“They wouldn’t,” she told herself decisively, and went to pack.

As she tossed underwear into a suitcase, the resentment she felt about having to go back to the ranch eased a little, and she found herself feeling glad to be going. If there was anywhere in the world that put firm ground beneath her boots, it was High Rock Ranch, where her grandparents ruled. She wanted to be with them, where her life felt solid, familiar, and reassuring.

Before she left the second floor, Jody went to the guest room a third time.

Standing in the doorway, she stared at the room where her father had died.

“We’ll get him back in prison, Dad. Don’t you worry.”

How that could happen she did not know, although finding out what he did to her mother could do it.

At the last minute she remembered to grab the scarf from the porch.

As she lifted the flowerpot off it, she felt chilled again and looked up to see if clouds had been blocked by the sun. But no, they hadn’t. The chill was another inner one. She stared all around the backyard. There. Her father’s truck was parked there the morning Annabelle found him. There. Crosby ’s truck was supposed to be parked behind the garage, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was lodged in a streambed with a bloody yellow dress inside. There. That path around the house led to the basement door where Annabelle and a neighbor-Samuel Carpenter, who still lived next door-had to enter because Laurie had the other doors locked, and nobody knew why she did that, either. Was it the storm that scared her? Had Billy tried to get in the house earlier?

Feeling spooked again, Jody went back inside.

She had to rummage around several kitchen drawers before she located them, but she finally found the old house keys. She put them in the same pocket that held the earring and then went around the perimeter, pressing old button locks that had not been used except when the big house stood empty. This is silly, she told herself, but she locked up anyway.

27

IN HER TRUCK, Jody used her cell phone to call the ranch.

Sometimes she wondered how her life might be different if her mother or father had owned cell phones. What if they could have called for help even though their land lines were dead? Now and then, when her phone rang and there was nobody there and she didn’t recognize the number, she wondered if it was her mom calling. It was crazy to think that, she knew, but the flash of hope came to her anyway.

When the soft, steady voice of her grandmother answered, “High Rock Ranch. This is Annabelle Linder speaking,” it had a greater calming effect on Jody than mere landscape ever could. They always answered phone calls like that at the ranch, because all of their business was conducted there alongside their personal lives. In her mind’s eye Jody saw the familiar figure of her father’s mother. If today was like most days in the spring and summer, Annabelle would be wearing a pair of her favored Capri pants, with a soft cotton shirt worn loose over them-to hide the tummy that only she could see-and sandals. She only put on cowboy boots these days when she donned blue jeans for riding her horse. Her hair, a beautiful silver-which it had turned after her son’s murder-was always cut very short so she didn’t have to think about it.

“Hi, Grandma.” She dropped her voice to a gentle tone. “Are you and Grandpa okay?”

“We will be as soon as we see you coming up the road.”

Her grandmother wasn’t given to laying guilt trips on people-that was the job of her sons-so Jody took her statement at face value as a simple statement of truth. She also took it as an example and held back her urge to lay a guilt trip on her grandparents for not taking her with them to see the governor. It was done. This was awful for them; she would not make it worse.

“I’m just leaving. Do you need me to pick up anything for you?”

“Child, I do. I have enough milk to mash the potatoes, but not enough for gravy.”

“Oh, no, not that!” Jody teased. “Uncle Bobby can’t live without gravy.”

“I think his veins run with it.” Even under these circumstances, there was humor in her grandmother’s reply. “That can’t be good, can it?”

Jody thought that if a person didn’t know her grandmother well, they’d never suspect from her voice on the telephone that anything was troubling her. It was only in person, where you could see her expressive face, that a stranger might get a glimpse of pain or trouble.

Jody said, “One day science will discover that your gravy cures cancer.”

“In that case, I’d better take out a patent on it.” There was a smile in the warm voice. “Pick up two half gallons, please?”

Her granddaughter knew without asking to get two-percent milk. “I’ll do it.”

“How are you, dearest?”

Jody’s throat closed on tears for a moment and she waited until she could talk. “Let’s see.” She cleared her throat. “I’m stunned. Confused. Sad. Pissed off. That about covers it, I think.”

“Yes,” Annabelle said gently. “That would about cover it.”

“I’ll be out as soon as I can get there, Grandma.”

“If you run into your uncles, tell them to be on time for supper unless they want cold fried chicken.”

The words “fried chicken” made Jody’s stomach rumble with hunger.

“I’m pretty sure I can smell it from here.”

“Well, then, I’d better check to make sure it’s not burning.”

“Chase and Bobby aren’t there yet?” They’d been in such a hurry to get her out to the ranch. “Where are they?”

But her grandmother had already murmured a soft goodbye and hung up.

JODY FELT ON high alert during her short trip to Main Street where George’s Grocery was still located. As she spotted people she knew and waved to the ones who noticed her, she wondered if she was only imagining that they, too, looked wary. Was everybody as nervous about seeing Billy Crosby as she was? Many of them had known him a long time ago, and they probably wondered what in the world they would say to him or he would say to them.

A couple of them had served on his jury.

She wouldn’t have wanted to be in their shoes today, either.

Jody walked into a grocery store that was far different from the bustling enterprise it had seemed in her childhood, when it was called George’s Fresh Food & Deli. With a falling population in the county, Byron George had been forced to cut back in every way, including closing a quarter of his floor space. There wasn’t any deli now; if you wanted a ham sandwich, you bought the bread and made your own at home. Everything about his store seemed smaller to Jody, and she knew that wasn’t just because she was bigger. The ironic exceptions were the products that kept arriving in ever larger containers containing ever less inside.

At least a half gallon of milk was still a half gallon of milk.

She walked into a store kept dim to save on the lighting bill.

Just inside, Jody halted, because she heard raised, heated voices.

She looked to her right and saw Byron surrounded by three of his customers who had him backed against a soft drink refrigerator. Taller than all of them, he looked red-faced and frustrated above his butcher’s apron.

Even from the rear, Jody recognized her grandmother’s friend Phyllis Boren and also one of the men, her own next-door neighbor, Samuel Carpenter. It might have seemed a coincidence, since she had just been thinking about him only minutes earlier, but it was hardly ever a coincidence to run into somebody she knew in Rose. There just weren’t that many people, and they basically all had the same errands to run. The other man wasn’t anybody she knew, which likely made him somebody from one of the neighboring towns that had lost its own grocery store and whose citizens were forced to use a lot of gas to pick up bread and milk. All three of them were in their seventies, at least, but that wasn’t weakening their voices or tamping down their anger.