“What happened?” I repeated the question, hoping for an answer.

“This town wasn’t a good place for your mom, or for you. I kept things from her. I thought I could shield her from what it meant to be with me, here.”

“Your father isn’t well-liked in Gaither.” I spoke out loud, instead of profiling him in my head. “You broke away from him, but you stayed local.” I thought back to the memory of Kane sweeping me into his arms after a nightmare. “When my mom and I left, you didn’t follow.”

Did you resent her for leaving? Did you keep track of her? Did you find a way, years later, to make her yours?

I couldn’t ask a single one of those questions out loud. So instead, I asked him about Lia.

Kane glanced around the diner. “Can we take a walk?”

In other words, he didn’t want an audience for what he was about to say. Knowing I would catch hell for it, I followed him out the door.

“My father prizes certain things.” Kane waited until we were a block away from the diner before he began speaking. “Loyalty. Honesty. Obedience. He won’t hurt your friend. Not physically. He’ll just slowly become more and more important to her, until she’s not sure what she’d be without him, until she’ll do anything he asks. And any time she doubts herself or doubts him, there’ll be someone there to whisper in her ear about how lucky she is, how special.”

“Were you lucky?” I asked Kane. “Special?”

“I was the golden son.” His voice was so even, so controlled, that I couldn’t hear even a tinge of bitterness underneath.

“You left,” I commented. When that didn’t engender a response, I pressed on. “What happens if Lia wants to leave?”

“He won’t stop her,” Kane said. “Not at first.”

Those three words sent a chill down my spine. Not at first.

“I wish I could do something, Cassie. I wish that I’d had any right to keep your mother here, or to go after her once she was gone. But I am my father’s son. I made my choices long ago, and I accept what those choices have cost me.”

I’d wondered why Kane Darby had stayed in Gaither. What if staying isn’t an act of loyalty? What if it’s penance? My mind traveled back to Mason Kyle, Kane Darby’s childhood friend.

What choices did you make? What exactly are you repenting?

“I never stopped thinking about you.” Kane stopped walking. “I know I wasn’t your father. I know that, to you, I’m probably just some guy who briefly dated your mom. But, Cassie? You were never just some kid to me.”

My chest tightened.

“So, please, listen to me when I say that you need to leave Gaither. It isn’t safe for you to be here. It isn’t safe for you to be asking questions. Your friend will be okay at Serenity, but you wouldn’t be. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You’re telling me that your father is a dangerous man.” I paused. “And that my mother left this town for a reason.”

YOU

Five admires his handiwork as blood drips down your arms, your legs. It will be hours before the others return. Hours before they ask you if Cassie and her friends should die.

No. No. No.

That’s Lorelai’s answer. That will always be Lorelai’s answer. But Lorelai isn’t strong enough to bear this. Lorelai isn’t here right now.

You are.

There was a thin line between a warning and a threat. I wanted to believe that Kane Darby had been warning me, not threatening me, when he’d suggested I leave town, but if my time with the FBI had taught me anything, it was that violence didn’t always simmer just below the surface. Sometimes, the serial killer across from you quoted Shakespeare. Sometimes, the most dangerous people were the ones you trusted most.

Kane Darby’s non-confrontational manner wasn’t any more natural than Michael’s tendency to wave red flags at any and all passing bulls. That kind of steadiness could have come from one of two places: either he’d grown up in an environment where emotion was seen as unseemly—and outbursts were punished accordingly—or staying calm had been his way of seizing control in an environment where someone else’s volatile emotions had served as land mines.

As I rolled that over in my mind, Dean fell in beside me. “I made a promise to the universe,” he said, “that if Lia gets out of this unscathed, I’ll go forty-eight hours without brooding. I will purchase a colored T-shirt. I’ll sing karaoke and let Townsend pick out my song.” He cast a sideways glance at me. “Did you learn anything from talking to Darby’s son?”

The answer to Dean’s question sat heavy and unspoken in my throat as we made our way down Main Street, past Victorian storefronts and historical markers, until the wrought-iron gate of the apothecary garden came into view.

“Kane said that he was the golden son,” I said finally, finding my voice. “He blames himself for that. I think staying in Gaither was a form of penance for him—punishment for, and I quote, ‘choices’ he made ‘long ago.’”

“You’re talking about him,” Dean observed. “Not to him.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“Or,” Dean countered softly as we came to a stop outside the garden, “you’re scared to go too deep.”

In the entire time I’d known him, Dean had never pushed me further into another person’s perspective than I wanted to go. At best, he curtailed his protective instincts, profiled with me, or got out of my way—but right now, I wasn’t the one that Dean would have given anything to protect.

“You came very close to remembering something back at your old house. Something that a part of you is desperate to forget. I know you, Cassie. And I just keep thinking that if you forgot an entire year of your life, it wasn’t because you were little, and it wasn’t the result of some kind of trauma. You’ve been through two lifetimes of trauma, just since I’ve met you, and you haven’t forgotten a thing.”

“I was a child,” I countered, feeling like he’d hit me. “My mother and I left in the middle of the night. We didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t say good-bye. Something happened, and we just left.”

“And after you left”—Dean took my hand in his—“it was just you and your mother. She was all you had. You were her everything, and she wanted you to forget. She wanted you to dance it off.”