I’d posed that question to Pamela Lindahl during the many hours we’d spent on the phone. Though difficult to assess long-distance, the psychiatrist’s tone had suggested agonizing guilt.

I took a moment to organize my thoughts. And have a bite of sweet-corn risotto.

“McGee’s therapist is convinced the arousal didn’t come from degrading or controlling, as with many serial killers. She feels McGee’s psychosis is two-pronged. First, she’s reenacting the deaths of the original victims, but killing them quickly and leaving them ‘in the sun’ to assure that her victims will never suffer as she did.”

“That’s why the bodies were placed out in the open, arranged with care and free of trauma or disfigurement.”

“Exactly. Second, McGee was seeking revenge on Pomerleau. But at the same time, she was diverting attention from herself, should she ever fall under suspicion.”

“So the shrink says she was driven by both love and hate.” Dubious. “And an instinct for self-preservation.”

“Yes.”

“Targets were chosen because they resembled one of Pomerleau’s Montreal victims?”

“Probably McGee herself. She was abducted at age twelve.”

“McGee made the calls six months out? Checking to see if the cops had anything on Donovan or Estrada?”

“Probably,” I said.

Hull bunched and tossed her napkin. Leaned back. Crossed her arms and wagged her head slowly. “Don’t sound like enough crazy to me.”

I pictured a girl in a trench coat and crooked beret. Felt sorrow clot any response I might have offered.

I knew the drill. So did Hull. McGee’s mental competence would be determined by pretrial motions and hearings and judges and lawyers.

Sane. Insane. Either finding would result in Tawny McGee’s worst nightmare, one she’d already endured. A life in one type of prison or another.

It had to be.

Even the damaged cannot be allowed to damage.

CHAPTER 44

THE NEXT MORNING I drove to Heatherhill Farm. Like the magnolia at Sharon Hall, the azaleas and rhododendron winked both waxy green and dull brown. I imagined the upside-down leaves, startled by the warm spell, turning for instruction from their roots.

River House itself was half in shade and half in bright sun. Its windows also looked confused, undecided between reflecting and ingesting light.

Mama was on the back deck, bundled in a parka and scarf, stretched out on the same chaise she’d occupied Thanksgiving week. As I had then, I paused a moment to study her. Perhaps to fix her image forever in my memory.

She’d lost weight, though the bulky jacket made that appraisal difficult. Her hands were chapped, the treasured hair a bit dull. Still, my mother looked beautiful.

It was a pleasant visit. No rancor. No resentment. I didn’t bring up chemo. She didn’t correct my manners or dress.

I told Mama about the arrest of Tawny McGee. About the CAIS. About the psychopathology of hatred and love. She called it Pomerleau’s legacy of madness.

I thanked Mama for her input. Said the YouTube cycling video had been the big break in the case. Ryan’s big bang.

She asked if I’d seen Ryan. I said not for a while. She didn’t persist.

Then I told her the good news. The police had located Kim Hamilton’s brother, now living in Miami. He was saddened to learn of his sister’s death and troubled by not knowing the location of her remains. Mostly, he was comforted by confirmation of a truth he’d always felt in his soul. Kim hadn’t turned her back on her family by running away.

At noon Mama and I shared a lunch of avocado salad and grilled chicken breast. At one Goose trundled Mama off for her nap.

That evening I turned in early. As was common since I’d met Umpie Rodas two months earlier, memories bombarded me the instant I closed my eyes. Unbidden apparitions involving bones and corpses and children.

I had no say in the order or arrival times of these sad visitations. Only in their duration. As soon as a reel began to play, I’d shut it down.

For some reason, that night I let my mind roll.

I saw Nellie Gower pedaling her bike, brown hair flying and catching the sun. Tawny McGee tightening the drawstring of a plastic bag under her chin.

Lizzie Nance practicing pliés and arabesques at a ballet bar. McGee closing her lifeless little fingers around a bunched white tissue.

Tia Estrada walking hand in hand with her mother. McGee tucking long blond hairs deep into her throat.

Shelly Leal tapping a keyboard, face radiant in the glow of the screen. McGee arranging her still body on a highway embankment.

I imagined the girls at the moment their worlds halted forever. Did they know death was at hand? Did they ask why?

In addition to the ballet slipper and clippings, McGee’s souvenir box had contained a yellow ribbon identical to the one found in Hamet Ajax’s trunk. Avery Koseluk’s mother didn’t recognize the ribbons. Laura Lonergan said they had not belonged to Colleen Donovan. Neither had yielded DNA.

I pictured those ribbons, wondered if they’d once bound the hair of my Jane Doe skeleton. Of another little girl as yet unknown to us. Though we might never learn for certain if there had been other victims, Barrow and Rodas would investigate on the U.S. end, Ryan in Canada.

I saw my Jane Doe, a sad collection of bones labeled ME107-10. Wondered if somewhere a family was searching.

I saw Colleen Donovan. Avery Koseluk. Hoped one day each would enter a police station seeking help.

We’d never know who removed Donovan’s name from the list of MPs on the NamUS site. It was back there now. With Koseluk and the scores of others either missing or lying anonymously in morgues or police evidence rooms.

Anique Pomerleau. Tawny McGee. Victims. Monsters. Their childhoods stolen. Their adult games played out with cold-blooded cunning.

It was finished now.

Yet it wasn’t.

The next morning I ran two miles. A quick shower, a bout of paper shuffling. Then I began grading lab exercises for the spring-semester course I was teaching at UNCC.

Earlier in the week, my front doorbell had begun sounding like a seagull with adenoid issues. I’d gotten halfway through the stack when a wobbly squawk interrupted.

Curious, I hurried to the door and peered through the peephole.

A spectacularly blue eye peered back.

Startled, I jumped.

Great.

Conscious of my wet hair and baggy yoga pants, I opened the door.

Ryan was wearing jeans, a leather jacket, and a black wool muffler. His cheeks were blotchy red. Probably due to overheating.

For a moment no one spoke. Then we both tried at once.

“This is a surprise,” I said.

“I should have phoned,” he said.

“You go first,” I said.

“Marry me,” he said.

“I— What?” That couldn’t be right.

“I’m proposing.”

“Proposing.”

“Marriage.”

“Yes.”

“It’s my first time.”

“Yes.”

“I’d envisioned a much more romantic pitch.”

“Your delivery was clear.”

“Shall I practice and try again later?”

“You were fine.”

“Or we could do dinner.”

“I often eat dinner.”

Ryan pulled me close. I put my arms around him and pressed my cheek to his chest. A beat, then I stepped back.

We looked at each other.

“Eight o’clock?” he asked.

“Eight is good,” I said.

Then Ryan was gone.

Zombie-like, I went inside. Closed and leaned on the door.

I couldn’t say how long I stood taking in the familiar. The known.

Harry’s chenille throw on the sofa back. Gran’s sweetgrass basket on the rug by the armchair. Mama’s silver candlesticks on the mantel.

My gaze fell on an item confiscated at the apartment on Dotger. A child’s painting—the one Mary Louise had made of Birdie that she’d wanted to show me.