Once Upon a Time Book Blog ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"A must-read!... Wonderful, suspenseful... Kept me hooked." Brianne's Book Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐-

Release date: July 22, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

A fisherman found my sister’s body in the swamp, washed up over the giant root of a cypress tree, only two miles from the house where we grew up. It was the day after Thanksgiving. Her legs were tangled in a fishing net, and, somehow, an arm of moss had wrapped itself around her head, giving rise to half a dozen nicknames when the story hit the local news: The Reverie Girls Claim Another. Swamp Babe. One of the more salacious headlines read: Murdered Mermaid. Though, from the beginning, everyone seemed to agree, her death was an accident.

The day before I heard the news, on my evening run along the beach, I stepped on a piece of glass, and, when I picked up my foot, wincing, I saw that the glass was the same green as my sister’s eyes, a wisp of blood spreading across its surface. I had to pick fragments out of my foot, and as I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was pulling Holly away, that she was leaving me somehow. Returning to my apartment, I continued with my standard routine and went to bed early.

But I slept poorly, waking every hour or so, to a ghostly voice calling my name, one that sounded as if it was just beyond the window, rather than years and miles away. Just like the one I had heard on that long-ago night at the deserted fairground, a whistling singsong, curling through the dark like vines. We all should have known better than to be out there, James, Holly, Cody and me. Page hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place. All my life, everybody’s parents had warned us of the Reverie Girls, lonely ghosts of drowned girls in the swamp, jealous of the living. I thought that was all they were: fireside stories, meant to keep children from wandering.

But it was no human voice that called to me that night—no human hand that tugged on my own, down into dark water that looked bottomless. What I didn’t know then was that it was also a warning, signaling the end of that dream I was living in. The next few months would see every last person I trusted give up on me: my parents; the boy I loved; even my own sister. But those breaking points were moments of truth, not anomalies. Nobody ever turned on me who hadn’t already seen me as deceitful, unbalanced, a cautionary tale for other people’s children: in other words, a teenage girl from the wrong part of town.

Like solving both sides of an equation—simplifying, combining like terms, isolating the variable—what it came down to was this: my heart got it wrong. So wrong I almost chased it to the bottom of the lake. From that understanding, I was free to make good, sensible choices, for the rest of my life.

I woke at three in the morning, my heart beating a steady, echoing rhythm that let me know I’d be awake for the day. I hurried to the shower, standing under the scalding hot stream, washing away the memory of swamp water and mud. The beaches here are bright, the water sparkling. Even when things are washed up, they wash up clean. That’s how I think of myself, now: a piece of beach glass, or a smooth piece of driftwood, in the form of a woman. That’s what rests beneath my ribs.

So, despite my sense that Holly was in trouble, I didn’t call her. I moved forward, as I always have done, a well-established habit. Working as a nurse, especially in pediatrics, I’m used to long days and hard work. People say nursing saps you like it’s a bad thing, but that’s what I was looking for. When I leave for the day, I don’t have much left for myself—of energy, of empathy, of feeling in general—and I don’t want much, either. After a few years working in the States, I applied to a travel nursing agency offering temporary placements, often no more than a few months at a time. There’s always work, but no promise as to where. Which suits me perfectly well. My last placement, in San Antonio, went through last spring, which was coincidentally when my last relationship ended. Derek Hannon, a soldier from Montana, who fell in love with me, another small-town stranger far from home. Maybe I thought I could extinguish it, this old strangeness that still calls to me. For better or for worse, tie an anchor to it. Derek was steady. Handsome. Even-tempered. I couldn’t be my whole self with him—I’d put it at around half. But the part of me left behind wasn’t the smooth part. It wasn’t the good part. I could not find one reason not to marry Derek. I thought I loved him, too—I did, really, until he proposed, and I knew I had to end it.

I wanted to say yes. Or, maybe, I wanted to want to say yes. I’d even practiced writing my first name next to his last name: Felicity Hannon. But they had never looked like one whole, just two pieces next to each other. I called the agency and told them I needed a new assignment, and wound up here, in the Virgin Islands.

Despite my foreboding dreams, I was feeling better by the time I went home to begin my evening chores. Cleaning, dinner, perhaps a walk on the beach, and then bedtime.

And then the phone rang.

“I’m trying to reach Felicity Wheeler.” A man’s voice, asking for me by name, in a southern accent.

“This is Felicity.”

“I’m Rob Dawson, Brightwater PD. This is—”

“Dawson, is that really you?” Smiling, I walked toward the kitchen, opened the freezer and filled an etched glass with ice. “It’s a nice surprise to hear from you. But how did you get my phone number?”

“I got your phone number from your mother.”

“Oh.” I was a bit surprised to hear that my mother had my phone number, as we spoke so rarely. “How are you? It’s only been thirteen years.” Rob Dawson, who had been called by his last name for as long as I could remember, was one of the rare people who had never, in my life, given me reason to worry about anything. He did not drink, never flirted, and rarely even made jokes. And, though he was a bit dull, if I could have chosen anyone to be my big brother, it would have been him.

“Yes, Rob Dawson, from Brightwater.”

“Did you say PD, as in police department?” With my phone tucked between my ear and shoulder, I measured and poured one half-shot of rum over the ice in my glass, topped it with sparkling water, then reached for the bowl of limes.

“Yes.” Dawson was on the wrestling team, and had a strong jaw, dull eyes. He went to public school, not the academy Holly and I attended, but we knew him the way you always know your neighbors in a small town. I remember him always showing up where Holly was, wistfulness so out of character on his straightforward features. I figured he’d always be in love with her. Holly let Dawson take her to one party, but she must have lost interest quickly, because she was married to Silas McDaniel before the end of that year. She was never interested in safe choices.

“It somehow doesn’t surprise me that you’re a cop now.” It was a mechanical series of motions, making my seven PM drink. Slice a lime, squeeze it over the drink, nestle the slice onto the rim of the glass. “It just seems like a good fit for you.”

“Well, thank you. Felicity, did you hear what I said when you answered the phone?”

“No,” I answered, tasting the lime juice on my fingertip. I carried my glass into the living room and took a seat on the chaise, facing the window.

“But you did hear that I said I’m calling for work, Felicity,” he pointed out. “You said being a cop was a natural fit for me.” Something unpleasant flickered across my mind as I sipped my drink, crossing my knees and leaning into the cushion. Maybe there was something I didn’t like about Dawson. Maybe he always did this, pointing out any tiny, harmless inconsistency. A natural fit, indeed.

“Um.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Yes,” I sighed, as if brushing off an overprotective older sibling. “Why?”

It clicked, then, and suddenly I felt trapped, as if the bars of some cage had clasped into place and I was on the wrong side of them. That wrong feeling in my stomach all day. The bad dreams I’d had, the certainty Holly needed me somehow. And a voice, whispering through the dark, from hundreds of miles away.

“Felicity, your sister Holly’s—”

“No.” My voice came out petulant, shaky. “That’s not possible.”

I had been so certain that she needed to talk to me. Shock, mingled with guilt, set my limbs tingling with dread.

“Your sister Holly has passed away.”

I could hear my ragged gasp echoing on the line.

“Felicity. There’s more.”

I tried to put the words together, Holly, and passed away, and the combination kicked up a confusion in my mind that almost knocked me to the floor. “But I need to talk to her. I knew something was wrong.”

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “And I’m sorry to have to bring up travel plans, but—”

“I’m not coming back,” I answered mechanically. “Holly knew that.”

“Everyone does,” he allowed, “but Holly’s will establishes you as the emergency guardian for the girls.”

“Me? But why?” I hadn’t even thought of Tess and Frankie. “Are they okay?” My voice skipped up several notes. “Dawson, what—what happened? To Holly?”

“She drowned,” he said. “If it’s any comfort, and this isn’t official yet, we’re all but certain it was accidental. And the girls are safe.”

“Why me?”

“Felicity, if you can’t manage it, the courts will appoint someone.”

“I’ll come.” Standing up, I take the lime from my drink and chew on it, only barely aware of its bright, bitter flavor, realize I’m crying. “Is my mother okay?”

“Um. Well, she—”

“Why isn’t she calling me? Why you, instead of her?”

An uneasy pause followed. “I have no doubt she’ll be glad to see you.”

“Then why’d I have to hear this from you, instead of her?”

“I—” Dawson cleared his throat. “She’s been refusing to speak to anyone since she identified the body.”

“Oh.”

“If you’d like, I can meet you at the airport, talk you through picking up the girls.” As if he already knew I didn’t have any family willing to meet me.

“Thank you,” I murmured, forcing a sense of control over my voice. “That would help, Dawson. I’ll be on the first flight tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know the details when I get my ticket.”

When the line goes silent, the words crystallize. It’s real.

I let the phone drop, feeling a distinct sense of weight above me, something heavy, dangling only by a thread. In an effort to shake off the dread materializing around me, I toss back the rest of my drink and stand up straight, sweeping my hair into a ponytail. I’ve devoted enough effort to my peace of mind that standing guard around it is a reflex. But now, I sense all the things that follow me, these unwanted companions. Cold night air on scraped knees. Swamp water on Holly’s jeans. This isn’t what I do: I can’t afford to. The smell of whiskey, sharp enough to make you forget things you shouldn’t. Holly’s eyes in the dark, bright with hurt, calling me a liar.

Holly and I were always mistaken for twins, though she was a year older. Only people who paid attention would notice that she was stronger than I ever was, that she was our voice and I was our conscience. The same things have always befallen Holly and me, one way or another. I was pregnant; she was a mother within a year. And today, I dreamed of drowning and woke up to learn that Holly was dead. A wave of foreboding shocks me and I nudge it back.

Numb, my mind wandering, I begin to make travel arrangements, but I’m lost in my mind, tripping through the empty fairground from that long-ago night. I move on autopilot to pour a second drink before sitting down at my computer to book a flight.

Morning finds me a shaky mess. I’m a lightweight, and a second drink in addition to my standard one is enough to throw me off. I call the hospital to double-check they got my message. I’ve saved up all my time off, just like I do with my paychecks. I’m at the airport before I’m fully awake, thankful I’m feeling rotten enough to keep the larger swamp of grief and shock at bay for now. My hangover’s just clearing as the sun rises over the Caribbean Sea, leaving me blinking. The clouds gleam like mother-of-pearl, and I pull down the shade on my window. The man in the seat next to mine grumbles quietly, and I nod an apology, but I can’t manage words. I see the little boy at his side gazing longingly at the closed window.

“Sorry,” I say, giving in. “Would you like to switch seats so you can look out the window? It’s a nice view, isn’t it?”

The boy smiles and we shuffle to trade seats. As he slouches into the window seat, he gives me a shy nod: Yes, it’s a nice view. I’d guess the boy and his father are on their way home from a vacation. As the morning passes, they trade observations: The sea is so blue. Almost green. And it shines in the light, like jewels, much brighter than at home. What they don’t know is that all water, no matter where, is really the same. Water hides, and it takes, and what you’re lucky enough to get back is irreparably changed. Even from this height, even far from home, I cannot imagine a body of water without seeing a cold, pale hand breaking the surface. Whether seeking help or to pull me down, the only thing certain is that it reaches for my grasp. It took hold of me once and has never really let me go.

It was a little over a month ago, the last time Holly and I spoke. I woke up to three missed calls, the phone buzzing on the nightstand, and, trying to check the number, accidentally answered it. She was musical, as she always was after a few drinks.

“Hey, Holly,” I murmured, head still on my pillow. “So late.”

“I always forget you work mornings.” Her cheery lilt fades. “And the time difference. It’s one hour later there than it is here, I know.” I was wrong. She wasn’t drunk at all.

“That’s okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Lissie, you know, Tess started her period. Twelve years old—can you believe it?”

“Hardly.” Time slips away a bit like a wave, I thought, still half sleeping. One moment can rise tall enough to knock you flat, then slip out of your arms, years washing away into the distance.

“I’ve been thinking. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“About what?” I asked, groggy.

“I didn’t realize how young teenagers are. Now Tess is almost the same age you and I were when you left home.”

“Ah. Right.” My mind slipped into something like work mode. Polite, surface level. “Well, there’s really no need to—”

“She’s a child,” Holly continued. “Like you were, back then. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d done more for you.” I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes.

“Enough, Holly.” The polite note in my voice bordered on warning, but my sister either failed to notice or pressed on regardless.

“I always kind of knew something bad happened to you. You never told me, but I should have seen it. I just didn’t want to look.”

Just like that, I was back there again, in our shared bedroom on the night before I left. He would never even look sideways at you. You were just my stupid baby sister, tagging along, like always. I stood before her silent with shock: had she felt this way all along? I thought we were best friends. Then, I realized, it was only one more thing I’d been wrong about.

Now, I tried to imagine her saying these different words instead: I always kind of knew something bad happened to you. In that alternate reality, her rage would have melted into understanding, and her arms would have folded around me, restoring the seamless closeness we once shared. In that version of events, maybe I didn’t creep out before dawn, suitcase in hand, and book a bus ticket for the furthest destination I could afford.

But that wasn’t what happened.

When I answered her, my voice was icy. “What exactly would you like me to say?”

“I’m sorry. No, no—that’s not what I want you to say. I mean, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“At least you’re being honest for once, right?” Angry, suddenly wide awake, I heard the twang surface in my voice. The same way it used to at our private Catholic school, announcing that I was from the muddy side of the lake, that my family never should have been able to afford the tuition. “Why now? After all this time?”

“Tess,” Holly whispered. “She’s so much like we were. She’s old enough to get herself in trouble, but she’s still a child.”

“Well, I hope you feel better now you’ve told me.” I paced in front of the open window. “That’s what you’re after, right? You want me to tell you it’s okay?”

“No.” Holly’s voice softened, and when she paused I could picture her pressing a hand to her eyes. “There’s something else I need to tell you. That I haven’t been able to, for all this time.”

“Save it, okay?” I felt myself regaining the impersonal territory where I was comfortable. “I don’t want to process anything else tonight.”

“I tried to tell you then, but I wasn’t brave enough.” Holly went right on, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Especially with everything else you were going through. You wanted that baby.”

“I didn’t,” I spit, “and you’re crossing a line.” The baby was one thing I couldn’t talk about, not even to Holly. My own Reverie Girl, as much a phantom, to me at least, as the rumored ghosts lurking in that tangled swamp. Between my own insides and the murky land where I grew up, it’s hard to say which is the more haunted.

“You think I would have been happy, stuck in a dead-end town, with that man’s baby?”

“Oh, stuck like me?”

“I gave up everything for you.” My voice was blank, as if I was reading a grocery list, holding those recollections safely at bay. “Don’t talk to me like I left you in the dust. You—” I have to pause, rubbing a hand at my temple. “You don’t know what it was like.”

“What if I did know?” The quiet exhale that followed her words felt like a knife in my ribs. “If I can fix it, will you come home?”

“Holly, if you had any idea what you’re talking about, you wouldn’t say that.” Where was this tenderness when I had needed it so badly, and why was she showing it now, when it could serve only as a reminder of what we’d lost? “You can’t fix it. Nobody can fix it.” I felt my chest soften as she cried quietly. I told her I loved her, but if there was any love in my voice, it was distant. I told her I wasn’t ready to talk about it. That I might not ever be.

Now, I know, that will always be the last time we spoke.

When the flight attendant passes by, I reluctantly order a cup of coffee, which I hope will clear my head before landing. As we approach the Atlantic Coast, the ground beneath looks gray, almost as gray as the water. From the air, home is a spongy-looking expanse of deep, lush green and brown, veins of water creeping through it here and there. The lake is clear and beautiful toward the west, while the east side blurs land and water in an expanse of swampland that stretches on for miles near Virginia’s southern border. It was back in the 1950s that a businessman from New York built a fairground, which he called The Reverie, right where the water meets the land. The population was booming, and it was meant to bring tourists and locals alike, linked to the town over the water by a long, scenic boardwalk. Just a week after it opened, the disappearances started, his own daughter the first among them.

By the time the fall came around and five girls had disappeared there, it was closed and deserted. A few years later, a worse-than-usual hurricane disturbed the water level, moving so that the fairground was firmly located within the swamp, vines and murk overtaking the curvature of its structures, the boardwalk half submerged. In the heart of the fairground, where the ground was driest, the old dance hall still stood, fragile as a gingerbread house.

But to those of us too young to remember the disappearances, it was just The Reverie, the best spot for parties or late-night walks. Could there have been anything more American than growing up by an abandoned fairground? I remember, like I’m thumbing through old photographs, James Finley and me, the quarterback and the cheerleader, stealing out for a quiet, close walk down the boardwalk after a football game. To everybody else, he was Fin or Finley, but I only ever called him James. From the first time we locked eyes, I felt something solemn between us, and calling him by his first name felt both formal and intimate. It was a small-town fairy tale, right up until the day it wasn’t. Just because something feels brighter, sweeter than reality, that doesn’t mean it’s real. Looking back on it all, I feel a pang of sympathy for the naive, optimistic man who built the fairground, as if daring the lowlands and their storms to do their worst. Which, in time, they inevitably did.

I hear an announcement over the PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re now fifteen minutes from arrival. The weather today is sunny and clear, but we’re expecting storms later. Hope you packed umbrellas!”

As the pleasant voice asks me to buckle my seatbelt, I realize that I haven’t packed an umbrella. I don’t think I even own one. The plane begins its descent, my ears popping with the change in pressure. It gives a feeling of being underwater, one I can’t shake, as if even to look at the place I once called home distorts my reality, as if I’m knowingly walking into a carnival mirror.

In the airport, I stand uselessly at the arrivals gate, dialing Dawson over and over, the call failing to go through each time. I begin to walk, wandering from one terminal to the next, until I find him sitting outside a coffee shop.

“Afternoon, Felicity.”

“Hi, Dawson.” I hurry over to greet him, switching my carry-on bag to my other shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he answers, extending one foot to push out a chair for me on the other side of the table. “It’s good to see you. I’m sorry it has to be for this reason.”

“You, too.” When he reaches out to grasp my hand, I realize my fingers are freezing, his warm. “Sorry I’m late. I tried to call you.”

“Do you have US coverage on that thing?”

“I don’t know, so probably not.” I drop into the seat, holding my bag in my lap.

“I’d update it,” he suggests, something fatherly in his tone. “Long as you have reception, you’ll be able to make emergency calls, so no worries there. But you’ll want to be able to reach people while you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You want a coffee?”

“No, thanks.” Since I’ve last seen him, Dawson has aged into himself, that heavy jawline a little more natural in his mid-thirties than it was at eighteen. I’m not sure why he offered to meet me—not even really sure whether he’s here as a police officer or as my friend. Dawson has always been the type of person to jump in and help. Maybe I should just be grateful he’s here.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m all right,” I answer crisply. “Thanks. Sorry about last night, I—”

“No,” he insists. “No apologies. So, about Tess and Frankie—”

“They’re all right?”

“Yes,” he answers. “With a relative. Wendy Wheeler.”

“Wendy?” I remember cousin Wendy as a standoffish woman several years older than me, someone I saw only at family get-togethers, who was always brimming over with cautionary tales. “Why not at home with their father?”

“You didn’t talk to Holly much, did you?” Dawson realizes. Admonished, I shake my chin. “Holly and the girls had been living at your mother’s house, since she and her husband separated—”

“When did that happen?”

He raises an eyebrow before answering me. “Silas is an alcoholic—don’t know if you knew that already. And your mother hasn’t taken the news well—not that I blame her. So, they’ve been with Wendy for the last few days. Honestly, at first glance, there’s no clear-cut guardian for them. But you’re the emergency guardian, which means Holly trusted you to figure something out. And to take care of them until you do.”

I wonder if Holly would have told me about Silas, if I hadn’t shut her down when she called last month. “I think I am going to get a coffee, on second thought.”

He nods and I turn quickly on my heel, walk up to the counter and order a coffee, black. I’ll be jittery later—I usually drink tea, and only one cup—but that isn’t really at the top of my list of concerns. I return to the table, holding the paper cup between my hands.

“Do you need directions to Wendy Wheeler’s house?” he asks.

“I think I remember how to get there.”

“What else, then?” He looks at me with something like concern. I could have sworn that, in my memory, his eyes were blue, though now they are a puzzling tone of gray. “Car rentals are that way—”

“I hope you know that I appreciate this.” I sip my coffee. I know what Dawson must see when he looks at me; I know well enough what people said behind my back, and even if Dawson wasn’t saying it, he surely heard it. The private school homecoming queen, turned pregnant dropout. The daughter who skipped town rather than face the rumors. “But I want to be clear: the past is in the past. If I couldn’t handle this, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Holly would have wanted me to look out for you.”

I nod, staring down at my coffee cup. “I need you to tell me what happened to her.”

“The details are unpleasant, Felicity.”

I level my eyes at him. “I said I can handle it.”

He sighs and pulls his chair a bit closer.

“She attended a Thanksgiving party at Cotton Blossom—that’s the diner where she worked.”

“I remember.” It’s the only diner in town, or it used to be.

“So, that’s the last time she was seen. And then, nothing. Your mother got in touch with us when she wasn’t at home by the next afternoon. We found her body—I mean,” he pauses, squeezes his nearly empty paper coffee cup in his fist, “we found her the following evening.”

“Are you quite sure it was her?”

Dawson nods. “Your mother confirmed it.”

I bite down on my lip, pondering this sense that it must be a mistake; this cannot be true.

“She could have been wrong.”

“She wasn’t wrong. I’m sorry, Felicity.” He shakes his head, answering my refusals patiently. “Your mother hasn’t spoken with anyone since she left the coroner’s office that day. Now that you’re in town, I hope you can check on her.”

I see that warning look of pity in his eyes, straighten up. . .