Truett Rennick had been my mother’s — I do not have a clean word for it.

Her love, her partner in something, the man she had chosen.

Long ago, my father had discovered what Rennick was and what he had done, and had tried to do the right thing, tried to expose him.

And my mother had chosen Rennick.

Together they had staged my father’s death — the accident, the closed casket, the empty grave — and instead of killing him, which perhaps even they could not do, they had buried him alive in the dark beneath the property, where no one would ever think to look for a dead man.

For twenty-six years my father had been down there, and for twenty-six years my mother had accepted condolences and raised his daughters and never once cracked.