Sara gave him a moment to recover before asking the woman, “Is there a reason you don’t agree with the coroner’s finding?”

“Several.” Aimee dove straight in. “Shay never went into the woods. Ever. And she was dressed for school. Why would she be out hiking when she had a class to teach? And why were her purse and phone locked in the trunk of her car? And then there was that creepy feeling she had. I know she dismissed it, but a mother knows when something is wrong with her daughter.”

Sara looked to Larry for confirmation.

He cleared his throat. “Shay was depressed.”

Aimee crossed her arms. “She wasn’t depressed. She was in transition. Every woman goes through a reckoning in their mid-thirties. I did it, my mother did it.”

Sara could tell this was a familiar argument. She asked Larry, “What was Shay depressed about?”

“Life?” He guessed. “Shay was getting older. Her job was becoming political. Things hadn’t worked out with Tyler.”

“Her ex,” Aimee explained. “They were together since college, but Shay didn’t want children and Tyler did, so they agreed it was best to split up. It wasn’t easy, but it was a decision they made together.”

Sara said, “From the police report, I gathered Shay was seeing someone new?”

“A trifle,” Aimee said. “He was just a side of fun.”

Larry countered, “They spent a lot of nights together.”

“That’s what you do when you’re having fun.” Aimee told Sara, “Shay was still in love with Tyler. I thought she would change her mind about babies, but she was stubborn.”

Larry said, “Wonder where she gets that?”

The observation could’ve sparked an argument, but it had the opposite effect. Aimee smiled. Larry smiled. Sara could tell there was still something between them. That something, she guessed, was their child.

Sara said, “There’s no easy way to ask this, but I’d like to re-examine Shay’s body.”

Neither parent had an immediate response. They looked at each other. They slowly turned back at Sara.

Larry was the first to speak. “How? Is there a machine?”

“Larry,” Aimee said. “The woman’s not talking about sonar. She wants to take Shay out of the ground.”

His dry lips parted in surprise.

“Officially, it’s called exhumation,” Sara said. “But yes, I am asking you if we can remove your daughter’s body from her grave.”

Larry stared down at his hands. They were gnarled from arthritis. Sara could see a callous along the webbing between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. He was used to holding tools, fixing or creating things. Aimee was clearly a businesswoman, the one who took care of the details. Sara’s own parents shared the same dynamic.

Sara offered, “Let me walk you through the steps of what an exhumation encompasses. You can ask as many questions as you like. I will answer as honestly as I can. Then I can leave you alone, or you can go away to talk, so that you can both make an informed decision.”

“You need our permission?” Larry asked.

Amanda could find a way around it, but not with Sara’s help. She told the father, “Yes, I need your written permission before I will exhume the body.”

“Could Shay have …” He searched for the words. “If she did it to herself, you would see that? You could tell us?”

Sara said, “I can’t make guarantees, but if there is evidence of self-harm, it’s possible I’ll be able to find it.”

He said, “So, you don’t really know what you’re looking for, and you don’t really know what you’ll find.”

Sara was not going to give them the brutal details. “I can only promise that I will be as respectful, and as thorough, with your daughter’s remains as possible.”

“But,” Aimee said. “You suspect something. You think something is suspicious, otherwise, you wouldn’t go through this, correct?”

“Correct.”

“We don’t—” Larry stopped himself. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

“You would not have to pay for the exhumation or the re-internment.”

“Okay. Well.” He was running out of reasons to say no, other than that his heart was shattering all over again. “When do you need an answer?”

“I don’t want to rush you,” Sara looked back at Aimee so that she felt included. “This is an important decision, but if you’re asking me for a deadline, I would say the sooner the better.”

He nodded slowly, acknowledging the information. “And then what? We write a letter?”

“There are forms that—”

“I don’t need forms, or steps or time,” Aimee said. “You’ll dig her up. You’ll look inside of her. You’ll tell us what happened. I say yes, do it now. Larry?”

Larry’s palm was pressed to his chest. He wasn’t ready. “It’s been three years. Wouldn’t she be …”

Sara explained, “When you arranged the burial, you requested that she be placed in a vault. If the air-seal is intact, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, then the body would be in good condition.”

Larry’s eyes closed. Tears squeezed out. Every muscle in his body was tensed, as if he wanted to physically fight off Sara’s request.

Aimee wasn’t blind to her ex-husband’s pain. Her voice was softer when she told Sara, “Maybe I do need the steps. How would this work?”

“We would schedule the exhumation early in the morning. That’s best so you don’t get onlookers.” She watched Larry wince. “You could be there if you wanted to be. Or you don’t have to attend. It’s your choice. All of this is your choice.”

“Would we—” Larry stopped. “Would we see her?”

“I would strongly advise against it.”

Aimee had taken a tissue from her purse. She blotted away her tears, trying not to smudge her eyeliner. “You would do the autopsy here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sara said. “She’ll be brought to this building. I’ll do X-rays to look for broken bones or fractures or any foreign objects that might have been previously missed. I’ll perform an autopsy and examine the organs and tissue. Embalming interferes with toxicology studies, but hair and nails might provide answers.”

“Is it that obvious?” Aimee asked. “Can you just tell if something is wrong?”

Again, Sara held back the details. “My goal is to be able to tell you both definitively whether Shay’s death was accidental or by another means.”

Aimee asked, “You mean murder?”

“Murder?” Larry struggled with the word. “What do you mean, murder? Who would hurt our—”

“Larry,” Aimee said, her voice softer. “Either Shay accidentally died alone in the woods, or she took her own life, or someone murdered her. There’s nothing else that could’ve happened.”

Larry looked to Sara for confirmation.

Sara nodded.

“What if—” Larry’s voice caught. “Will you be able to tell other things?”

Aimee asked, “What other things?”

Sara knew what he was most afraid of. “Mr. Van Dorne, if your daughter was murdered, it’s possible that she was raped.”

He would not meet Sara’s gaze. “You’ll be able to tell?”

“How?” Aimee asked. “From sperm? Could you get his DNA?”

“No, ma’am. Any genetic material would have been absorbed.” Sara chose her words carefully. “If there was bruising, or internal tearing, the damage would still be apparent.”

Larry asked, “Tearing?”

“Yes.”

He stared at Sara, unspeaking. His eyes were light green, like her own eyes.

Like her father’s.

Eddie had never asked and Sara had never shared with him the details of her rape, though the weight of it had shifted their relationship in subtle ways. Cathy likened it to Adam eating from the tree of knowledge. They had both been thrown out of paradise.

“Larry.” Aimee had her arms crossed again. She was visibly struggling to hold back her emotions. “You know where I stand. But this isn’t my decision alone. Shay is just as much yours as she is mine.”

Larry looked down at his twisted hands. “Two yesses, one no.”

Sara recognized the phrase from her work at the children’s clinic. A lot of parents agreed to the dictum that on the important decisions, you had to have two yesses. One vote of no from either parent, for any reason, could shut down the conversation.

Larry leaned up to find his handkerchief in his back pocket. He blew his nose.

Sara was about to offer to leave, but the father stopped her.

“Yes,” he said. “Dig her up. I want to know.”

Sara spread out Leslie Truong’s paperwork across several desktops, trying to figure out what was bothering her. There was no lightning bolt. Her concentration was shot. Her brain had lost its sense of logic. She was standing in the briefing room, the same room they had all sat in this morning, but with another stressful twelve hours tacked onto her sleepless night.