Prologue
When I was a little girl growing up in rural Oregon, I thought the entire world was made up of acres and acres of green grass. I thought everyone’s life revolved in some way around farmlands.
I would sometimes hear the distant sirens on the interstate, and it felt like a piece of a parallel universe was breaking into my sanctuary. I couldn’t imagine that anything bad would ever happen to us.
Then the fire happened.
The lighter fluid spilled out of the bottle so easily. All down the white couch that my mother fastidiously vacuumed. It splashed against the coffee table and the wall. And I stopped, stunned, as the flame appeared almost like magic. It caught everything, swallowing it whole like a monster from a dream.
I heard my mother screaming in the bedroom. I ran to her, thinking numbly how backward it was that she wascrying out to me for help. It had only been a few years since I’d stopped having bad dreams that woke me from my sleep, prompting me to call out for her. Now I was the one running to save her. Only this time, the nightmare was real.
The doorknob was white-hot, and I drew away, hissing in pain. Panic set in and I started to cry. No, I told myself. Think. In school, they made us do weekly fire drills. We assembled into a line and tried not to giggle and whisper too loudly, excited as we were to escape class for a few minutes.
But it wasn’t something that could really happen, I’d thought.
I balled my nightshirt up and used it like an oven mitt to turn the knob. The door opened, but the air was pulled from my lungs and I reared back. The smoke was thick and black, and I couldn’t see anything. It roared louder than the screams, everything blurring into one big sound.
I was twelve, and I remember stumbling out of the first-floor window. I found myself beneath the same clear, starry sky that had been looking over me all my life. Only now, the silence was punctuated by sirens. They weren’t trilling on some faraway interstate, but racing toward my little ranch house.
My older brother found me, both of us standing in the darkness beyond the glow of the flickering lights. His eyes were wide, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. But his hands were firm when he gripped my shoulders and turned me toward him.
“The police are going to come,” he said. “They’re goingto ask questions. Don’t tell them anything. That’s the only way I can protect us.”
I was too stunned to ask him what he meant. I was too frightened to ask what had happened to our parents. On some level, I already knew.
Then he ran back into theflames.
One
The courtroom is packed.
Today, the highly publicized six-month murder trial comes to an end. At seven this morning, the jury announced that they had reached their verdict. Now we gather to hear the fate of the defendant, Emma Graham.
“Mom,” Collette whispers, “Ican’tbe late for school. I have a math test today.”
At eleven years old, my daughter is going on thirty.
“It’s fine.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders, giving her a comforting squeeze. “Not everything is learned in the classroom. This is educational.”
Collette cranes her neck to see over the rows of people seated ahead of us. We didn’t get here early enough to sit directly behind the attorneys, but with the popularity of this case, it’s a miracle we got in at all. Through the window, I can see that the sidewalk outside the courtroom isalso packed with people, all of whom are huddled over smartphones waiting for the next update.
Collette was interested in this case because it fascinated her that this crime went down long before even I was born, but also because the murderer could still be found guilty. I explained the statute of limitations to her—how some crimes, like petty theft or even assault, have an expiration date. But murder never does. Even if they find you when you’re a hundred years old and on your last days, justice will come for you.
I stare at the back of Emma Graham’s head. Her gray hair is cut short, and her skin is still tanned from her long days spent on sunny beaches. Back in 1985, when her husband went missing, she was youthful and radiant, only thirty-two. She wept on the news and pleaded for her husband to return to her, safe and sound. She begged the public to be on the lookout. She alluded weakly to poorly planned-out and vague mental health issues, claiming he’d “been depressed” and that she’d “always known” he “might do something.”
This didn’t stop her from cashing the insurance check when his van was later found submerged in a river, with him at the wheel. No attempts to escape had been made, and it was deemed an accident. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel and perhaps hit his head, rendering him unconscious on impact.
That was forty years ago. Since then, she’s remarried three times—no children—and retired to an upscale condo in sunny Florida. When her husband’s death was ruled accidental, the case disappeared from public discussion. Andbecause there are so many tragedies to fill the evening news, the world eventually forgot about her.
The room falls silent when the jury files into the room. Collette eyes them curiously. The jurors aren’t shown on the cameras, so this is the first time she’s having a look at them.
My husband, Waylen, would be angry if he knew I’ve taken our daughter here. Yesterday, when he caught Collette watching the trial recap on YouTube, which contained salacious details about Emma’s affairs during her first marriage, he took her iPad away. He said the topic is too grown up for her.
But whether or not he wants to admit it, Collette is smart. She knows that criminals exist and finds it reassuring that they can be punished for their crimes. Like me, she’s interested in how a grave injustice can be corrected. How criminals who thought they’d gotten away with it can finally be punished.
“You’re a good mother,” Waylen told me recently, during one of our hushed little late-night arguments while Collette was sleeping across the hall. “A perfect one, really. But you’re trying to make her too much like—”
“Like me?” I’d pressed.
