“Where is Hannah?”

Veronica gestured, without losing her smirk, toward the far end of the property — toward the livestock pens.

“Learning how to be useful,” she said.

“Ever since Sarah died, the girl has been nothing but a drain on my finances and a headache.

Someone had to teach her that nobody gets a free ride around here.”

Something in the casual cruelty of it, in the direction she had pointed, put a cold hand around my heart, and I did not wait to hear another word.

I broke into a run — past the stables, toward the pens, toward a sound I could already hear, the small metallic clang of a tin bucket against concrete, and toward the truth about the ten years I had spent believing my daughter was safe.