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accident?”
    Sadie gave a small nod and grabbed a muffin as well to busy her hands. “You know your mother. She was at the old house on Argonne and must’ve gone out for a hike in the backwoods…” Sadie choked on her words and cleared her throat, starting again with a firm purpose. “Some…kids found her. You know, from the trailer park by your house?” She tore at her muffin distractedly with long purple nails. “They said it looked like a bear attack, claw marks, you know.”
    So she did still visit the old house. What was the relationship between Lynn and Marcus? Thinking too hard on that made Cami uneasy, like finding Playboys in grandmother’s house.
    “But that doesn’t make sense,” Cami blurted out. “She lived in that house for twenty years. She’s not stupid . She knows how to watch for animals.”
    Cami spotted a look that passed between Sadie and Jenny, but didn’t know what to make of it.
    “Being smart doesn’t protect you from bear claws,” Jenny said. “Especially in mating season.”
    Cami frowned and glanced down at her plate. “Bears mate in spring, not fall,” she muttered, but her mind wandered distractedly. She remembered when she was just a kid—six or seven, maybe—and her mother had given her the privilege of going out to play in the woods on her own. Lynn had crouched down to zip up Cami’s poofy coat.
    (You remember what to do if you see a bear, don’t you?)
    (Stand your ground.)
    (And?)
    (And…uh…)
    When little Cami drew a blank, her mother had demonstrated for her. Lynn spread her arms out and waved then, roaring dramatically, before swooping her little girl up in her arms and the two fell into a fit of giggles.
    So what had happened? Had Lynn finally met her match? A bear that didn’t back down in the face of naked aggression?
    Cami tried to blink away the memory. Animals were animals. No rhyme or reason. She was reading too much into it.
    Maybe it had just been wrong place, wrong time.
    She tried to ignore the nagging feeling inside of her and nibbled a muffin, despite her loss of appetite. A sudden noise from Sadie jerked her back to the present and, within seconds, her aunt’s arms were around her, holding her tightly.
    “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She wept a bucketful of tears against Cami, who went stiff as a board. Sadie sobbed apologies into her shoulder and Cami shut her eyes tightly, trying to block out a flurry of dormant emotions inside her.
    Keep it together.
    Cami dug her nails into her palms and counted to ten.
     

Chapter 8
    “Strawberry margarita,” Cami called out to the bartender. She leaned over the bar, arms folded on the stained surface in front of her. After spending all day with her weepy-eyed aunt and her monosyllabic cousin, she needed a drink. The Tipping Point—which had been here since as long as she could remember—seemed just what the doctor ordered.
    She leaned back and glanced around the bar. At one point in her life, she might’ve known everyone here. She could have had friends who never texted to say they were coming, they just all showed up eventually as if drawn forward by an unseen force. She could have had rivals, the catty band of judgmental moms who were married and pregnant before Cami even had her second date. She could have had a string of close-knit ex-lovers who were all somehow connected by a degree or two, men who it was awkward to be around but who eventually stopped caring because it was impossible to avoid anyone in a small town like this (unless you were some wild man who chopped wood at 5 a.m.). Hell, maybe Cami would’ve even made friends with some of them. Married one, even.
    But this was all a sea of strangers. There were a few older men at the end of the bar—seasoned workers in plaid and dust-brown jeans. A flock of college kids laughed in a booth. Beside her, a handsome hipster chatted up a pretty little thing in a skimpy dress. On one hand, Cami felt a step ahead of the crowd. She’d left .