’m sorry she came here, because now she’s dead,” said a weeping John Keene, 18, of his younger sister Natalie, 10. “Someone killed my little sister.” Natalie Keene’s body was discovered on May 14, jammed upright in a space between Cut-N-Curl Beauty Parlor and Bifty’s Hardware in the small town of Wind Gap, Mo. She is the second young girl murdered here in the past nine months: Ann Nash, nine, was discovered in a nearby creek last August. Both girls had been strangled; both had their teeth removed by the killer.

“She was this goofy kid,” John Keene said, crying softly, “kind of a tomboy.” Keene, who moved here from Philadelphia with his family two years ago, and who recently graduated from high school, described his younger sister as a bright, imaginative girl. She once even invented her own language, complete with a working alphabet. “A regular kid, it’d be gibberish,” Keene said, laughing ruefully.

What is gibberish is the police case so far: Wind Gap police officials and Richard Willis, a homicide detective on loan from Kansas City, admit there are few leads. “We have not ruled anyone out,” Willis said. “We are looking very closely at potential suspects within the community, but are also carefully considering the possibility that these killings may be the work of an outsider.”

The police refuse to comment on one potential witness, a young boy who claims he saw the person who abducted Natalie Keene: a woman. A source close to the police say they believe the killer is, in fact, likely to be a man within the local community. Wind Gap dentist James L. Jellard, 56, concurs, adding that removing teeth “would take some strength. They don’t just pop right out.”

While the police work the case, Wind Gap has seen a run on security locks and firearms. The local hardware store has sold three dozen security locks; the town’s gun and rifle dealer has processed more than 30 firearms permits since Keene’s killing. “I thought most folks around here already had rifles, for hunting,” says Dan R. Sniya, 35, who owns the town’s largest firearms store. “But I think anyone who didn’t have a gun—well, they will.”

One Wind Gap resident who’s increased his arsenal is Ann Nash’s father, Robert, 41. “I have two other daughters and a son, and they’re going to be protected,” he said. Nash described his late daughter as quite bright. “Sometimes I thought she was smarter than her old man. Sometimes she thought she was smarter than her old man.” He said his daughter was a tomboy like Natalie, a girl who liked to climb trees and ride her bike, which is what she was doing when she was abducted last August.

Father Louis D. Bluell, of the local Catholic parish, says he’s seen the effect of the murders on residents: Sunday mass attendance has increased noticeably, and many members of his church have come for spiritual advice. “When something like this happens, people feel a real yearning for spiritual nourishment,” he says. “They want to know how something like this could have happened.”

So, too, do the police.

Before we hit press, Curry made fun of all the middle initials. Good God, Southerners love their formalities. I pointed out Missouri was technically the Midwest and he snickered at me. And I’m technically middle-aged, but tell that to poor Eileen when she has to deal with my bursitis. He also excised all but the most general details from my interview with James Capisi. Makes us look like suckers if we pay too much attention to the kid, especially if the police aren’t biting. He also cut a lame quote about John from his mother: “He’s a kind, gentle boy.” It was the only comment I got from her before she kicked me out of the house, the only thing that made that miserable visit near worthwhile, but Curry thought it was distracting. He was probably right. He was quite pleased that we finally had a suspect to focus on, my “man within the local community.” My “source close to the police” was a fabrication, or more euphemistically, an amalgam—everyone from Richard to the priest thought a local guy did it. I didn’t tell Curry about my lie.

The morning my story came out, I stayed in bed and stared at the white rotary phone, waited for it to ring with rebukes. It would be John’s mom, who’d be plenty angry when she discovered I got to her son. Or Richard, for my leak about the suspect being local.

Several silent hours went by as I got progressively more sweaty, the horseflies buzzing around my window screen, Gayla hovering outside my door, anxious for access to my room. Our bedclothes and bath towels have always been changed daily; the laundry is forever churning down in the basement. I think this is a lingering habit from Marian’s lifetime. Crisp clean clothes to make us forget all the drips and dank smells that come from our bodies. I was in college by the time I realized I liked the smell of sex. I came into my friend’s bedroom one morning after a boy darted past me, smiling sideways and tucking his socks into his back pocket. She was lazing in bed, splotchy and naked, with one bare leg dangling out from under the sheets. That sweet muddy smell was purely animal, like the deepest corner of a bear’s cave. It was almost foreign to me, this lived-in, overnight odor. My most evocative childhood scent was bleach.

As it turned out, my first angry caller was not anyone I’d guessed.

“I can’t believe you left me completely out of the story,” Meredith Wheeler’s voice clanged into the phone. “You didn’t use one thing I said. You’d never even know I was there. I was the one who got you John, remember?”

“Meredith, I never told you I’d use your comments,” I said, irritated at her pushiness. “I’m sorry if you got that impression.” I jammed a floppy blue teddy bear under my head, then felt guilty and returned him to the foot of the bed. One should have allegiance to one’s childhood things.

“I just don’t know why you wouldn’t include me,” she continued. “If the whole thing was to get an idea what Natalie was like, then you need John. And if you need John, you need me. I’m his girlfriend. I mean, I practically own him, ask anyone.”

“Well, you and John, that wasn’t really the focus of the story,” I said. Behind Meredith’s breathing, I could hear a country-rock ballad playing and a rhythmic thump and hiss.

“But you had other people from Wind Gap in the story. You had stupid Father Bluell. Why not me? John’s in a lot of pain, and I’ve been really important to him, working through it all with him. He cries all the time. I’m the one keeping him together.”

“When I do another story that needs more voices from Wind Gap, I’ll interview you. If you have something to add to the story.”

Thump. Hiss. She was ironing.

“I know a lot about that family, a lot about Natalie that John wouldn’t think of. Or say.”

“Great, then. I’ll be in touch. Soon.” I hung up, not quite easy with what the girl was offering me. When I looked down, I realized I’d written “Meredith” in loopy girlish cursive across the scars on my left leg.

On the porch, Amma was swaddled in a pink silk comforter, a damp washcloth on her forehead. My mother had a silver tray with tea, toast, and assorted bottles on it, and was pressing the back of Amma’s hand against her cheek in a circular motion.

“Baby, baby, baby,” Adora murmured, rocking them both on the swing.

Amma lolled sleepy as a newborn in her blanket, smacking her lips occasionally. It was the first time I’d seen my mother since our trip to Woodberry. I hovered in front of her, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off Amma.

“Hi, Camille,” Amma finally whispered, and gave me a little curl of a smile.

“Your sister is sick. She’s worried herself into a fever since you’ve been home,” Adora said, still pressing Amma’s hand in that circle. I pictured my mother’s teeth gnashing against each other inside her cheek.

Alan, I realized, was sitting just inside, watching them through the window screen from the living-room loveseat.

“You need to make her feel more comfortable around you, Camille; she’s just a little girl,” my mother cooed to Amma.

A little girl with a hangover. Amma left my room last night and went down to drink a while in her own. That’s the way this house worked. I left them whispering to each other, favorite buzzing on my knee.

“Hey, Scoop.” Richard rolled along beside me in his sedan. I was walking to the space where Natalie’s body had been discovered, to get specific details about the balloons and notes placed there. Curry wanted a “town in mourning” piece. That is, if there were no leads on the murders. Implication being there better be some lead, and soon.

“Hello, Richard.”

“Nice story today.” Damn Internet. “Glad to hear you’ve found a source close to the police.” He was smiling when he said it.

“Me too.”

“Get in, we’ve got some work to do.” He pushed open the passenger door.

“I’ve got my own work to do. So far working with you has given me nothing but unusable, no-comment comments. My editor’s going to pull me out soon.”

“Well, we can’t have that. Then I’ll have no distractions,” he said. “Come on with me. I need a Wind Gap tour guide. In return: I will answer three questions, completely and truthfully. Off record of course, but I’ll give it to you straight. Come on, Camille. Unless you’ve got a date with your police source.”

“Richard.”

“No, truly, I don’t want to interfere with a burgeoning love affair. You and this mysterious fellow must make quite a handsome pair.”

“Shut up.” I got in the car. He leaned over me, pulled down my seat belt and secured it, pausing for a second with his lips close to mine.

“I’ve got to keep you safe.” He pointed over to a mylar balloon swaying in the gap where Natalie’s body was found. It read Get Well Soon.

“That to me,” Richard said, “perfectly sums up Wind Gap.”

Richard wanted me to take him to all the town’s secret places, the nooks that only locals know about. Places where people meet to screw or smoke dope, where teens drink, or folks go to sit by themselves and decide where their lives had unraveled. Everyone has a moment where life goes off the rails. Mine was the day Marian died. The day I picked up that knife is a tight second.

“We still haven’t found a kill site for either girl,” Richard said, one hand on the wheel, the other draped on the back of my seat. “Just the dumping areas, and those are pretty contaminated.” He paused. “Sorry. ‘Kill site’ is an ugly phrase.”

“More suited to an abattoir.”

“Wow. Fifty-cent word there, Camille. Seventy-five cents in Wind Gap.”

“Yeah, I forget how cultured you Kansas City folks are.”

I directed Richard onto an unmarked gravel road, and we parked in the knee-length weeds about ten miles south of where Ann’s body had been found. I fanned the back of my neck in the wet air, plucked at my long sleeves, stuck to my arms. I wondered if Richard could smell the booze of last night, now sitting in sweaty dots on my skin. We hiked into the woods, downhill and back up. The cottonwood leaves shimmered, as always, with imaginary breeze. Occasionally we could hear an animal skitter away, a bird suddenly take flight. Richard walked assuredly behind me, plucking leaves and slowly tearing them apart along the way. By the time we reached the spot, our clothes were soaked, my face dripping with sweat. It was an ancient one-room schoolhouse, tilting slightly to one side, vines weaving in and out of its slats.

Inside, half a chalkboard was nailed to the wall. It contained elaborate drawings of penises pushing into vaginas—no bodies attached. Dead leaves and liquor bottles littered the floor, some rusted beer cans from a time before pop tops. A few tiny desks remained. One was covered in a tablecloth, a vase of dead roses at its center. A pitiable place for a romantic dinner. I hoped it went well.

“Nice work,” Richard said, pointing to one of the crayoned drawings. His light blue oxford clung to him. I could see the outline of a well-toned chest.

“This is mostly a kid hangout, obviously,” I said. “But it’s near the creek, so I thought you should see it.”

“Mm-hmm.” He looked at me in silence. “What do you do back in Chicago when you’re not working?” He leaned on the desk, plucked a withered rose from the vase, began crumbling its leaves.

“What do I do?”

“Do you have a boyfriend? I bet you do.”

“No. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a long time.”

He began pulling the petals off the rose. I couldn’t tell if he was interested in my answer. He looked up at me and grinned.

“You’re a tough one, Camille. You don’t have a lot of give to you. You make me work. I like it, it’s different. Most girls you can’t get to shut up. No offense.”

“I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s just not the question I was expecting,” I said, regaining my footing in the conversation. Small talk and banter. I can do that. “Do you have a girlfriend? I bet you have two. A blonde and brunette, to coordinate with your ties.”

“Wrong on all counts. No girlfriend, and my last one was a redhead. She didn’t match anything I owned. Had to go. Nice girl, too bad.”

Normally, Richard was the kind of guy I disliked, someone born and raised plush: looks, charm, smarts, probably money. These men were never very interesting to me; they had no edges, and they were usually cowards. They instinctively fled any situation that might cause them embarrassment or awkwardness. But Richard didn’t bore me. Maybe because his grin was a little crooked. Or because he made his living dealing in ugly things.

“You ever come here when you were a kid, Camille?” His voice was quiet, almost shy. He looked sideways, and the afternoon sun made his hair glimmer gold.

“Sure. Perfect place for inappropriate activities.”

Richard walked over to me, handed me the last of the rose, ran a finger up my sweaty cheek.

“I can see that,” he said. “First time I’ve ever wished I grew up in Wind Gap.”

“You and I might have gotten along just fine,” I said, and meant it. I was suddenly sad I’d never known a boy like Richard growing up, someone who’d at least give me a bit of a challenge.

“You know you’re beautiful, right?” he asked. “I’d tell you, but it seems like the kind of thing that you’d brush off. Instead I thought…”

He tilted my head up to him and kissed me, first slowly and then, when I didn’t pull away, he folded me into his arms, pushed his tongue into my mouth. It was the first time I’d been kissed in almost three years. I ran my hands between his shoulder blades, the rose crumbling down his back. I pulled his collar away from his neck and licked him.

“I think you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” he said, running a finger along my jawline. “The first time I saw you, I couldn’t even think the rest of the day. Vickery sent me home.” He laughed.

“I think you’re very handsome, too,” I said, holding his hands so they wouldn’t roam. My shirt was thin, I didn’t want him to feel my scars.

“I think you’re very handsome, too?” He laughed. “Geez, Camille, you really don’t do the romance stuff, huh?”

“I’m just caught off guard. I mean, first of all, this is a bad idea, you and me.”

“Horrible.” He kissed my earlobe.

“And, I mean, don’t you want to look around this place?”

“Miss Preaker, I searched this place the second week I was here. I just wanted to go for a walk with you.”

Richard also had covered the two other spots I had in mind, as it turned out. An abandoned hunting shed on the south part of the woods had yielded a yellow plaid hair ribbon that neither girl’s parents could identify. The bluffs to the east of Wind Gap, where you could sit and watch the distant Mississippi River below, offered a child’s sneaker print that matched shoes neither girl owned. Some dried blood was found dribbled over grass blades; but the type was the wrong match for both. Once again I was turning up useless. Then again, Richard didn’t seem to care. We drove up to the bluffs anyway, grabbed a six-pack of beer and sat in the sun, watching the Mississippi River glimmer gray like a lazy snake.

This had been one of Marian’s favorite places to go when she could leave her bed. For an instant, I could feel the weight of her as a child on my back, her hot giggles in my ears, skinny arms wrapped tight around my shoulders.

“Where would you take a little girl to strangle her?” Richard asked.

“My car or my home,” I said, jolting back.

“And to pull out the teeth?”

“Somewhere that I could scrub down well. A basement. A bathtub. The girls were dead first, right?”

“Is that one of your questions?”

“Sure.”

“They were both dead.”

“Dead long enough there was no blood when the teeth came out?”

A barge floating down the river began turning sideways in the current; men appeared on board with longpoles to twist it back in the right direction.

“With Natalie there was blood. The teeth were removed immediately after the strangling.”

I had the image of Natalie Keene, brown eyes frozen open, slumped down in a bathtub as someone pried her teeth from her mouth. Blood on Natalie’s chin. A hand on pliers. A woman’s hand.

“Do you believe James Capisi?”

“I truly don’t know, Camille, and I’m not blowing smoke at you. The kid is scared out of his wits. His mom keeps calling us to put someone on guard. He’s sure this woman is going to come get him. I sweated him a little bit, called him a liar, tried to see if he’d change his story. Nothing.” He turned to face me. “I’ll tell you this: James Capisi believes his story. But I can’t see how it can be true. It doesn’t fit any kind of profile I’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t feel right to me. Cop’s intuition. I mean, you talked to him, what did you think?”

“I agree with you. I wonder if he isn’t just freaked out about his mom’s cancer and projecting that fear somehow. I don’t know. And what about John Keene?”

“Profilewise: right age, in the family of one of the victims, seems maybe too broken up over the whole thing.”

“His sister was murdered.”

“Right. But…I’m a guy and I can tell you teenage boys will sooner kill themselves than cry in public. And he’s been weeping it up all over town.” Richard blew a hollow toot with his beer bottle, a mating call to a passing tugboat.

The moon was out, the cicadas in full jungle pulse, when Richard dropped me at home. Their creaking matched the throbbing between my legs where I’d let him touch me. Zipper down, his hand guided by mine to my clitoris and held there lest he explore and bump into the raised outlines of my scars. We got each other off like a couple of schoolkids (dumpling thumping hard and pink on my left foot as I came) and I was sticky and smelling of sex as I opened the door to find my mother sitting on the bottom stair with a pitcher of amaretto sours.

She was wearing a pink nightgown with girlish puffed sleeves and a satin ribbon around the neckline. Her hands were unnecessarly repacked in that snowy gauze, which she’d managed to keep pristine despite being deeply in her cups. She swayed slightly as I came through the door, like a ghost debating whether to vanish. She stayed.

“Camille. Come sit.” She beckoned her cloudy hands toward me. “No! Get a glass first from the back kitchen. You can have a drink with Mother. With your mother.”

This should be miserable, I murmured as I grabbed a tumbler. But underneath that, a thought: time alone with her! A leftover rattle from childhood. Get that fixed.

My mother poured recklessly but perfect, capping off my glass just before it overflowed. Still, a trick to get it to my mouth without spilling. She smirked a little as she watched me. Leaned back against the newel post, tucked her feet under her, sipped.

“I think I finally realized why I don’t love you,” she said.

I knew she didn’t, but I’d never heard her admit as much. I tried to tell myself I was intrigued, like a scientist on the edge of a breakthrough, but my throat closed up and I had to make myself breathe.

“You remind me of my mother. Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me, either. And if you girls won’t love me, I won’t love you.”

A wave of fury rattled through me. “I never said I didn’t love you, that’s just ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous. You were the one who never liked me, even as a kid. I never felt anything but coldness from you, so don’t you dare turn this on me.” I began rubbing my palm hard on the edge of the stair. My mother gave a half smile at the action and I stopped.

“You were always so willful, never sweet. I remember when you were six or seven. I wanted to put your hair up in curlers for your school picture. Instead you cut it all off with my fabric shears.” I didn’t remember doing this. I remembered hearing about Ann doing this.

“I don’t think so, Momma.”

“Headstrong. Like those girls. I tried to be close with those girls, those dead girls.”

“What do you mean be close with them?”

“They reminded me of you, running around town wild. Like little pretty animals. I thought if I could be close with them, I would understand you better. If I could like them, maybe I could like you. But I couldn’t.”

“No, I don’t expect so.” The grandfather clock chimed eleven. I wonder how many times my mother had heard that growing up in this house.

“When I had you inside of me, when I was a girl—so much younger than you are now—I thought you’d save me. I thought you’d love me. And then my mother would love me. That was a joke.” My mother’s voice swept high and raw, like a red scarf in a storm.

“I was a baby.”

“Even from the beginning you disobeyed, wouldn’t eat. Like you were punishing me for being born. Made me look like a fool. Like a child.”

“You were a child.”

“And now you come back and all I can think of is ‘Why Marian and not her?’”

Rage flattened immediately into a dark despair. My fingers found a wood staple in the floorboard. I jabbed it under my fingernail. I would not cry for this woman.

“I’m not so pleased to be left here anyway, Momma, if it makes you feel any better.”

“You’re so hateful.”

“I learned at your feet.”

My mother lunged then, grabbed me by both arms. Then she reached behind me and, with one fingernail, circled the spot on my back that had no scars.

“The only place you have left,” she whispered at me. Her breath was cloying and musky, like air coming from a spring well.

“Yes.”

“Someday I’ll carve my name there.” She shook me once, released me, then left me on the stairs with the warm remains of our liquor.

I drank the rest of the sours and had dark sticky dreams. My mother had cut me open and was unpacking my organs, stacking them in a row on my bed as my flesh flapped to either side. She was sewing her initials into each of them, then tossing them back into me, along with a passel of forgotten objects: an orange Day-Glo rubber ball I got from a gumball machine when I was ten; a pair of violet wool stockings I wore when I was twelve; a cheap gold-tinted ring a boy bought me when I was a freshman. With each object, relief that it was no longer lost.

When I woke, it was past noon, and I was disoriented and afraid. I took a gulp from my flask of vodka to ease the panic, then ran to the bathroom and threw it up, along with strings of sugary brown saliva from the amaretto sours.

Stripped naked and into the bathtub, the porcelain cool on my back. I lay flat, turned on the water, and let it creep up over me, fill my ears until they submerged with the satisfying whulp! of a sinking ship going under. Would I ever have the discipline to let the water cover my face, drown with my eyes open? Just refuse to lift yourself two inches, and it will be done.

The water stung at my eyes, covered my nose, and then enveloped me. I pictured myself from above: lashed skin and a still face flickering under a film of water. My body refused the quiet. Bodice, dirty, nag, widow! it screamed. My stomach and throat were convulsing, desperate to pull in air. Finger, whore, hollow! A few moments of discipline. What a pure way to die. Blossom, bloom, bonny.

I jerked to the surface, gulped in air. Panting, my head tilted toward the ceiling. Easy, easy, I told myself. Easy, sweet girl, you’ll be okay. I petted my cheek, baby-talked myself—how pitiful—but my breathing hushed.

Then, a bolt of panic. I reached behind me to find the circle of skin in my back. Still smooth.

Black clouds were sitting low over the town, so the sun curled around the edges and turned everything a sickly yellow, as if we were bugs under fluorescents. Still weak from the encounter with my mother, the feeble glow seemed appropriate. I had an appointment at Meredith Wheeler’s for an interview concerning the Keenes. Not sure it would yield much of import but I’d at least get a quote, which I needed, having not heard a word from the Keenes after my last article. Truth was, with John living behind Meredith’s house now, I had no way of reaching him except through her. I’m sure she loved that.

I hiked over to Main Street to pick up my car where I’d abandoned it during yesterday’s outing with Richard. Weakly dropped into the driver’s seat. I still managed to arrive at Meredith’s a half hour early. Knowing the primping and plumping going on in preparation for my visit, I assumed she’d set me out back on the patio, and I’d have a chance to check in on John. As it turned out, she wasn’t there at all, but I could hear music from behind the house, and I followed it to see the Four Little Blondes in fluorescent bikinis at one end of the pool, passing a joint between them, and John sitting in the shade at the other end, watching. Amma looked tan and blonde and delicious, not a trace of yesterday’s hangover on her. She was as tiny and colorful as an appetizer.

Confronted with all that smooth flesh, I could feel my skin begin its chattering. I couldn’t handle direct contact on top of my hangover panic. So I spied from the edge of the house. Anyone could have seen me, but none bothered. Amma’s three friends were soon in a marijuana-and-heat spiral, splayed face down on their blankets.

Amma stayed up, staring down John, rubbing suntan oil on her shoulders, her chest, breasts, slipping her hands under her bikini top, watching John watching her. John gave no reaction, like a kid on his sixth hour of TV. The more lasciviously Amma rubbed, the less flicker he gave. One triangle of her top had fallen askew to reveal the plump breast beneath. Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.

“Hey John, who do I remind you of?” Amma called.

“A little girl who’s misbehaving and thinks it’s cuter than it is,” John called back. He sat at the pool’s edge in shorts and a T-shirt, his feet dipped into the water. His legs had a thin, almost feminine coating of dark hair.

“Really? Why don’t you stop watching me from your little hideaway then,” she said, pointing a leg toward the carriage house, with its tiny attic window sporting blue checked curtains. “Meredith will be jealous.”

“I like to keep an eye on you, Amma. Always know I have my eye on you.”

My guess: My half sister had gone into his room without permission, rifled through his things. Or waited for him on his bed.

“You sure do now,” she said, laughing, her legs spread wide. She looked gruesome in the dark light, the rays casting pockets of shadows on her face.

“It’ll be your turn some day, Amma,” he said. “Soon.”

“Big man. I hear,” Amma called back. Kylie looked up, focused her eyes on her friend, smiled, and lay back down.

“Patient, too.”

“You’ll need it.” She blew him a kiss.

The amaretto sours were turning on me, and I was sick of this banter. I didn’t like John Keene flirting with Amma, no matter how provocative she was being. She was still thirteen.

“Hello?” I called out, rousing Amma, who waggled her fingers at me. Two of the three blondes looked up, then lay back down. John cupped some pool water in his hands and rubbed it across his face before turning the corners of his mouth up at me. He was tracing back the conversation, guessing how much I’d heard. I was equidistant from each side, and walked toward John, sat a good six feet away.

“You read the story?” I asked. He nodded.

“Yeah, thanks, it was nice. The part about Natalie at least.”

“I’m here to talk a little bit to Meredith today about Wind Gap; maybe Natalie will come up,” I said. “Is that okay by you?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure. She’s not home yet. Not enough sugar for the sweet tea. She freaked, ran off to the store without makeup.”

“Scandalous.”

“For Meredith, yes.”

“How are things going here?”

“Oh, all right,” he said. He began patting his right hand. Self-comfort. I felt sorry for him again. “I don’t know that anything would be any good anywhere, so it’s hard to gauge if this is better or worse, you know what I mean?”

“Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,” I offered. He turned and stared at me, blue eyes mirroring the oval pool.

“That’s exactly what I mean.” Get used to it, I thought.

“Have you thought about getting some counseling, seeing a therapist?” I said. “It might be really helpful.”

“Yeah, John, might quell some of your urges. They can be deadly, you know? We don’t want more little girls showing up without their teeth.” Amma had slipped into the pool and was floating ten feet away.

John shot up, and for a second I thought he was going to dive into the pool and throttle her. Instead, he pointed a finger at her, opened his mouth, closed it, and walked to his attic room.

“That was really cruel,” I said to her.

“But funny,” said Kylie, floating by on a hot pink air mattress.

“What a freak,” added Kelsey, paddling past.

Jodes was sitting in her blanket, knees pulled to her chin, eyes trained on the carriage house.

“You were so sweet with me the other night. Now you’re so changed,” I murmured to Amma. “Why?”

She looked caught off guard for a split second. “I don’t know. I wish I could fix it. I do.” She swam off toward her friends as Meredith appeared at the door and peevishly called me in.

The Wheelers’ home looked familiar: an overstuffed plush sofa, a coffee table hosting a sailboat replica, a jaunty velvet ottoman in lime green, a black-and-white photo of the Eiffel Tower taken at a severe angle. Pottery Barn, spring catalog. Right down to the lemon yellow plates Meredith was now placing on the table, glazed berry tarts sitting in the center.

She was wearing a linen sundress the color of an unripe peach, her hair pulled down over her ears and held at the nape of her neck in a loose ponytail that had to have taken twenty minutes to get that perfect. She looked, suddenly, a lot like my mother. She could have been Adora’s child more believably than I. I could feel a grudge coming, tried to keep it in check, as she poured us each a glass of sweet tea and smiled.

“I have no idea what my sister was saying to you, but I can only guess it was hateful or dirty, so I apologize,” she said. “Although, I’m sure you know Amma’s the real ringleader there.” She looked at the tart but seemed disinclined to eat it. Too pretty.

“You probably know Amma better than I do,” I said. “She and John don’t seem to…”

“She’s a very needy child,” she said, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, straightening her dress. “Amma worries she’ll shrivel up and blow away if attention isn’t always on her. Especially from boys.”

“Why doesn’t she like John? She was implying he was the one who hurt Natalie.” I took out my tape recorder and pressed the On button, partly because I didn’t want to waste time with ego games, and partly because I hoped she’d say something about John worth printing. If he was the prime suspect, at least in Wind Gap minds, I needed comment.

“That’s just Amma. She has a mean streak. John likes me and not her, so she attacks him. When she’s not trying to steal him away from me. Like that’s going to happen.”

“It seems a lot of people have been talking, though, saying they think John may have something to do with this. Why do you think that is?”

She shrugged, stuck her lower lip out, watched the tape whir a few seconds.

“You know how it is. He’s from out of town. He’s smart and worldly and eight times better looking than anyone else around here. People would like it to be him, because then that means this…evilness didn’t come from Wind Gap. It came from outside. Eat your tart.”

“Do you believe he’s innocent?” I took a bite, the glaze dripping off my lip.

“Of course I do. It’s all idle gossip. Just because someone goes for a drive…lots of people do that around here. John just had bad timing.”

“And what about the family? What can you tell me about either of the girls?”

“They were darling girls, very well behaved and sweet little things. It’s like God plucked the best girls from Wind Gap to take to heaven for his own.” She’d been practicing, the words had a rehearsed rhythm. Even her smile seemed measured: Too small is stingy, too big is inappropriately pleased. This smile just right. Brave and hopeful, it said.

“Meredith, I know that’s not what you thought about the girls.”

“Well, what kind of quote do you want?” she snapped.

“A truthful one.”

“I can’t do that. John would hate me.”

“I wouldn’t have to name you in the article.”

“Then what would be the point of me doing the interview?”

“If you know something about the girls that people aren’t saying, you should tell me. It could direct attention away from John, depending on what the information is.”

Meredith took a demure sip of tea, dabbed at the corner of her strawberry lips with her napkin.

“But could I still get my name in the article somewhere?”

“I can quote you elsewhere by name.”

“I want the stuff about God plucking them to heaven,” Meredith baby-talked. She wrung her hands and smiled at me sideways.

“No. Not that. I’ll use the quote about John being from out of town and that’s why people are so gossipy about him.”

“Why can’t you use the one I want?” I could see Meredith as a five-year-old, dressed as a princess and bitching because her favorite doll didn’t like her imaginary tea.

“Because it goes against a lot of things I’ve heard, and because no one really talks that way. It sounds fake.”

It was the most pathetic showdown I’ve ever had with a subject, and a completely unethical way to do my work. But I wanted her fucking story. Meredith twirled the silver chain around her neck, studied me.

“You could have been a model, you know?” she said suddenly.

“I doubt that,” I snapped. Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

“You could have. I always wanted to be you when I grew up. I think about you, you know? I mean, our moms are friends and all, so I knew you were in Chicago and I pictured you in this big mansion with a few little curly tops and some stud husband investment banker. You all in the kitchen drinking orange juice and him getting in his Jag and going to work. But I guess I imagined wrong.”

“You did. Sounds nice, though.” I took another bite of tart. “So tell me about the girls.”

“All business, huh? You never were the friendliest. I know about your sister. That you had a sister who died.”

“Meredith, we can talk some time. I’d like that. After this. But let’s get this story, and then maybe we can enjoy ourselves.” I didn’t intend on staying more than a minute after the interview wrapped.

“Okay…So, here it is. I think I know why…the teeth…” she pantomimed extraction.

“Why?”

“I can’t believe everyone refuses to acknowledge this,” she said.

Meredith glanced around the room.

“You didn’t hear this from me, okay?” she continued. “The girls, Ann and Natalie, they were biters.”

“What do you mean, biters?”

“Both of them. They had serious tempers. Like scary-time tempers. Like boy tempers. But they didn’t hit. They bit. Look.”

She held out her right hand. Just below the thumb were three white scars that shone in the afternoon light.

“That’s from Natalie. And this.” She pulled back her hair to reveal a left ear with only half an earlobe. “My hand she bit when I was painting her fingernails. She decided halfway through that she didn’t like it, but I told her to let me finish, and when I held her hand down, she sunk her teeth into me.”

“And the earlobe?”

“I stayed over there one night when my car wouldn’t start. I was asleep in the guest room and the next thing I knew, blood all over the sheets and my ear just felt like it was on fire, like I wanted to run away from it but it was attached to my head. And Natalie was screaming like she was on fire. That screaming was scarier than the biting. Mr. Keene had to hold her down. The kid had serious problems. We looked for my earlobe, see if it could be stitched back on, but it was gone. I guess she swallowed it.” She gave a laugh that sounded like the reverse of a gulp of air. “I mostly just felt sorry for her.”

Lie.

“Ann, was she as bad?” I asked.

“Worse. There are people all over this town with her teeth marks in them. Your mother included.”

“What?” My hands began to sweat and the back of my neck went cold.

“Your mom was tutoring her and Ann didn’t understand. She completely lost it, pulled some of your momma’s hair out, and bit into her wrist. Hard. I think there had to be stitches.” Images of my mother’s thin arm caught between tiny teeth, Ann shaking her head like a dog, blood blossoming on my mother’s sleeve, on Ann’s lips. A scream, a release.

A little circle of jagged lines, and within, a ring of perfect skin.