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revenge so long he wouldn’t let himself.
    â€œFrom the looks of things, he got drunk and threw himself off the ledge at Briar Ridge, but I’m waiting on an official autopsy report for cause of death. The note said he couldn’t live with the guilt any longer.” Grady inhaled a calming breath, aware that he was dropping another bombshell, then forced himself to spit it out. “Violet, your father confessed to killing Darlene.”
    * * *
    A HEARTBEAT OF SILENCE stretched between them. “What?” Violet clutched the table edge. “Did you tell my grandmother this?”
    â€œYes. I’m sorry, she insisted.”
    Violet sank into the chair. Her father was not a killer. He wouldn’t have hurt Darlene. Not her best friend. Not the girl who’d defended her.
    Bits and pieces of that horrible last day rushed back. Her father’s fury when he realized she’d told the town about her connection to Darlene. The nervous way he’d stalked around the house, muttering under his breath that people would think she was a nutcase. That the devil had gotten her.
    A shudder gripped her. What did she really know about her father? That he’d dragged her to the car that dark cold night without even kissing her goodbye. That he’d sent her away without a backward glance because he thought she was possessed. That he hadn’t contacted her since. That he’d made her feel like some kind of freak.
    That he hadn’t told the Monroes where to find Darlene in time.
    She swallowed to make her voice work, but before she could speak, her grandmother clutched her chest.
    â€œViolet…”
    Panic slammed into her. “Grammy, what’s wrong?”
    Her grandmother doubled over in the kitchen chair, gasping for air.
    â€œIs she all right?” Grady yelled.
    She was turning white. No, blue. “I have to call an ambulance!” Violet disconnected the phone and punched in 9-1-1, her heart racing.
    â€œJed didn’t…do it,” her grandmother rasped. “Not a…k-killer.”
    Her frail body jerked, then she slumped against Violet.
    * * *
    W HAT THE HELL WAS happening? Grady hit Redial, his pulse clamoring, but the phone rang over and over. Was Mrs. Baker okay? Had the news killed her?
    He scrubbed a sweaty hand over his face and cursed. The scents of death and formaldehyde from the coroner’s office came back to him, his sister’s childlike face resurfacing. He’d never forget standing beside his father to identify her body. The image of Darlene’s glassy eyes. The cuts and scrapes. Dirt and mud and weeds had clung to her pale skin, the signs of rigor mortis already setting in. Signs he hadn’t understood at the time. Signs he’d recognized in other bodies since.
    He and his father had waited all these years to learn the truth about Darlene’s killer. But now to discover he’d been living in their own town, that Violet’s father had murdered her. It was almost unbelievable….
    But why had Baker killed himself now, twenty years later? It wasn’t as if the case had been recently reopened. Unless the anniversary had finally driven Baker mad, as it threatened to do to Grady every year…
    Uncertainty nagged at him again. At age thirteen, he hadn’t known anything about the police investigation.
    But he had read the files since. Hell, he’d memorized them. Tonight he would review them again and see how the police had missed that Baker was the killer. Just as soon as he told his father. A stream of sweat dribbled down his chin.
    He hoped his dad didn’t already know….
    * * *
    V IOLET CLUNG TO HER grandmother’s hand on the ambulance ride to the hospital, as the minutes stretched out. For several seconds back at the cottage, she’d thought her Grammy had died. Then she’d jerked slightly, breathing again as if she refused to give up the fight. As if she knew she couldn’t leave this