“Your father never told you about it,” Ruth said, pushing her glasses up with one thumb.

“Zane took cash out of the store safe three weeks before the river rose.

He swore he paid it back, but the pages didn’t add up.”

“Why didn’t Dad ever tell me?”

“Because your daughter died seven days later,” Ruth said.

“A father doesn’t ask for receipts from a man who just lost his child.”

She shut the lunchbox with a soft click and set it beside Jeremy’s backpack on the chair.

I went upstairs to the little bedroom at the end of the hall.