She had spent days telling the whole town she was desperately searching for her missing niece; and yet the very man she had meant to force onto that niece was standing at her shoulder the instant someone claimed to know where the girl had been hidden.

That single detail told the whole story to anyone paying attention.

The magistrate was gentle with Mason, gave him a glass of water, told him to take his time.

And the boy, gripping his father’s hand, told it plainly — the truck, the bushes, the woman in the white dress with a cloth tied over her mouth, the two men dragging her by the arms, Delilah opening the cellar and telling them to hurry.

Delilah leaped up shouting that it was a lie, that a child could invent anything, and Pastor Timothy quietly told her to let the boy finish.