“He came to see me about a month after Mama died. I was living with my grandparents by then, trying to figure out how to be a kid again when I felt like I’d aged a hundred years.”
Michael turned from the window, and his eyes held memories ancient and painful. “Milton came to my grandparents’ house about a month after Mama died. Sat in their living room with his hat in his lap, same patient expression, same concerned voice asking the same questions everyone had already asked. And when I tried to tell him about Elder Crenshaw confronting Mama, about the phone call where she said she knew where Reverend Pickering was getting money, he patted my head like I was a dog who’d done a trick.”
The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut.
“He said I was confused. That grief was making me remember things wrong, mixing up what really happened with what I’d seen on TV or heard adults talking about. He said the investigation was over, that they knew what had happened, and I needed to stop telling stories or I’d make things harder for everyone. He said the best thing I could do for my mama’s memory was to let her rest in peace and move on with my life.
“I became a funeral director because of her,” Michael said quietly, staring at the photograph of Ruby in her yellow dress, young and happy and impossibly alive. “Because I wanted to give other families the closure I never got. I wanted to help people say goodbye properly, with dignity, with certainty. Every body I prepare, every service I conduct, every family I guide through their grief—it’s my way of making up for not being able to help my mother when she needed it. For being too young, too small, too powerless to save her.”
Tears had started tracking down his face, cutting paths through his carefully maintained composure. He made no move to wipe them away, and I realized this might be the first time he’d cried about this in decades. Some grief gets buried so deep it fossilizes, becomes part of your bones.
I felt my own throat tighten with emotion. How many times had I conducted this same internal autopsy of my own grief? How many times had I cataloged all the things I should have done differently before Patrick died, all the signs I’d missed, all the moments I’d let slip away because I’d thought we had infinite time? The what-ifs that haunted you in the small hours of the morning, the guilt that wrapped around your ribs like barbed wire, making it hard to breathe, hard to move, hard to live.
“You were a child,” I said firmly, leaning forward in my chair, making sure he heard me, really heard me. “Traumatized and alone. The failure wasn’t yours—it belonged to every adult who should have asked better questions, who should have listened more carefully, who should have protected you instead of telling you to forget. It belonged to Roy Milton, who dismissed what you said because it was inconvenient for whatever narrative he was constructing. It belonged to every person who knew something was wrong with that investigation and stayed silent anyway.”
Michael looked at me with gratitude in his red-rimmed eyes.
Chowder, who’d been remarkably patient through all of this, waddled over to Michael’s desk and looked up at him with those bulging, impossibly earnest eyes. There was something about a French bulldog’s gaze that could convey profound sympathy while simultaneously suggesting that what you really needed was a snack and a nap. It was a gift.
Michael actually smiled—just a small one, but real. “Nice dog,” he said.
“He’s exceptional,” I agreed.
Dash was quiet for a moment, letting the weight of everything Michael had shared settle between us. Then he leaned forward slightly. “Thank you, Michael. This has been incredibly helpful. We’ll look into Elder Crenshaw, see if we can track him down for an interview.”
“There’s one more thing,” Michael said, and his voice had changed, become steadier, like he’d made a decision. “After Mama died, my grandparents gave me a box of her things. Nothing valuable—just photos and letters, a few pieces of jewelry, her Bible. I’ve kept it all these years, couldn’t bring myself to go through it. It’s still in my attic, sealed up just like they gave it to me.” He pulled a card from his desk drawer, wrote something on the back in careful script. “My home address. If you want to come by sometime, look through it, you’re welcome to. Maybe there’s something in there that could help. Maybe she left some clue I was too young to understand.”
Dash took the card carefully, like it was precious. “We’ll be in touch.”
Michael stood, and we did too, Chowder rousing himself from his dignified repose at my feet. At the door, Michael paused, looking back at the photograph of Ruby.
“My mother was a complicated woman. And she didn’t always do the right thing. But she was my mother. And she deserves justice,” he said quietly. “Even now. Especially now.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” I promised.
The afternoon sunlight hit us as we stepped outside, bright and warm and somehow heavier than before. The funeral home’s door closed behind us with a soft click that felt final.
Chowder’s tweed cap had gone askew, his bow tie crooked from an hour of sitting still. He looked up at me with an expression that clearly said his work here was done, and he’d like his compensation in the form of treats.
Dash and I stood on the front steps for a moment, neither of us speaking, both of us processing what we’d just heard. A ten-year-old boy who’d carried guilt that wasn’t his. A mother who’d tried to protect her son and paid for it with her life. A box of belongings that had waited decades to tell their story.
But secrets didn’t stay buried forever. Ruby Bailey had known that. And George Pickering had learned it too late.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The walk back to The Perfect Steep felt longer than four blocks, as if the weight of what Michael Bailey had shared had somehow altered the geography of Grimm Island, stretching the familiar streets into something foreign and heavy. The afternoon sun painted everything in shades of gold and amber, but the beauty felt wrong somehow—too bright, too cheerful, like wearing a ball gown to a funeral.
Chowder trotted between us with the satisfied air of a dog who’d conducted important business and deserved recognition for his contributions to justice. His tweed cap sat at a jaunty angle, and every few steps he’d look up at me with those bulging eyes that somehow conveyed both wisdom and the desperate need for a snack.
“Elder Matthias Crenshaw,” Dash said finally, breaking the silence that had wrapped around us like Spanish moss. “That’s our first real lead. Someone who confronted Ruby directly, who had power in the church, who could have been involved in whatever financial impropriety Pickering was hiding.”
I hummed a few bars of “All of Me.” The Ella Fitzgerald version, not the Billie Holiday one, because somehow Ella’s voice felt more appropriate for this particular moment.
“You do that when you’re worried,” Dash observed, glancing at me with that half smile that made my stomach perform complicated gymnastics.
“Do what?”
