“My cousin Jasper has it. I heard my mama say, and then I heard Daddy say: How come they had to use fancy words for being shy? You’re just feeling shy is all.”

  “I never used to be shy.”

  “Good, so you’ll likely get over it. How’re you going to get a boyfriend if you don’t go to school with boys?”

  “I’m not really thinking about boyfriends right now. I don’t know any boys except Rem’s friends.”

  “They’re too young for a boyfriend. You don’t want to be a cradle robber.”

  “Oh, Maddy! As if.”

  “Plus, they’re goofy.”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “Who wants a goofy boyfriend? You’ll meet more boys in school, and I’ll steer you clear of ones not worth your time. Me, I’m going to have lots and lots of boyfriends right up till I decide to get married.”

  Maddy flopped over again.

  “And I’m not getting married until I find one that’s handsome. If he’s not real handsome, he has to be hot, and if he’s not real hot, he at least has to be cute. So I’m having lots of boyfriends so I can weed through them till I find one I decide’s worth marrying.”

  “That’s going to take a while.”

  “Oh, at least till I’m thirty, I figure. Maybe thirty-five.” Maddy shot a finger at the ceiling. “A woman’s got a life to live.”

  “Grammie had my mom when she was sixteen.”

  Maddy shifted her dark eyes to Thea. “I love Miss Lucy like crazy, but that’s wacky. You think they maybe had to get married and all that?”

  Though the bedroom door was closed, Thea glanced that way. “I wondered, so I looked up when she and my grandfather got married, and my mom was born almost a year later. Like ten and a half months, so I guess they didn’t have to. Grammie said they just loved each other so much they couldn’t wait.”

  “I can wait,” Maddy said definitely, “before I settle for one man. Wouldn’t mind if he was rich, and he can’t be stupid or mean or I kick him right to the curb. Handsome doesn’t make up for stupid or mean.”

  Pushing up, Maddy sat cross-legged. “Anyway, plenty of boyfriends, and I want to have sex with at least three before I pick. You gotta be compatible in the sex stuff or you end up divorced or cheating.”

  “Maddy!” Shocked, thrilled, Thea shoved up to mirror her friend’s pose. “You’ll be a slut!”

  “No such thing! A boy goes around having some sex, they say how he’s sowing his wild oats. Well, girls got oats, too. I’ll sow mine when I want to. But not till I’ve dated—just dated—at least half a dozen.

  “Now school.”

  Maddy flipped subjects so quick, Thea’s head spun.

  “We’re going to eat lunch together every day. Plus, we’re going to have some classes together. And you’re going to know everybody by the first week. You’re going to make friends, but you’d better not make a best best friend. Because that’s already me.”

  Thea knew lunch period equaled the Great Humiliation Zone without friends.

  “You’ll eat lunch with me every day?”

  “Promise. Now kick that homeschooling idea in the ass, and let’s pick out what you’re wearing the first day.”

  * * *

  Since Thea couldn’t stop time, the first day came. With her stomach churning, she dressed as Maddy decreed. Denim skirt, white tee, her pink Converse sneakers. She wore her mother’s pink studs, and did her hair—Maddy approved—in a side braid that fell over her left shoulder.

  Rem tossed on shorts, a tee, tied his new shoelaces, and considered it done.

  “Look at the pair of you! You’re going to indulge your grammie and let me take pictures. I want to memorialize your first day. I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the quiet around here until you get home.”

  When the school bus rolled up, Lucy kissed them both. “You have a good first day, and I want to hear all about it.”

  Thea clung a little; she couldn’t help it. Lucy murmured in her ear.

  “If you’re worried about taking the bus, I can drive you in.”

  Thea understood the meaning of gauntlet now. Maddy lived in town, and didn’t ride the bus. Rem already ran toward it, thrilled to embrace the experience.

  She couldn’t let her little brother be braver than she was.

  “No, Grammie, it’s fine.”

  She walked the gauntlet as the bus driver waved and called out to Lucy. To the bus, onto the bus, down the aisle between mostly empty seats. They rode the winding road, climbing up, heading down, making more stops. Kids piled on; the noise level rose.

  Two girls sat behind her and giggled together.

  They’d nearly reached town before someone sat beside her. The girl said, “Hey,” then immediately shifted to talk to other kids.

  Thea suffered the thirty-five-minute bus ride without speaking a word.

  When they reached the school, she filed off. Rem deserted her for a group of boys. She started the second gauntlet while around her kids greeted each other, laughing, talking, mock groaning about school.

  Maddy came up behind her, hooked an arm around Thea’s waist.

  “God, it was awful! Nobody talked to me the whole way.”

  “Did you talk to anybody?”

  “No, but—”

  “Social anxiety,” Maddy said wisely. “We don’t have homeroom together because of the alphabet, but I asked Mama to check, and we have first and third and sixth period together. Hey, Julianne!” she called out as she steered Thea through the heavy front door. “Like the new do! This is my friend Thea.”

  She called out to others as they walked, and explained the layout to Thea as they went.

  The offices, the doors to the gym, the auditorium where they had assemblies and the concerts.

  Compared to her school in Virginia everything here was smaller, older. At least she’d never get lost.

  “Okay, this is your homeroom. Mine’s right across there. So after the bell rings to go to the first class, we’ll meet right out here. Now go on in there and talk to somebody.”

  Without a choice, Thea went in and started to head straight to the back where she’d have a better chance of invisibility.

  But she stopped herself when she got to the middle and slid into a desk.

  Her ears rang; her heart thumped. So she gripped her hands in her lap under the desk and tried desperately to look normal.

  Eventually someone dropped into the desk beside her. The girl with short red hair wore snug, cropped jeans and a bright green shirt. Her nails matched the shirt.

  She propped her chin on her fist and appeared bored to the bone. But she looked everywhere, including at Thea. She gave Thea a long once-over that made Thea want to sink into the earth and pull it over her head.

  “I like your shoes.”

  The shock of the words nearly left Thea speechless.

  “Thanks.”

  “My grandmother says redheads can’t wear pink, but hell with that. I like pink. You’re new, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll get used to it. We’ve got Mrs. Haverson for homeroom. She teaches history and makes it boring. I’m Gracie.”

  “Thea. I’m Thea.”

  “Well, Thea, welcome to the last year, thank you, Jesus, of middle school hell.”

  By the time Thea got back on the bus to ride home, she’d kicked the idea of homeschool in the ass.

  * * *

  She survived that last year of middle school hell with a circle of friends. She turned thirteen—at last. She had her first boyfriend, her first breakup. Her vow to never love another didn’t last through Christmas of her freshman year in high school.

  In her other world, as she sometimes thought of the world of Riggs, prison, detectives, the police traced Riggs from his home outside of Bowling Green to Toledo, to the motel and the room where he killed Jessica Lynn Vernon.

  “Once we tied him to it,” Howard told her on the phone, “he laid it all out. Where he’d picked her up, how he’d taken a bus to Akron after.”

  “He was proud of it. It gave him a way to relive it again, to feel it all again.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  She knew she was right.

  “Charging him with another murder, that gives him a…”

  “A shine,” Howard finished.

  “A shine. Yeah.”

  “Are you doing okay, Thea?”

  “I’m doing fine, thanks. He pushes at me sometimes, especially when he’s bored.” She didn’t add Riggs was bored a lot. “But I don’t let him in.”

  “Good. Don’t. You’ve still got my number. Use it anytime.”

  “Thank you. Um … congratulations on the baby. Fiona’s a pretty name. You’re thinking about her really hard,” Thea explained.

  “And you get that through the phone?”

  “Really hard. It just sort of came through. And the blue stairs. Just be careful on the blue stairs.”

  “All right, Thea. Give my best to your grandmother. And call anytime.”

  Knowing she’d done her best for Jessica Lynn Vernon, Thea did what she could to close the door on that other world.

  * * *

  At fourteen she cut her hair to chin length, an impulse she regretted for months after. She won an award in math, an accomplishment that both thrilled and embarrassed her.

  When she was fifteen, they lost Aster and grieved. The best of best friends, Maddy brought them flowers.

  They called the new cow Betty Lou.

  Waylon married a rawboned blonde named Kyra Lightfoot who had a wonderful wild laugh and played the fiddle.

  She developed an obsession with a rock band—four young guys who called themselves Code Red. And most particularly the lead singer, songwriter, and all-around hottie (according to Maddy) Tyler Brennan.

  He starred in dozens of her dreams and cast every boy she knew in his shadow.

  So for her sixteenth birthday, Lucy took her, Maddy, and Gracie to their concert in Louisville.

  And there he was onstage, tall and lean in ripped jeans and a black tee, his wild mop of hair the color of the sipping whiskey her grandmother sometimes poured.

  The music, his music, simply filled her. She considered her heart lost to him forever.

  In her journal, she wrote that no matter how long she lived, she’d never have a better birthday.

  * * *

  As her senior year approached, she knew what she wanted to do with her life. College loomed, and she focused on computer science at the University of Kentucky. With a double major in art.

  She’d add an online course in computer game design.

  Because that was the dream. She’d design, maybe even develop video games.

  Another dream included somehow meeting Tyler Brennan, having him fall in love with her. They’d marry and have three children and live on a small farm near her grandmother.

  He’d write and play his music; she’d design games.

  And they’d live happily ever after.

  Waylon and Kyra gave Lucy another granddaughter and had a second baby coming. Caleb landed a co-starring role as a charming yet dedicated police detective in a TV series called Case Files filmed in New York.

  On the fifth anniversary of her parents’ death, she stood, as always, with Lucy and Rem at their graves. As always, they laid hydrangeas against the stone.

  Rem stood two inches taller than Thea’s five-nine, and didn’t appear to have finished growing as she had. He had their father’s eyes, but the rest of him looked like Caleb.

  Thea knew the girls swooned over him.

  At the end of the summer, she’d leave them both when she went to college. She’d leave Maddy, too, who would head to Duke to begin her journey toward becoming a doctor.

  Gracie had her waitress job and a boyfriend she’d moved in with. So she’d stay right in Redbud Hollow, at least for now.

  Most of her friends would scatter, she knew. Some already had.

  But she’d come back. She’d always come back to the hills and the forests, to the farm, to her parents’ grave.

  “They’d be so proud of you.” Lucy gripped Thea’s hand, and Rem’s. “So proud of both of you.”

  “I can’t even picture the house in Fredericksburg anymore.”

  Thea glanced at Rem, and thought: I can.

  She went back sometimes, in dreams, to see them as they’d been. Just as she went back to the prison to look at the half life Riggs led.

  “I can’t really remember it.”

  “You remember them,” Lucy told him. “That’s what matters. And look at you, baseball star already and making the honor roll every semester in your sophomore year. And you, going off to college to study what I couldn’t understand if I lived to be a thousand. I swear I don’t know how I’m going to run the online part of the business you talked me into starting without you right here.”

  “I’ve got you covered, Grammie.”

  “You’d better, Rem.”

  “You’re more computer literate than you’ll admit,” Thea told her. “And you can call or text or FaceTime me if you need help. I’ll be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and…”

  Thea pressed a hand to her belly.

  “Don’t you start getting nervous. You’re going to shine. Both of you, the two Waylon and Kyra’ve given me. And if Caleb ever decides to give me more, they’ll shine, too.”

  Thea dreamed of the house in Virginia that night. And though the house stood empty, she heard her mother’s voice, her father’s laugh. Distant, distant as if smothered by the shadows.

  Then it flooded back, all flooded back as she stood outside the house, not empty, no, not empty, behind Riggs.

  She could walk in behind him, see it all again. Hear it, feel it.

  Instead, she turned away, let herself drift, let her mind travel. Let her gift take her to his cell.

  He slept, but fitful, jerking on his cot, muttering in his sleep.

  He wore his hair short now, and his face was as pale as the moon. Still thin, she noted, but getting some flab around the middle. Soft in the middle, she thought, but hard in the face. He looked older than his twenty-three years.

  He has a toothache, she realized, but he’s afraid to say, afraid of the dentist. He scored some pills—opioids—but they’ve worn off, and that tooth’s throbbing.

  “Wake up, Ray.”

  His eyes flashed open on a moan. Then their eyes met.

  “Remember me?”

  “Little bitch.” On a wince, he pressed a hand to his right jaw. “Get the fuck out of here. I’ll kill you.”

  “Yeah, you remember me. They’re going to yank that tooth. It’s going to hurt like a bitch until they do. And it’ll hurt like a bitch for days after.”

  He rolled to sitting. “Fuck you. Get out of my head.”

  “You don’t look so good. Don’t smell so good either. I can smell that tooth rotting in your head. Anyway, I’m just checking in to say goodbye. I won’t be back. I’ve got a life to live.”

  “I’m gonna kill you slow.” Still cradling his jaw, he pushed at her, pushed what he wanted to do against her mind.

  She didn’t flinch.

  “Keep dreaming, Ray. Oh, your nose is bleeding.”

  She willed herself awake to stare up at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her heart didn’t pound; her head didn’t ache.

  Rising, she rehung the charm bag she’d taken down before she’d gone to bed. She’d wanted this one last time.

  She said the words, repeated them three times, then got back into bed.

  Time to let it go, she thought. Time to look forward instead of back.

  Thea closed her eyes and slipped into sleep, dreaming the dreams she built herself.

  PART II

  Living

  Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.

  —HENRY JAMES

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  Chapter Eleven

  At the end of her junior year, Thea assessed her college life.

  In her freshman year, she’d survived frequent bouts of homesickness as well as Mandy, the Roommate from Hell.

  Mandy, who liked to have phone sex—loud phone sex—with her boyfriend at two in the morning. Mandy, who spent most Sunday mornings puking up her Saturday night partying. Mandy, who appeared to have a religious objection to clothes hangers and wastebaskets.

  Thea’d had sex for the first time, and had nearly decided it wasn’t as advertised. The second time changed her mind. The boy, or maybe just the sex, made her feel things she’d never felt before. Had her seeing stars and hearing bells ring.

  But she’d made the mistake of convincing herself she loved the boy—Asher Billings, another computer nerd.

  In the heat of sex and love, she’d told him about her gift.

  His initial laugh hadn’t hurt, or not much. But what followed had cut though the core of her.

  Freak, weird-ass loony, and worse. Worse yet, he’d dumped her and told others. Between the scorn and the stares, she’d nearly run home.

  Home was safe. Home where people accepted who she was.

  “Don’t you think about letting that jerk chase you off!”

  Maddy FaceTimed two minutes after Thea’s misery midnight text.

  “I’m over him, okay? I’m over him, but he’s got people talking about me, and this girl I don’t even know came up to me today in the coffee shop and said I was the devil’s spawn, and—”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “Then fuck her, fuck all like her. You know who you are, Thea Fox, so fuck them. You stick, you hear? You stick and show them what you’re made of.”

  “I shouldn’t have told him. I thought if we were going to be together, really together, he should know, well, what I’m made of.”

  “He showed you what he’s made of. Pig shit’s what he’s made of, and you won’t step in it again. You get your guts up, Thea, and don’t let his kind take away what you love.”