Angie had her own inheritance, too. From her uncle, which had a certain kind of irony, since Dale had never claimed her until Deidre was gone and he could trick her out. The bricks of cash that Angie had taken from his Kia totaled eighteen thousand dollars. Together with the money in her bank account, she had about fifty grand to live on before she figured out what to do with the rest of her life.

Back to being a private eye? Back to running scams? To running girls? To running pills? Back to Atlanta?

Not once since Deidre had drugged herself into a coma had Angie felt like she had choices. From the age of ten, Dale was always there, pushing Angie, pulling her, slapping her around. Even when she managed to get away, Virginia always connived her back into the fold.

In her imaginary letter to Jo, Angie would explain how Dale and Virginia had gotten their hooks into her. That she had only been four years older than Anthony when it happened. That she had been vulnerable. Terrified. That she had done anything and everything to keep them happy because they were all she had in the world. Maybe she would even quote LaDonna Rippy. The bitch was going to spend some hard time in prison for holding on to those shoes, but she hadn’t been wrong about the nature of damage. Some people had holes inside of them that they spent their lives trying to fill. With hate. With pills. With scheming. With jealousy. With a child’s love. With a man’s fist.

Angie had created the hole inside of Jo. She had to own that truth. Jo had her adoptive parents. She had a normal life. But the second Angie had abandoned her baby in that hospital room, Jo had started to tear. The old saying was that women married their fathers. Angie had a sinking feeling that Jo was attracted to men who were more like her mother.

There weren’t a lot of excuses to make, but this is what Angie would have told her daughter: badness doesn’t come all at once. The dominoes fall over time. You hurt someone by mistake and they let you get away with it. Then you try hurting them on purpose and they still stick around. And then you realize that the more you hurt them, the better you feel. So you keep hurting them, and they keep hanging on, and the years roll by and you convince yourself that the fact that they still stand by you means that the pain you cause is okay.

But you hate them for it. For what you do to them. For what they do to you.

A sudden strong breeze cut through Angie’s thin shirt. She looked up at the tree. American sycamore, she guessed, maybe one hundred feet tall. Tiny dots of dead leaves and twiggy tendrils gave the canopy the appearance of a hairnet. Massive trunk, shallow roots. The kind of tree that, for all its grandeur, would eventually topple during a bad storm.

‘Anthony!’ Jo yelled, loud and clear.

He was running up the slide. He guiltily ran back down, waving an apology. Jo slowly returned to the bench. She shook her head. She was smiling. Not a big grin that showed her teeth, but a smile that said things might end up okay.

Would Angie end up okay?

She was doing all this thinking about writing a letter when the only letter that mattered was the one that Will had left for her.

The minute she had been released from police custody, Angie had rushed to her PO box. She needed to cash her last check from Kip Kilpatrick before his account was closed.

The check wasn’t there.

She had found a letter from Will instead.

Not a letter, really. More like a note. No envelope. Just a folded sheet of notebook paper. He hadn’t used his computer. He had used a pen. Will never wrote anything but his signature anymore. He was too ashamed. The last time Angie had seen his handwriting was in high school, before computers, before anyone knew what dyslexia was and just thought his childish, backward letters and bad spelling signified a low IQ.

Typical Will, his note was succinct, as brief as anything Angie had ever left Sara on the windshield of her car.

It is over.

Three words. All underlined. Unsigned. Will had always avoided contractions. She could picture him sitting at his desk in his house, studying the note, sweating over the spelling, unable to tell if he’d gotten it right and too proud to ask anyone to check it for him.

Sara wouldn’t know about it. This was between Will and Angie.

‘Mommy!’ The piercing scream made her flinch. Three little girls started running around, shouting their heads off. There didn’t seem to be a reason why, but the sound was contagious. Pretty soon all the kids were screaming.

Her cue to leave.

Angie walked toward the parking lot. The sun quickly warmed her. Her car was an older model Corvette she’d bought off Craigslist. The money had come from an advance she’d taken off Delilah Palmer’s credit card. It’s not like the little bitch would get stuck with the bill. Weirdly, the car reminded Angie of Delilah. The tires were bad. The paint was chipping. Still, the engine had a threatening rumble when she turned the key.

The interior had the lingering odor of perfume. Not from the previous owner, but from Angie. She still had half a bottle of Sara’s Chanel No. 5. The scent didn’t exactly suit her, but then it probably didn’t suit Sara, either.

Angie was still keeping an eye on her place-holder.

She had gotten Sam Vera to hook her up with the same technology he had used to clone Reuben Figaroa’s computer. The contents from Sara’s laptop were updated in real time now. She was still writing sickly sweet emails about Will to her sister.

When he holds me in his arms, all I can think is that I want this to last forever.

Angie had laughed when she’d read the line.

Forever was never as long as you thought it was.