“I’m starving,” Abby said. Her stomach growled, and she raised her voice as if to drown out the rumble. “Good catch with Gabrielle’s social media. Are you going to keep digging?”

“Yeah. How’s the mother?”

“Tired. Scared.”

“She didn’t do so well with the phone call this morning.”

“She’ll get better.” Abby wasn’t sure Eden would get better, but she would do whatever she could to try and prepare her. “Listen, I have an important phone call with Steve today about Ben’s birthday.”

“That does sound important.”

“Scoff all you want. When your precious daughter will be old enough to celebrate birthdays with the rest of her class, that’s when shit gets real.”

Will raised his eyebrows. “Point taken. Important conversation.”

“I want to simulate it with you.”

Will slumped in his chair. “Oh no.”

“It’s an important—”

“I get it, I get it. An important conversation. Okay, when do you want us to do it?”

“Right now would be great,” Abby said.

“No way,” Will said. “Not before you eat.”

She frowned, annoyed. “We don’t have a lot of time, and I really need to be prepared—”

“Abby, you know I’d do anything for you.” Will spread his hands. “But remember in June, when we did the simulation about the summer camp?”

“That was a one-time thing—”

“You skipped lunch, and within ten minutes you were ready to kill me. I don’t even want to mention the conversation about Ben’s homework from last year. No, never again. That’s my one rule. No ex-husband simulations when you’re hungry.”

Abby was about to retort, but Pauline approached them, smiling widely.

“Abby,” she said warmly. “How ya beenerble warble garble deerbleing?”

Abby glanced up at Pauline, her mind parsing the woman’s words.

She knew some people who stayed away from Pauline’s, simply because they couldn’t understand anything the restaurant’s owners said. Pauline spoke really quickly and enthusiastically, her mind churning words much faster than her tongue could utter. As a result, the words mashed together into an almost-incoherent ramble. Pauline’s husband, who did the cooking, had a thick Scottish accent that some people found even more difficult than Pauline’s unique way of talking. As a result, the customers had to learn to talk Pauline dialect if they wanted to get something to eat.

Pauline’s burgers were worth learning a new language for.

“I’m good.” Abby grinned at Pauline. “What about you?”

“Ah, not bad. Son’s poodle gorble feedleburg on the floor with two balls, it was a messuple warbelung, had to get a guy. Ya hungry?”

“Starving. Can I have a King Lear, medium rare, with extra onions and fries on the side?”

“And I’ll have a Mercutio,” Will said. “Medium, also with fries.”

Pauline jotted that down. “Okay, anywan garink?”

“Two Cokes,” Abby said.

Pauline nodded and turned away.

“Anyway,” Abby said. “About Steve—”

Will raised one finger. “When we get our food. Not before that.”

Abby sighed. “Fine. There’s something else we need to talk about.”

“What is it?”

“Eden Fletcher.” Abby took a long breath and began fiddling with her napkin. “I knew her long ago. As a child.”

Will frowned. “From school?”

Abby cleared her throat. “No, it was . . . before that.”

Will’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

Abby had shredded her napkin to bits. She sighed, gazed at the street beyond the door. The truth would come out sooner or later. She’d known that as soon as she’d involved herself with this case. It was better to talk about it first with Will, her closest friend. Soon she’d need to talk to Carver and Griffin about it. And Will was the only one who knew about Abby’s history in the Wilcox cult aside from her parents. Even her kids didn’t know.

Abby took a long breath. “When we were kids, it felt like a family, you know? It’s not like we were walking around thinking we were in some sort of religious cult. Kids had a lot of free time there, and we didn’t know anyone outside the cult. Eden was older than I was, but we still played together.”

Abby could read body language and facial expressions like open books. Know someone long enough, and that book became one of your favorites. The kind of book in which the pages were worn, and the spine was falling apart because you read it so many times. Will’s demeanor—the parting of the lips, the narrow eyes, the tenseness in his shoulders—was so achingly familiar and touching she had to glance aside and blink a tear away.

“No one knows yet, but they’ll figure it out,” she said.

“They might,” Will agreed.

“Carver already noticed something yesterday. I needed Eden to calm down, so I used one of Wilcox’s meditation speeches. And Carver looked at me like I was a loony tune.”

“It must have brought back memories, seeing her like that,” Will said.