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day.”
    Elizabeth laughed. If the sound had been a dead fish, both Heath and Wily would have rolled in it. A child’s laughter, particularly after tears, wasn’t something Heath had ever fancied getting dewy-eyed over, but she was, and not for the first time, either.
    “Well, me and Tiff—”
    “Tiff and I,” Gwen corrected, then looked abashed that she’d interrupted at such a time.
    “You and Tiff,” Heath said to get Elizabeth going again. She didn’t want to give her time to reconsider that lie she’d seen sneaking across her face earlier.
    “We were supposed to be looking after Brady, Tiff’s little brother,” she explained to Anna and Gwen, in case they’d forgotten about him. “He’s a monster. A real monster—he bites and spits; he just never lets his mom see him doing it, so she thinks he’s like this little angel and Tiff and I are the evil stepsisters or something. Anyway, we were supposed to be watching him because it was Wednesday night—remember, Mom? I wanted to go over even though we’d be babysitting so Tiff and I could decide what to wear on the last day of school? Not like it matters, but there’s always stuff on the last day and, well, you know.”
    Heath nodded, though she didn’t know, and didn’t remember that particular Wednesday.
    “Wednesday nights are big church nights. Usually Tiff and her brother both go, and sometimes her dad, but Brady had been pretending to have the flu all day, so Mrs. Edleson let him stay home if Tiff would watch him. Mr. Edleson stayed home, too, though I got the feeling Mrs. Edleson wasn’t happy about that. Then, around eight or so, Brady disappeared to pull the wings off of flies or whatever—”
    “Does the kid torture animals?” Anna asked darkly.
    Elizabeth was untouched by the ice in her voice. “No,” she said. “He’s not like a little Hannibal Lecter in the making or anything. At least not that I’ve seen. He’s mostly into torturing high school girls, as in Tiff and me.
    “So Tiff went out to the backyard—you know what a big yard they have, part of it borders on the creek—because that’s where the little monster likes to hide out in the dark and leap out and scare the bejesus out of us. I didn’t want to deal, so I stayed in the living room, where we’d been watching boring kid movies to keep Brady happy.
    “Turns out Tiff wasn’t in the yard looking for Brady.” Elizabeth faltered to a stop.
    Heath, Anna, and Gwen waited in respectful silence. Heath wondered if they worked as hard as she did not to demand answers.
    Elizabeth sighed deeply and resumed. “Her dad had intercepted her coming in and sent her and Brady out for something at the drugstore. So, anyway, I was sitting on this big couch they have in the living room playing solitaire on my phone, and Mr. Edleson comes down from upstairs and sits on the couch and starts asking me the usual lame questions. How do I like school and what do I want to be when I grow up. Then he asks if I have a boyfriend, and I say don’t I wish, and he starts in this long thing about some tribe in darkest wherever, and how fabulous it is that the old guys, uncles even—gross—introduce the virgins into womanhood. Way gross.”
    She looked up from where her hands were picking at the edge of a fray on the hem of her pajama top, swept an inclusive glance over Heath and the others, then returned to her hands. “It reminded me of something Father Sheppard would say.”
    Father Sheppard—Dwayne Sheppard—was the leader of the pseudo-Mormon cult Heath and Anna had rescued Elizabeth from when she was nine years old. Sheppard believed in multiple wives, the younger the better. Heath could feel her blood pressure rising. Anna and Gwen were as stone.
    “Then what happened?” Gwen asked softly.
    “He like put his hand on my thigh and leaned in and kissed me. A wet sloppy kiss that Wily would be disgusted by. I was, you know, so totally freaked, for a second I didn’t do anything. I