Can you squash the restraining order before my divorce hearings? I didn’t steal my husband’s girlfriend’s dog, I just borrowed her.

When I reach the top step, she’s gaping at my leg. I’m fixed on her breasts, still half-spilled out of her top.

“Eyes up here,” I say to her crisply, averting my own. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve just never seen one,” the woman says, nodding to my leg. “My aunt has an extra toe, though. My niece has a third nipple.”

“Are you serious?”

She steps purposefully toward me. “Oh, I’m serious. I’m Gretchen McBride of the McBride Chevy dealership. Tell Wyatt Branson to stay the hell away from my daughter, or I’m going to shoot off his fucking balls.”

“First,” I order, “take your hand out of your purse. Slowly.” I’m painfully aware that my gun is in the car and the porch is concrete. I’m not sure I could take her down without hurting both of us.

Who is she? Not the mother of Lizzie Raymond, the girl Wyatt was accused of stalking, because I’ve met her. Maybe the mother of the other cheerleader walking home with her? I stretch my mind for her name in the police report. It won’t come.

“Sorry.” She has dropped her arm to her side. “It’s a force of habit to touch my gun when I’m riled. My brother says it’s either going to get me killed or ten-to-twenty.”

“Listen to your brother. Was your daughter the girl walking home with Lizzie Raymond?”

“Are you kidding? You think I look old enough to have a teenager? I’m Gretchen McBride, the third wife of Mac McBride of the McBride Chevy dealership. I’m thirty-two. My daughter is nine, in fourth grade. Her name is Martina McBride, like the singer. My husband wanted to call her that because I used to blast ‘Independence Day’ when we had sex. My Martina sings like a toad, though; we’re going to have to figure out something else for her talent. People at church are being kind when they call her a low alto.”

“Has Wyatt Branson harassed your daughter? If so, you need to file an official report at the station, not on this porch.”

“Well, no. Not yet.” She glances around the porch. “This is like a priest thing, right? Like you said, I’m on your front porch, not at the station. This is friendly. I mean, there’s a pitcher of sweet tea. So you can’t tell anybody what I say?”

I recognize Gretchen McBride’s type, and she will carry on a full discourse whether I talk or not. It’s almost always an advantage to nurse the silence.

She sighs, allows the purse strap to slide down her shoulder, and drops back into the Adirondack chair. “Look, I slept with Wyatt Branson’s father, Frank. Just one time, a few months before he and his daughter disappeared. I was pissed at my husband. As usual, he’d left me seriously unsatisfied. I headed to the bar and there was Frank, wearing his badass eye patch. I’d heard he had a colossal working dick for his age, and my husband, well, he just is a colossal dick. I let Frank buy me a few drinks. He told me how he lost his eye in the war while trying to save one of his friends from stepping on a landmine. One thing led to another. I thought it wouldn’t be a sin to blow an American hero, you know?”

It still surprises me every single time—people who feed off pathological liars.

Frank Branson wasn’t a war hero. He lost half his vision when he was twelve after a friend “accidentally” stabbed a stick in his eye.

He wasn’t a lot of things he dropped into his casual conversation.

He wasn’t a twin saved by the heart of his stillborn twin sister. The army didn’t set up a secret UFO base on his back forty for six months. He didn’t hook up with Renée Zellweger in a Walmart bathroom when she came back to visit Katy, Texas.

Gretchen absently draws a heart in the condensation gathering on the tea pitcher, my grandmother’s.

I let myself be mesmerized by her fingernail, tracing the glass as sensually as if it’s a man’s skin. By the translucent green of the pitcher, as lovely as Angel’s eye.

I wonder if, wherever my grandmother is floating, she can feel the tickle of her nail. If she’s giving Gretchen a nickname. Pretty Claw. Chevy Bride.

“I like a man with guts,” Gretchen says abruptly, breaking her silence. Snapping me back. “You know that big life Facebook question? If a human being you don’t know and your beloved dog were drowning at the same time, which would you save first? Well, they’d both be dead if my husband was their only hope. I guess as a cop you’d have to save the person.”

“I’d save the person,” I say. “Cop or not.”

“People told me your family was like that. Black and white. Always riding a moral high horse. Let me tell you something: That leg doesn’t make you any extra holy. You’re no different than me. For instance, you know in your heart that dogs are better than people. For instance, you’ve fucked in the same gene pool as me. I know about you and Wyatt Branson. How hard those Branson men are to resist. When I got Frank’s clothes off at the Hampton Inn, I didn’t give a shit whether he had one eye or four, whether he was fifty-two or eighteen.”

I used to think certain people went at me unprovoked because of my leg—that it flipped their bully switch. After five years as a cop I’ve concluded that it’s because cops deal with a high percentage of unpleasant human beings. And like they often are, this bully is right. About everything.

“You must know where I’m going,” she says. “I did the DNA on it. Frank Branson is the father of my daughter, not my husband. So, if his mentally deranged son is out there looking for a replacement sister for Trumanell and he comes to my door, that won’t end well. So you tell him to stay away. In return, I’m going to give you a hint about who I think killed Frank Branson and chopped him into little pieces you’ll never find.”

This seems unnecessarily specific. She pulls out a tin of cinnamon mints, pops it open, and offers me one. My acceptance of a mint is apparently the equivalent of a handshake.

“Here’s your tip,” she says. “Interview Lizzie’s mom. I think she might be ready to pop after that documentary. That documentary reporter couldn’t nail her down, but I bet you can. It’s no coincidence that Wyatt Branson was bothering her or that she looks like Trumanell’s ghost. There’s some big shit there.”

I don’t consider this much of a tip. The rumor of Frank Branson’s sperm run amok is nothing new.

There could be a lot of little Franks and Francines hidden all over this town, secrets until they pop on ancestry.com or out of a drunken mouth.

Lizzie is just the girl who stirs the loudest whispers. The case against Wyatt has always been a prosecutorial nightmare for this very reason—a whole roster of other people would have liked to stick a gun in Frank Branson’s good eye, the crystal blue one that looked plucked out of Brad Pitt, and turn off his buzz for good.

But it doesn’t explain why Trumanell had to die, too.

Gretchen stands up and wiggles her skirt down over a splotch of varicose veins. It doesn’t matter how tight that muscle is, how intricate the tattoo on her calf, the blue spiderweb of veins is what people will always remember.

“People say all sorts of terrible things about Frank,” she says. “That he killed his wife and got away with it. That he killed Trumanell and then he killed himself and the son buried them both. That he killed Trumanell and ran his ass to Mexico. All I know is Frank was gentle. He cried a little when he told me he couldn’t get his friend’s dying face out of his head. If Frank came back from the dead, I’d screw him again in a heartbeat. I’d save him before my dog.”

Her long navy fingernails are digging into her thigh.

Blue Spider. That’s what my grandmother would call her.

27

The Chevy Bride is squealing away from the curb as I shut the front door.

The cop who built the Blue House in 1892 is glaring at me from the wall. The first sheriff in this town has hung in this foyer in a place of honor since his death. He was no relation but the first to disapprove when I snuck in late. Smug, like he knew everything.

I ignore him and scroll my texts. Maggie, reminding me that she was taking Lola and Angel to a movie and out to eat. Rusty, asking if we can move our chat about your boy to midnight, because his shift is going long. Finn from two hours ago, asking four times where the hell I am. Well, now he knows.

I answer Rusty, flip a heart emoji to Maggie. Delete all of Finn’s.

In our room, the bed is neatly made up, corners crisp and tucked, the best job I’ve seen from either of us in five years of marriage. Nice work, Finn. The things you discover your spouse is capable of after a split.

In spontaneous fury, I tug out every corner, toss the pillows, scramble the covers. The closet door hangs open, providing a clear sightline to a new batch of empty hangers. I slam it shut.