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tousling hair, Cassie thanked
     God for them. Fraternal twins —Heather looked like a carbon copy of Cassie at twelve while the taller, more big-boned Hillary
     was an even mixture of Cassie and Marcus’s features —the girls embodied the type of relatively carefree, confident youth that
     had escaped Cassie. As a biracial child in 1970s Ohio, her very identity had seemingly been a radical concept.
    Back in the hallway again, she prayed as she did every night that God would protect the girls from the demons that had complicated
     her young life. Demons that had arisen again to stalk her and those she loved.
    The doorbell surprised her, then filled her with dread as she tiptoed down the steps, trying to decide whether to even answer
     it. Pacing back and forth in her foyer, she found her hands clasping, felt the involuntary craning of her neck as she looked
     heavenward.
How can I pray,
she asked herself,
when I don’t want to hear God’s answer?

6
    T he doorbell rang two additional times as Cassie tried to calculate the likelihood that Whitlock had already returned. She
     had specifically
not
told him about Marcus’s trip, so showing up at nine o’clock would normally be a bold move. But then, Whitlock hadn’t sounded
     too threatened by the thought of confronting her taller, bulkier husband.
    “I don’t have to do it this way, Cassie,” the detective had said that day on her porch. He continued, lighting a new cigarette
     at the same time. “As an officer of the law, for me, the honest course would be to file Lenny Parks’s testimony that he picked
     you and his sister up from the Christian Light campus nearly an hour after the game was over, and that you were clearly out
     of sorts. Disheveled clothing, blood on several of you . . . and that he never really thought your story that you’d been attacked
     by a stray dog made sense. That’s enough there to reopen the investigation, you see.”
    Cassie had done her best to keep a poker face, had said it sounded like a long leap from that testimony to the idea that some
     girls with no criminal records —before or since —could have harmed a spunky boy who’d been taller than all of them.
    “Oh, Cassie,” Whitlock replied, his eyes rising with a chuckle, “I’ve been in law enforcement too long. I saw the way you
     tensed up at the sound of my brother’s name. That was all I needed to confirm you were involved. Now, either you can do what’s
     right and confess everything to me, or I’ll start the legal process in earnest. It’s real easy, you see. Even if the court
     ultimately rules that the statute of limitations has run out on a criminal prosecution, my family still has recourse in civil
     court.
    “Do you have any idea how expensive it’s been for my mother to keep Eddie alive, if you can call his existence living? Trust
     me, once I prove the criminal case, even if you escape prosecution, you’ll be on the hook for millions of dollars.”
    On the inside, she’d hemorrhaged with rage, but Cassie kept her face impassive as Whitlock crossed his arms and leaned in.
     “So whenever you think about telling your big, bad hubby or anyone else about my visits —because there will be more —just
     remember the alternative.”
    The sudden ring of her home phone jarred Cassie out of her flashback, and she rushed to the kitchen and grabbed a cordless
     unit. “Hello?”
    “Well, thank God. I was starting to worry about you and the kids. I remembered you saying Marcus would be out of town this
     week.”
    “Julia?”
    “Yes. Does my voice sound any different to you?”
    Cassie frowned. “There’s an echo.”
    “That would be because I’m outside on your porch. Hello, can you let me in? I don’t have all night.”
    Chastened but relieved, Cassie held the phone and hustled back to the foyer. Once she had opened the door and let Julia in,
     her friend paused at the foot of the front stairwell. “Hey, have to pick up Amber from my father’s in a