“What are you doing here?” he asks Nicolas. “You've got me back here. What is it you came to tell me?”

  “What can you tell me about your father's death?” Nicolas asks.

  Jake's shoulders square off, and his hand clenches around mine. The fries are forgotten. Heat stretches across my chest. I know what that question means. I've heard it asked so many times before. I've asked it even more times. It's never really what it sounds like. Jake's father didn't die recently, and that only makes the question even more ominous.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” Jake demands. “Do you think that's funny?”

  He starts forward, and I press my hand against his chest to hold him back.

  “Jake,” I murmur under my breath. “He doesn't mean anything by it.”

  “I'm not trying to start anything, Jake. We're just trying to get to the bottom of what happened, and that means starting from the beginning.”

  “There is no beginning,” Jake says through gritted teeth. “This was all over with a long time ago. Why are you bringing it up again?”

  My attention piques. A secret simmers just beneath the surface of this conversation, and I'm aching to hear it. It's something everyone else in the room knows, and I feel on the outside, separated by years and space.

  “We're just trying to figure things out. This isn't anything official. Just us talking.”

  I tilt my head at him; my eyes narrowed as I silently send back what he just said. The officer avoids looking at me. He knows he's being a hypocrite, talking out of his ass to try to get Jake to come down from the angry, roiling place he's quickly climbing into and talk with him.

  “If it isn't anything official, maybe you could stop talking in circles and just tell him why you came,” I say.

  “My father died from natural causes,” Jake bites off. “At least, that's what his file says.”

  “Has there been any sign of vandalism or interference with his grave before now?” Nicolas asks, sounding relieved Jake is talking.

  “No.”

  “And have you experienced any threats recently? Anything that might indicate someone was planning this?”

  “No.” A breath snorts through his flaring nostrils.

  “How about the date? Is there anything significant about the date?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Nicolas looks at me like he shoved acknowledging my existence out of his thoughts and isn't happy to have to bring it back to the forefront.

  “Sometimes, in situations like this, the date is not chosen randomly. A person will pick a certain day because it has something to do with the person or their death.”

  I bite down on my tongue to stop the retort that quickly forms there. I scrape the words back down my throat and take a breath to clear them away.

  “I understand the concept. I meant, why would you ask him that?”

  Jake shifts with built-up energy. “You think this is personal. It's not just something random.”

  The second officer looks at Nicolas with a heavy expression in his eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Nicolas doesn't take his eyes away from Jake.

  “No,” Jake says, his voice becoming low and gravelly.

  “And is there any reason to believe there's someone who might want to hurt you? Or to upset you like this?” Nicolas asks.

  Brent rocks back and forth uncomfortably. He's lower in rank than Nicolas and won't argue with him, but there's something building up inside him. His eyes keep flickering to the door, and his hands clench on the sides of his belt. Thin lips press together as he leans forward, wanting to say something but holding back the words.

  “What is this about, Nicolas?” Jake asks.

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Seems like you're just trying to open up old wounds and drag up old shit for fun. Why did you really come out here and make such a fuss about talking to me?”

  “We're following up on some new information,” Nicolas says.

  Brent's eyes close briefly, but the gesture isn't lost on Jake. He looks at the younger officer, then back at Nicolas. His eyes widen.

  “You found him, didn't you? You found my father's bones. Where?” Neither of the officers answer, and Jake takes a threatening step toward them. “Where did you find him?”

  Before either officer can say anything, Jake's expression shifts, and realization crosses through his eyes. He storms out of the office, dragging me along with him by my hand.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Where are you going?”

  “Jake, you need to stay here,” Nicolas commands as he follows us.

  The order is futile. Jake isn't going to do anything either of them tell him. They lost him very soon after the beginning of the conversation. He brings me to his car and opens the passenger door. Part of me expects him to stuff me inside like a piece of luggage, but he resists and just lets go of my hand so I can get in myself. As I'm hooking my seatbelt, he storms around the front of his car and gets in. I can hear Nicolas shouting after Jake as they come out of the bar. Brent is on his radio, and Nicolas has his hands planted on his hips, watching us. When they realize we aren't stopping, they run for their police car.

  “Where are we going?” I ask again, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible in hopes of calming him down.

  I don't know if that's possible. If I was in his situation, I don't think I could be calm, either. But I don't love the frantic look on his face and the way his knuckles look like they're going to snap under the tension of their grip on the steering wheel. He's not fully in control, and the winding, narrow streets of Feathered Nest aren't the place to test muscle memory.

  “Look, Jake, I know you're upset. That's perfectly understandable considering what you're going through. But I think you need to take a second and think through this,” I say.

  “I don't need to think through it.”

  Holding tightly to the door handle beside me, I keep watching his face. I'm waiting for the expression to change, for the crazy to drain from his eyes and the laughter to come back. Then I'll know he's in there somewhere.

  It doesn't happen. But I'm relieved when he pulls the car into a gravel driveway studded with grass and shrubbery growing up through the jagged rocks. I don't know where we are, but at least we've stopped. He didn't bother to put on his seatbelt, which puts me at a disadvantage getting out of the car. By the time I wrench myself out of mine and climb out, he's disappearing around the side of the squat blue house.

  Overhead, the cloud cover has moved back in. A white sky streaked with smoky wisps of gray promises more snow, or at least the sharp, almost violent needles of freezing rain that cover everything with a glittering glaze. The atmosphere is too still. It amplifies the voices coming from the backyard of the house, and my boots crunching over the rocks.

  They aren't casual voices. They're low and measured, controlled to a rhythm I know. Before I even see him, I know Chief LaRoche is back there. He's talking to the other officers, the ones who weren't sent to talk to Jake and instead are investigating the gruesome desecration.

  I run to the side of the house and see Jake nose to nose with LaRoche.

  “Back up, Jake,” the chief growls.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “I'm not letting you back there. This is nothing you should be seeing.”

  “I don't need you to tell me what I should be seeing,” Jake says back through gritted teeth. “I'm a grown man. You have my father back there, and I have the right to know about it.”

  LaRoche holds up his hands, playing the innocent again, and shakes his head.

  “Now, Jake, we don't know what we have back there. And I'm not giving out details. What we might have found is part of an ongoing investigation, and I have to guard my information closely,” he says condescendingly.

  Jake stabs a finger angrily over LaRoche's head toward the backyard.

  “You know damn well what you have back there. That's my father. All that's left of him. And if the man who did this to him is here, he needs to have a word with me.”

  “If you keep acting like this, I'm going to have to arrest you for interference.”

  “I'll take my chances,” Jake fires back, his voice lowering.

  He steps around LaRoche, and I rush after him. I stumble over a rotting piece of lumber positioned at the end of the driveway that made its way from the front of the house around to the side. I reach out and grab Jake's hand just as we get to the backyard. All I see are blue tarps hanging from trees with white nylon rope. It’s clunky and unwieldy, but it does the job. We can't see anything beyond a few steps away from the driveway and the cramped cinderblock patio built at the back of the house. Jake looks at each of the tarps like he hopes to see through them and find out what's going on beyond them.

  From my angle, I can see piercing yellow tape set up in a perimeter a few feet away from a small shed. What looks like the sum of the rest of the police force mills around snapping pictures, taking notes, and setting down markers. One officer walks to the edge of a well and peers down into the gap created by the lid sitting off-kilter by several inches. A wheelbarrow sits a few yards from the shed, mounded with dirt, and supporting the handle of a large shovel. The darkness of the ground behind it tells me that dirt came from being dug out of the ground fairly recently.

  “Get off me!”

  I turn to the sound of the shout and see Jake with his hands wrapped around the shirt of a man standing on the patio. His hands are already handcuffed behind him, but Jake tries to yank him away from the officer leading him down the steps.

  “What did you do?” he screams.

  I rush up to him and pull him back by his waist. The man sagging from the handcuffs is white-haired, his face etched with deep lines. His shirt is well-worn and hanging over the waist of jeans broken in by years of wear, not the machines that are so trendy now. He looks old and broken. Jake doesn't care.

  “What did you do?” Jake screams again.

  He struggles against my arms, trying to get to the man, but I hold him back.

  “You need to stop. You don't want to get yourself arrested,” I say.

  “You were his best friend,” Jake shouts at the man, completely ignoring me. “He trusted you. And this is how you repaid him? Don't you think you already did enough?”

  “Jake,” LaRoche says, coming up to us.

  I hold up a hand to stop him. “I've got it. Come on. We're getting you away from here.”

  Jake lets me pull him away from the man, but his eyes stay welded to him until the last second. I take Jake by the shoulder and walk him around the house until he’s finally forced to break eye contact. I guide him into the passenger seat of the car and get in beside him. He's silent for the first few moments of the ride, but his seething creates tension I'm just waiting to cause the windows to explode.

  “I'm sorry,” I finally say, just to break the silence.

  It's not the right thing to say. Not really. Of course, it very rarely is. It's one of those phrases people have tucked into their vocabulary to stuff into situations that feel like they need something. One thing that grates on me to the point of physically shuddering when I hear it is people who attach 'I'm sorry' to the beginning of questions or to sentences that don't need them. I'm sorry, but what time is it? I'm sorry, can you tell me where you got your shoes? I'm sorry, but her wearing white at her wedding is a joke.

  This isn't one of those times. I have an ache inside me for Jake and what he's going through and want him to know I'm here. But those words just aren't enough.

  “How could he do that?” Jake mutters. “After all these years, why couldn't he just let well enough alone? With everything else this town is going through, what could he possibly get out of digging my father up and leaving him in that shed? He helped build that shed.”

  I reach over with one hand to rub his back. No other words come to mind. All I can think of is the fragile-looking old man and try to understand how he could do something so grisly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I drive past the turn to Jake's house and then down the main road, not stopping at the bar. He doesn't need to try to go back to work right now and being home won't do him any good. The familiar surroundings will only keep his mind spiraling. Instead, I drive back to the cabin. He sits with his head hanging, staring at his hands pressed between his knees even as I get out and walk around the front of the car.

  “Come on inside,” I tell him.

  He looks up for a second before climbing out and following me up onto the porch. His eyes sweep over the wood planks, and my stomach twists a little. Maybe walking him across an unsolved murder scene wasn't the most compassionate choice in this moment. But he doesn't seem bothered by it. He walks inside without a word and immediately drops down onto the couch. Quickly scooping the pictures off the table and tucking them in the compartment under it, I take off my shoes and curl up onto the cushion beside him.

  “Can I make you a cup of coffee?” I ask a few silent seconds later

  He nods, and I head into the kitchen. Beyond the window, the sky looks angry again. Within a few seconds, a mixture of cold rain and snowflakes starts coming down. The coffee pot gurgles and fills the room with the warm, reassuring scent. While it fills, I peek into a few of the cabinets to see if there's anything I can bring out with the coffee. I know there aren't any cookies or pastries sitting around, yet I still look. Maybe one of these times, it will spontaneously appear.

  Settling for a few foil-wrapped truffles from a bowl on the counter, I carry everything back into the living room and offer a mug to him. Jake takes it and holds it between his strong hands but doesn't take a sip. I breathe in the warmth of the steam coming up off the dark surface of the brew, imagining the caffeine somehow traveling through the air and getting a head start by seeping into my lungs.

  “My father was a very good businessman,” Jake suddenly says. “Maybe too good.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Setting my mug of coffee on the table, I unwrap one of the truffles.

  “He was driven to succeed and worked extremely hard to make sure he always did what he set himself out to do. But he didn't take shortcuts. He wouldn't settle for anything less than excellence. No matter what element of the business he was handling, he did it with every bit of him. He took pride in treating customers well, being honest, and making sure they always got the best experience from him. That didn't always sit well with other people.”

  “Why?”

  “Small towns aren't always as sweet and innocent as people want to think they are. There are people in Feathered Nest who didn't have the same thoughts about business as my father. They thought only about themselves. They cut corners, did what they could to save money, and didn't care about the customers on the other end of their deals. Sometimes it was just unethical. Sometimes it was illegal. My father stood up for what he believed in, and it didn't matter who he had to cross to do it. A few people ended up in hot water because of it. Businesses closed or were forced to change their practices and make less money. Jail time.”

  I shake my head. “I don't understand.”

  “I don't know all the details of it, and a lot has been hushed up and brushed aside over the years. But I do know there were some suspicious deaths of farmhands and a lot of money rolling through the town. People were paying far more for their goods than they needed to, and nobody was saying anything about it.”

  “Money laundering? Did the police get involved?” I ask.

  “The Chief at the time was LaRoche's father,” Jake admits. “But he didn't seem surprised by any of it if you catch my drift.”

  “He was in on it.”

  “That's what some people around here think. But other people blamed my father for everything. They thought he should have left well enough alone and kept his nose out of things that didn't concern him. The tension remained for the rest of his life.”

  “What about that man? His best friend? What would he have to do with any of this?” I ask.

  “Cole Barnes was my father's best friend from way back. They were just kids together. When I was young, he was a fixture at our house and at family events. They did everything together, and if one needed something, anything, then the other was there to do anything he could,” Jake tells me. “But then that changed. Things started getting tense between them. Cole accused my father of betraying him.”

  “Betraying him? What did he do?” I ask.

  Cupping my mug in my palms, I let the warmth of the coffee seep through me. What Jake's telling me stirs up suspicions and unsteady feelings that have been growing inside me since arriving in Feathered Nest. I don't want to push too hard or ask too many questions and possibly reveal the real reason I'm here. Instead, I tuck away the little bits of information, so I'll be able to take them out and tumble them around later, figuring out what they could mean and where they fit in the puzzle I'm trying to solve.

  “I don't know all the details. Secrets are secrets for a reason. My father didn't want to air other people's dirty laundry if he didn't have to. All I know is they had a falling out. A serious one, from the way the town talked about the two of them after that. Then, my father died.”

  “How did he die?”

  Jake shrugs and stares down into his mug like the coffee is going to reveal all the answers of the universe for him.

  “That's a good question, isn't it?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was always the healthiest person I knew. Never sick a day in his life. Everyone else would get colds or stomach bugs, and it never once got him. He'd take care of all of us and keep going right about his life. Then, all of a sudden, he was sick as a dog. Just out of nowhere. One day he was perfectly fine like any other day, and the next, he was so sick he couldn't get out of bed. Stayed that way for three more days before we finally convinced him to go to the doctor. They couldn't help him, and he ended up in the hospital, where he died the next day. One of the doctors said it was the strangest thing he ever saw. They tested for a bunch of things, but couldn't find anything,” Jake tells me.