Chapter 1

Cocoa splashed Charla's emerald dress, and she seized Josie's wrist.

The mug struck the floorboards without breaking.

"Look what you did."

A brown line spread down the knit.

Seven-year-old Josie swayed in her faded purple sweater.

Her eyes looked heavy.

One shoelace trailed beside her foot.

Charla had made the cocoa herself.

When Verna offered to help, she'd shut the kitchen door.

Now the drink lay between them.

"I'm sorry, Charla."

Josie's voice barely reached the couch.

Charla caught the girl's forearm with her other hand.

Her gold hoops swung as she bent.

"Every single night."

Josie's shoes slid across the floor.

Not toward the kitchen.

Toward the open wood stove.

Fresh logs glowed behind the cast-iron door.

Outside, snow covered the fields beyond Platteville.

Inside, Josie turned her cheek from the heat.

On the couch, Charla's thirteen-year-old son laughed.

Tyler had his feet on a folded blanket.

"Maybe you need to learn what hot means."

Josie's knees buckled.

Her bead bracelet scraped against Charla's fingers.

Elena had made that bracelet before the crash.

Josie had worn it for two years.

"You're hurting my arm."

Charla pulled again.

The sweater slipped above an older yellow bruise.

At the kitchen doorway, Verna pressed her phone against her apron.

Its screen faced her chest.

The little recording timer kept running.

She stepped into the room.

"Let her go."

Charla stopped pulling.

"Stay out of this."

Verna's shoes stopped beside the rug.

"She's seven."

"And the county needs to evaluate her."

Tyler lowered his feet.

Josie lifted her wet face.

"Do I have to go?"

Verna's mouth trembled.

She was Elena's aunt, not just the housekeeper.

She had changed Elena's diapers.

Now she washed Elena's daughter's sheets.

Beneath her cardigan hung Elena's ring.

Its chain pressed against the phone.

"No one's taking you anywhere tonight."

Charla looked at the phone.

"What did you do?"

"I recorded it."

"Tonight?"

"Six weeks."

The stove popped.

Nobody turned toward it.

Charla's fingers opened.

Josie cradled her wrist against her sweater.

Four pale spots slowly filled with pink.

"And I called her father."

Ray's last delivery had been in Dubuque.

When Verna reached him, he'd already been driving home.

Charla glanced toward the dark front window.

Verna moved beside the fallen mug, keeping Charla from reaching it.

A little cocoa remained inside.

Its smell reached her above the wood smoke.

Sweet, with something bitter underneath.

"Ray believes me," Charla said.

Verna said nothing.

Josie's shoulders shook beneath her braid.

She kept her eyes on the front door.

From outside came the crunch of tires on frozen snow.

The headlights swept the wall as Ray's truck came up the drive, and Verna said, "He's here. And there's more I kept."