A memory dropped into place with a sickening click.

Weeks earlier, I had gone looking for that exact photograph, the one that lived on our refrigerator, and could not find it, and Brenda had told me, easily, that it must have slipped down behind the counter during cleaning.

She had looked me straight in the eye, without a flicker, and said exactly that.

And sitting with that memory, standing on the lawn as the pieces came together, I felt a fresh wave of something cold, because it meant the deception had reached me directly, not just my daughter.

It was one thing to imagine Brenda saying cruel things to Hannah when I was not there.