James Harris had told her his ID was being mailed to him. She wondered if it had ever arrived, but it must have, otherwise how had he bought a car? Was he driving around without a license? Or had he lied to her about not having any ID? She wondered why someone wouldn’t use their identification to open a bank or a utility account. She thought about that bag of cash. The only reason she thought it belonged to Ann Savage was because he said so.

They had read too many books about mafia hit men moving to the suburbs under assumed names and drug dealers living quietly among their unsuspecting neighbors for Patricia not to start connecting dots. You kept your name off public records if you were wanted for something by the government. You had a bag of money because that was how you had been paid, and people who got paid in cash were either hit men, drug dealers, bank robbers—or waiters, she supposed. But James Harris didn’t seem like a waiter.

Then again, he was their friend and neighbor. He talked about Nazis with Blue and drew her son out of his shell. He ate with them when Carter wasn’t home and made her feel safe. He had come around the house to check on them that night someone got on the roof.

“I don’t know what to think,” she repeated to Grace, who dipped a serving platter in the soapy water and tilted it from side to side. “Mrs. Greene told us that a Caucasian male is coming into Six Mile and doing something to the children that makes them sick. She thinks he might be driving a white van. And it’s only been happening since May. That’s right after James Harris moved here.”

“You’re under the influence of this month’s book,” Grace said, lifting the platter out of the soapy water and rinsing it in the tub of clean. “James Harris is our neighbor. He is Ann Savage’s grandnephew. He is not driving out to Six Mile and doing something to their children.”

“Of course not,” Patricia said. “But you read about drug dealers living around normal people, or sex abusers bothering children and getting away with it for so long, and you start to wonder what we really know about anyone. I mean, James Harris says he grew up all around, but then says he grew up in South Dakota. He says he lived in Vermont, but his van had Texas plates.”

“You have suffered two terrible blows this summer,” Grace said, lifting the platter and gently drying it. “Your ear has barely healed. You are still grieving for Miss Mary. This man is not a criminal based on when he moved here and the license plate of a passing car.”

“Isn’t that how every serial killer gets away with it for so long?” Patricia asked. “Everyone ignores the little things and Ted Bundy keeps killing women until finally someone does what they should have done in the first place and connects the little things that didn’t add up, but by then it’s too late.”

Grace set the gleaming platter on the table. Creamy white, it featured brightly colored butterflies and a pair of birds on a branch, all picked out in delicate, near-invisible brushstrokes.

“This is real,” Grace said, running one finger along its rim. “It’s solid, and it’s whole, and my grandmother received it as a wedding gift, and she gave it to my mother, and she passed it down to me, and when the time comes, if I deem her appropriate, I’ll hand it down to whomever Ben marries. Focus on the real things in your life and I promise you’ll feel better.”

“I didn’t tell you this,” Patricia said, “but when I met him he showed me a bag of money. Grace, he had over eighty thousand dollars in there. In cash. Who has that just lying around?”

“What did he say?” Grace asked, dipping a tureen lid in the soapy water.

“He told me he’d found it in the crawl space. That it was Ann Savage’s nest egg.”

“She never struck me as the kind of woman who’d trust a bank,” Grace said, rinsing the tureen lid in clean water.

“Grace, it doesn’t add up!” Patricia said. “Stop cleaning and listen to me. At what point do we get concerned?”

“Never,” Grace said, drying the tureen lid. “Because you are spinning a fantasy out of coincidences to distract yourself from reality. I understand that sometimes reality can be overwhelming, but it must be faced.”

“I’m the one facing it,” Patricia said.

“No,” Grace said. “You stood right there on my front porch after book club two months ago and said you wished that a crime or something exciting would happen here because you couldn’t stand your routine. And now you’ve convinced yourself something dangerous is happening so you can act like a detective.”

Grace picked up a stack of saucers and began placing them in the soapy water.

“Can’t you stop cleaning china for a second and admit that maybe I’m right about this?” Patricia asked.

“No,” Grace said. “I can’t. Because I need to be finished by 5:30 so I can clear off the table and set it for supper. Bennett’s coming home at six.”

“There are more important things than cleaning,” Patricia said.

Grace stopped, holding the last two saucers in her hand, and turned on Patricia, eyes blazing.

“Why do you pretend what we do is nothing?” she asked. “Every day, all the chaos and messiness of life happens and every day we clean it all up. Without us, they would just wallow in filth and disorder and nothing of any consequence would ever get done. Who taught you to sneer at that? I’ll tell you who. Someone who took their mother for granted.”

Grace glared at Patricia, nostrils flaring.

“I’m sorry,” Patricia said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just worried about James Harris.”

Grace put the last two saucers in the soapy water bin.

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know about James Harris,” she said. “He lives in the Old Village. With us. There isn’t anything wrong with him because people who have something wrong with them don’t live here.”

Patricia hated that she couldn’t put into words this feeling gnawing at her guts. She felt foolish that she couldn’t shift Grace’s certainty even for a moment.

“Thank you for putting up with me,” she said. “I need to start supper.”

“Vacuum your curtains,” Grace said. “No one ever does it enough. I promise it’ll make you feel better.”

Patricia wanted that to be true very badly.

* * *

—

“Mom,” Blue said from the living room door. “What’s for supper?”

“Food,” Patricia said from the sofa.

“Is it chicken again?” he asked.

“Is chicken food?” Patricia replied, not looking up from her book.

“We had chicken last night,” Blue said. “And the night before. And the night before that.”

“Maybe tonight will be different,” Patricia said.

She heard Blue’s footsteps retreat to the hall, walk into the den, go into the kitchen. Ten seconds later he reappeared at the living room door.

“There’s chicken defrosting in the sink,” he said in an accusatory tone.

“What?” Patricia asked, looking up from her book.

“We’re having chicken again,” he said.

A pang of guilt twisted through Patricia. He was right—she’d made nothing but chicken all week. They’d order pizza. It was just the two of them and it was a Friday night.

“I promise,” she said. “We’re not having chicken.”

He gave her a sideways look, then went back upstairs and slammed his bedroom door. Patricia went back to her book: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy. The more she read, the more uncertain she felt about everything in her life, but she couldn’t stop.

Not-quite-book-club loved Ann Rule, of course, and her Small Sacrifices had long been one of their favorites, but they’d never read the book that made her famous, and Kitty was shocked when she found out.

“Y’all,” Kitty had said. “She was just a housewife who wrote about murders for crummy detective magazines, and then she got a deal to write about these coed murders happening all over Seattle. Well, she winds up finding out that the main suspect is her best friend at a suicide hotline where she works—Ted Bundy.”

He wasn’t Ann Rule’s best friend, just a good friend, Patricia learned as she read, but otherwise everything Kitty said was true.

That just goes to show, Grace had pronounced, whenever you call one of those so-called hotlines, you have no clue who’s on the other end of that phone. It could be anyone.

But the further she got into the book, the more Patricia wondered not how Ann Rule could have missed the clues that her good friend was a serial killer, but how well she herself actually knew the men around her. Slick had called Patricia last week, breathless, because Kitty had sold her a set of her Grandmother Roberts’s silver but asked her not to mention it to anyone. It was William Hutton and Slick couldn’t help herself—she needed someone to know that she’d gotten it for a song. She’d chosen Patricia.

Kitty told me she needed extra money to send the children to summer camp, Slick had said over the phone. Do you think they’re in trouble? Seewee Farms is expensive, and it’s not like Horse works.