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Dean was nodding along like a metronome.

“In terms of where you want to lay your mom to rest, when I was trying to choose, the only real consideration was whether the plot was under a tree or not.”

“Oh,” Dean said, looking down one row of graves. There were three empty spaces interspersed among the marked graves and only one of them was shaded by a giant oak tree. Dean headed directly for it. “I think she would like this one here, being in the shade where it’s cool in the summer.”

“Dean?” called a female voice. Josie recognized it as the same one from the funeral planning meeting.

“Over here,” he called back without looking away from the strip of land under the tree.

Seconds later, Kirstie West appeared, weaving her way through the grave markers. Josie had only had a glimpse of her at the church but now she could see she was in her mid-thirties. Flaxen blonde hair was gathered into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. A long, flowing skirt clung to the fronts of her legs as she walked toward them. It was blue, covered in bright yellow daisies. She wore a fitted white shirt with it and as she reached them, Josie saw two stains on it, one near her collarbone and the other near her navel. One was purple, the other green. Paint?

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” she asked Dean.

He pointed at the flat stretch of undisturbed ground at his feet. “I thought this was a good place for Mom to rest.”

“You don’t want her under a tree. What if there are issues with the roots?”

“But she would like it,” Dean argued weakly.

She hooked an arm through his. “Maybe she would have but we have to think practically, don’t we? I just talked to the office manager again and she suggested we look at plots in the section next to this one.”

Dean stared almost longingly at the ground. He opened his mouth, presumably to make another attempt at arguing with her, but she’d finally turned her attention to Josie and Noah. Her eyes flitted over their khakis and polo shirts and the guns at their waists. “Oh God, I’m so sorry! Dean said you’d be coming to speak with us.” She extended her hand. “Kirstie West.”

Josie and Noah shook hands with her while Dean continued to stare at the ground beneath the oak tree.

“You’re here about Sylvia,” Kirstie said. “Carter called us not that long ago.”

Dean nodded. “He said she was strangled. He thinks it was the Last Kiss Killer who did this, that he came back to finish the job. We told her not to do the interview but she insisted. I don’t know how she could put herself out there like that after what he did to her.”

“When your mom was attacked the first time,” Josie said, “was she living alone?”

Dean gave a barely discernible wince. “No. I was living with her, but that night I was out with Carter and a bunch of our friends. We went to some bar and grill. I couldn’t drink, obviously, ’cause I was only twenty but we had a good time. I crashed at his place afterward. This is so messed up. If she’d just listened.”

Kirstie’s eyes filled with tears. “Carter wanted her to move in with one of us after she gave the interview. Even if it was just for a few days, but there was no changing her mind.”

Noah addressed Dean. “Did you and Carter believe the man who attacked her thirteen years ago was still a threat, or was it more of a precaution?”

“Both. This guy got away with it. Of course we were always secretly afraid that he’d try to come back and finish the job. Not so much once we moved here, but doing that interview was like painting a target on her back.”

“What did she think about that?” asked Josie.

“She wasn’t afraid,” Dean said. “She said she was tired of hiding and if he was still out there, the publicity around the whole thing would make him too afraid to retaliate.”

“Your mother must have been approached by journalists a lot,” Noah said. “Had she been talking about giving an interview for a while?”

Dean shook his head. “No. This was a sudden thing. Carter and I were totally blindsided. I mean, she went from never talking about what happened to wanting to go on national television and blab every little detail.”

Carter had also mentioned that Sylvia didn’t talk about the attack with them. Josie said, “You and your brother were adults when she was attacked, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. Like I said, I was twenty. Carter was about to turn twenty-three. She wouldn’t tell us anything. Said only the police and God needed to be privy to what had happened that night and that all we needed to know was that God saved her and she was fine. It makes no sense that she would suddenly want to tell the whole world. Reporters tried to get her to talk for years.”

“She’s been pretty obsessed with Trinity Payne’s show,” Kirstie said. “Watches it religiously. I’m not surprised she wanted to go on there. Hey, aren’t you her sister?”

Dean’s eyes snapped to Josie. “You’re Trinity Payne’s sister?”

Josie nodded, keeping her face neutral. “Yes, but I’m not involved with her show.”

“Maybe if she hadn’t been so obsessed with getting my mom on camera, this wouldn’t have happened,” Dean spat.