Carl meets my eyes, tired but honest. “That’s all I’ve got. No grand secret. No confession. Just an accident everyone decided not to question too hard.”
We sit with that.
When we finally stand to leave, Carl clears his throat. “Your dad would’ve hated this,” he says to Marshall. “All the half-truths.”
Marshall nods. “Yeah. He would’ve.”
Outside, the night air feels sharper somehow.
“Well,” Marshall says, hands in his pockets, “that helped.”
I snort. “Define helped.”
He glances at me. “You believe him?”
I think about Carl’s face. The grief. The certainty. The gaps.
“I believe he’s telling the truth,” I say slowly. “I just don’t think it’s the whole one.”
Marshall exhales. “Me neither.”
Because accidents don’t fracture families in that way.
They don’t send people running. They don’t echo for decades.
Something happened. And whatever it was, it’s still casting a shadow—one long enough to reach Abilene.
That’s what scares me.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Abilene
Monday
Oh no.
My heart doesn’t just stutter—it drops, as if something vital has slipped loose inside my chest, when I spot the envelope on the mat.
I stare at it like it’s a living thing. Like it might crawl away if I look too hard. My hands go cold, then hot, then numb, anxiety zigzagging through my veins in sharp, electrical bursts that leave me dizzy.
Another letter.
Same cream envelope. Same careful, restrained handwriting.
Familiar now in the way a recurring nightmare becomes familiar.
You recognize the shape of it before it fully forms.
From “a friend,” I can tell.
My pulse thunders wildly as I take a step toward it, then stop. My breath goes shallow, caught somewhere between ribs that suddenly feel too tight.
I crouch slowly, feeling the floor might tilt if I move too fast, and pick up the envelope. My name is written neatly across the front.
JustAbilene.
I sit on the bottom stair because my legs won’t hold me anymore.
