It just makes you a stranger, slowly, to everyone who loves you, including at last yourself.”

Chapter 10 — The Summer of 1986

“In the summer of 1986,” she began, “Robert and I lived in a little township up in the northern part of Indiana.

Farming country.

Gravel roads, tin roofs, dry heat that sat on you all July.”

A young family lived directly across the dirt road from them, she said, with a little girl of three named Natalie.

And on one particular afternoon — dry, and windy, the worst possible combination — Edith had been out hanging laundry on the line when she smelled smoke.