She went back into the sitting room and sat on the edge of one of the sofa cushions and picked through the basket of fruit. She immediately bit into a green apple. She’d missed dinner and was starving. A few pieces of cheese and several crackers later, and Mia felt herself begin to revive. She stuck the key in her pocket, took one of the glasses from the bathroom, grabbed the bag holding the wine and her handbag, and went outside into the dark.

When she arrived at her cabin, she’d noticed the chairs set to overlook the bay, and chose the one closest to the water. She took the corkscrew from her shoulder bag and opened the bottle, and poured herself a glass. Stretching herself out in the chair, she sipped her wine and watched small dark birds darting across the water.

She was on her second glass of wine when she realized the small birds were bats.

“Oh, swell,” she muttered, pulling herself into a ball and hunkering down in the chair. “Maybe they won’t see me.”

The moonlight was bright on the bay; except for the presence of the bats, it was a near-perfect night. It was quiet, except for the beating of the occasional wing overhead and the croaking of the bullfrogs from the marsh on the far side of the inn. She tried closing her eyes and willed herself to ignore the bats.

They’re eating insects, she reminded herself. That’s good, right? The more they eat, the fewer mosquitoes to bite me. They have no interest in me.

That’s what her big brother always told her.

The thought of her big brother brought a pain to her heart.

“Go away, Brendan,” she whispered to the night. “Crawl back into that little corner of hell where you’re going to spend your unhappily ever-after, and don’t come back…”

A sound behind her drew her attention and she looked over her shoulder. The shadow of a man stretched out across the lawn, growing larger as it drew closer.

When the figure was about twenty feet away, it demanded, “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

Beck. And he didn’t sound happy.

“What was what all about?”

“That little show you put on back there. What the hell were you thinking, taunting him like that? Were you trying to get him to come after you?”

She pulled her gun from her bag. “Better me than someone else.”

“Yeah, sure. If he comes at the place and time you want him to.”

Beck stood five feet away, looking down at her. From the chair, he appeared to be about twelve feet tall and most foreboding.

“The problem, as I see it, is that he’s going to be doing the choosing, Mia.”

“Maybe so.” She put the gun back, then sat up and grabbed the bottle by its neck. “Would you like some wine? There’s another glass in my cabin. I could-”

“I don’t drink.”

“I didn’t used to.” She set the bottle back on the ground and took a sip from her glass.

“What happened?”

“Shit.” She told him matter-of-factly. “Shit happened.”

He picked up the bottle and appeared to be looking at the label.

“How’d you get here?” she asked.

“Borrowed the car from Hal.” He tilted the bottle in her direction. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, roughly a half hour.”

“I meant-”

“I know what you meant.” She waved a hand dismissively. “That was my weak attempt at humor.”

He replaced the bottle on the ground near the chair.

“None of my business, I know, but I’m curious. You don’t have to answer.”

“Since I got back from Indiana.” She leaned her head back and looked skyward to avoid his eyes.

“What happened in Indiana?”

“We had this case…twenty-two-year-old guy killed his whole family. Mother. Father. His sisters. Their husbands and children.” Her voice dropped with each word until Beck was almost leaning into the chair to hear her. “Eleven people in all. He killed every one.”

“I guess there’s no point in asking why.”

“Oh, there was a why. His father wouldn’t cosign a loan for him to get a new car, so he shot him and his mother. Went to the first sister’s, asked the brother-in-law, who also declined, since the guy with the gun was unemployed. Shot him, too. Then I guess he figured, aw, fuck it, and he went house to house and just blew them all away.”

She cleared her throat.

“And after that, there were these three little boys in Virginia…”

They sat in silence until Beck broke it by saying, “You mentioned once that your brother-”

“Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t take a genius to draw a line between the guy with the gun in Indiana and the guy with the gun in my family.” She waved her glass in his direction.

“Want to tell me about it? What happened with him?”

“I’m sure you read all about it. It was a really big story about two years ago. FBI agent behind a child-smuggling ring, runs into his cousin while preparing to take a shipment of kids out of some small Central American country, later attempts to assassinate the cousin, kills the cousin’s brother by mistake. The networks, the newsmagazines, the papers, they just couldn’t get enough of it.”

“That was your brother? The killer?”

“Good old Brendan.” She took a gulp from the glass and stared into space. “This case in Indiana, when they spoke with the neighbors and with friends, they all said how close the family was. An ideal, all-American family, they all said. Well, they used to say that about us, too.”

“People on the outside, they never really know what’s going on.”

“Well, in our case, apparently no one on the inside knew, either. He never showed a thing, never gave any one of us a hint that something was evil and twisted inside him. And the thing is, none of us ever saw it.” She leaned forward in the chair again and whispered, “Why didn’t we know?”

“Because he obviously didn’t want to share that part of his life with you.”

“But you’re family, you should know.” Her eyes welled but no tears fell. “And here’s the thing that’s killing me. Connor-who my brother had intended to murder-still treats me like the princess.”

“The princess?”

“I was the only girl in the entire family.” She nodded. “That’s why I was the princess.” She leaned forward and added, “That’s why I should have been the one to know.”

“The one to know about Brendan?”

She nodded.

“I’m not following that.”

“I was supposed to be the momma. I was supposed to take care of the boys the way Mom would have. And I did not do that.”

“I thought your brothers were all older than you.”

“They are.”

“And the cousins, the other three guys? They were all older, too?”

She nodded.

“Then why were you supposed to be responsible for them?”

“Uncle George said so,” she told him solemnly.

“Uncle George?”

“My mother’s uncle.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“When everyone came back to the house after my mother’s funeral.”

“Uncle George told you that you were supposed to be the little mother because your mother was dead?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mia, with all due respect, Uncle George has his head up his ass. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“I agree. It was stupid and cruel and it was sexist, and my mother must have turned right over in her grave, but I was seven years old and I had just watched my mother be put in the ground.” She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her right hand. “I still wasn’t clear on whether or not she was going to come back. I mean, even if she could get out of that box, how was she going to dig through all the dirt?”

Mia took a deep breath. “You know, no matter what you tell a child about death, they really don’t understand a damned thing you’re saying, because it’s all beyond their experience.

“I clung to the adults around me for a long time because I had to. They all became much more important to me than they had been before she died. So when one of them told me something so profound, I believed it. I believed it for a long time.”