“I promise,” Lena vowed, feeling pity take over. “Terri, it’s okay.”

“He won’t understand.”

“I won’t tell,” she repeated, putting her hand over Terri’s.

“It’s so hard,” she said, grabbing Lena ’s hand. “It’s so hard.”

Lena felt tears in her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to let herself go. “Terri,” she began. “Terri, calm down. You’re safe here. I won’t tell.”

“I felt it…” she began, holding her stomach. “I felt it moving inside. I felt it kicking. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have another one. I couldn’t take… I can’t… I’m not strong enough… I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it…”

“Shh,” Lena hushed, smoothing back a wisp of hair that had fallen into Terri’s eyes. The woman looked so young, almost like a teenager. For the first time in years, Lena felt the urge to comfort someone. She had been on the receiving end for so long that she had almost forgotten how to offer help. “Look at me,” she said, steeling herself, fighting her own emotions. “You’re safe, Terri. I won’t tell. I won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m such a bad person,” Terri said. “I’m so bad.”

“You’re not.”

“I can’t get clean,” she confessed. “No matter how much I bathe, I can’t get clean.”

“I know,” Lena said, feeling a weight lifting off her chest as she admitted this. “I know.”

“I smell it on me,” she said. “The anesthesia. The chemicals.”

“I know,” Lena said, fighting the urge to slip back into her grief. “Be strong, Terri. You have to be strong.”

She nodded. Her shoulders were so slumped, she looked as if she might fold in on herself. “He’ll never forgive me for this.”

Lena didn’t know if she meant her husband or some higher power, but she nodded her head in agreement.

“He’ll never forgive me.”

Lena chanced a look outside the window. Dale was standing at the car but Jeffrey was to the side, talking to Sara Linton. He looked back at the station, throwing his hand out into the air as if he was angry. Sara said something, then Jeffrey nodded, taking what looked like an evidence bag from her. He walked back toward the station.

“Terri,” Lena said, feeling the threat of Jeffrey’s arrival breathing down her neck. “Listen,” she began. “Dry your eyes. Look at me.” Terri looked up. “You’re okay,” Lena said, more like an order than a question.

Terri nodded.

“You have to be okay, Terri.” The woman nodded again, understanding Lena ’s urgency.

She saw Jeffrey in the squad room. He stopped to say something to Marla. “He’s coming,” she said, and Terri squared her shoulders, straightening up as if she were an actor taking a cue.

Jeffrey knocked on the door as he came into the office. He was obviously disturbed about something, but he held it back. The evidence bag Sara had given him in the parking lot was sticking out of his pocket, but Lena could not tell what it contained. He raised his eyebrows at her, a silent question, and she felt a lurch in her stomach as she realized she hadn’t done the one thing he had told her to do.

Without pausing a beat, Lena lied. “Terri says she’s never seen anyone at the garage but Dale.”

“Yes,” Terri said, nodding as she stood from the chair. She kept her eyes averted, and Lena was grateful Jeffrey seemed too preoccupied to notice the woman had been crying.

He didn’t even thank her for coming in, instead dismissing her with, “Dale’s waiting outside.”

“Thank you,” Terri said, chancing a look at Lena before she left. The young woman practically ran through the squad room, grabbing her kid from Marla as she made for the front door.

Jeffrey gave Lena the evidence bag, saying, “This was sent to Sara at the clinic.”

There was a piece of lined notebook paper inside. Lena turned the bag over, reading the note. The four words were written in purple ink, all caps, taking up half the page. “ABBY WASN’T THE FIRST.”

Lena walked through the forest, her eyes scanning the ground, willing herself to concentrate. Her thoughts kept darting around like a pinball, one minute hitting against the possibility that there might be another girl buried out in these woods, the next colliding into the memory of the fear in Terri Stanley’s voice as she begged Lena not to tell her secret. The woman had been terrified by the prospect of her husband finding out what she had done. Dale seemed harmless, hardly the type of man capable of Ethan’s kind of rage, but she understood Terri’s fear. She was a young woman who had probably never held a real job outside her home. If Dale left her and their two kids, she would be completely abandoned. Lena understood why she felt trapped, just as she understood Terri’s fear of exposure.

All this time, Lena had been concerned about Ethan’s reaction, but now she knew there was more to worry about than the threat of his violence. What if Jeffrey found out? God knew she had been through a lot of shit in the last three years- most of it of her own making-but Lena had no idea what would be the final line she crossed that made Jeffrey turn his back on her. His wife was a pediatrician, and from what she had seen, he loved kids. It wasn’t like they had political discussions all the time. She had no idea where he stood on abortion. She did know, however, that he would be pissed as hell if he found out Lena hadn’t really interviewed Terri. They had been so tied up in their mutual fears, Lena hadn’t asked her about the garage, let alone if there had been any visitors Dale didn’t know about. Lena had to find a way to get back in touch with her, to ask her about the cyanide, but she couldn’t think how to do this without alerting Jeffrey.

Less than two feet away from her, he was muttering something under his breath. He had called in pretty much every cop on the force, ordering them to the woods to check for other gravesites. The search was exhausting, like combing the ocean for a particular grain of sand, and throughout the day, the temperature in the woods had kept going from one extreme to the other, the hot sun pouring through one minute, the cool shadows of the trees turning her sweat into a chill the next. As night was settling, it became even colder, but Lena had known better than to go back and get her jacket. Jeffrey was acting like a man possessed. She knew he was shouldering the blame for this, just like she knew there was nothing she could say that would help him.

“We should’ve done this Sunday,” Jeffrey said, as if he could have miraculously guessed that one coffin in the forest meant there would be at least another. Lena didn’t bother pointing this out; she had tried and failed several times before. Instead, she kept her eyes on the ground, the leaves and pine needles turning into a melted mess as her thoughts went elsewhere and her vision blurred with the threat of tears.

After nearly eight hours of searching and only getting through half of the more than two hundred acres, she doubted she would be able to find a neon sign with a big arrow pointing down, let alone a small metal pipe sticking out of the ground. Not to mention they were losing light fast. The sun was already dipping down low, threatening to disappear behind the horizon at any moment. They had pulled out their flashlights ten minutes ago, but the beams did little to aid the search.

Jeffrey looked up at the trees, rubbing his neck. They had taken one break around lunch, barely pausing to chew the sandwiches Frank had ordered from the local deli.

“Why would someone send that letter to Sara?” Jeffrey asked. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Everyone knows y’all are together,” Lena pointed out, wishing she could sit down somewhere. She wanted just ten minutes to herself, time enough to figure out how to get back in touch with Terri. There was the added problem of Dale. How would she explain why she needed to talk to his wife again?