I leaned back on the edge of the counter. “I feel the same about you. I love hearing about my mom and the great times we all had together back in the old days.”

She cracked a smile. “It does seem like it all happened so long ago.”

I felt the bittersweet in her voice. “Things are different now, but the two of us are still together,” I said, hoping to put a pleasant twist on a depressing topic.

She looked at me with a mournful grin. “My biggest regret is that Eva and Art swept you away. I’d planned on being with you. You’d have been like the grandchild I never had.”

I reached out and touched her hand. “I’m all yours now.”

“But the lost years . . . Who could have known what Eva would do when your mother died? It’s not so bad here, is it, Tish? We’re not all evil, right?”

My grandma Amble’s words floated on my memory. “There’re bad people here, Tish. Lots and lots of bad people.”

I shook my head and looked up at Candice. “No. This place is full of good people. And you’re one of them.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” She wiped at her eyes. “I’m just feeling a little misty today. I’m glad to know you care for me. Because I love you so very much.”

On impulse, I reached out and hugged her. Just then the teapot whistled. I jumped back, heart pounding. “That scared me!”

We both laughed, the black mood broken.

She put the tea supplies on the tray. “Let’s sit in the parlor. I can’t stand all this gray.”

She lit candles along the mantel, helping to dispel the gloom. I poured the tea, grateful to be with Candice instead of surrounded by chaos back home.

“So how is Melissa doing?” She leaned back in her chair.

I slumped against my seat. “Good. Maybe a little too good. She seems happy Drake’s dead.”

“Does that surprise you after what she claims to have endured?”

I stared at the swirls in the Oriental rug. “It just seems like she should be more upset. I’m worried about her.”

Candice looked at me in silence. Then she spoke softly. “Do you worry that she killed Drake?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess I do. She was supposedly out for a walk when it happened. She could have been the one to do it.”

“How would you feel if it turned out she killed him?”

I swallowed hard. “Wow. What a shock. I know she’d be justified. But murder’s wrong no matter how you slice it.”

Candice didn’t respond.

I rushed to fill the dead air. “I mean, I thought I was doing Grandma Amble a favor when I fed her those pills. But really I was hurting myself. And just think what will happen to Missy if she’s convicted of murder. She’ll lose her kids, her freedom, her future. It’s just not worth it.”

“What if it had been different, Tish? What if Drake had murdered Melissa? Then how would you feel?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Angry. That would be so unfair. I would want Drake to be locked up for good. I’d hope those kids never had to be around him. I’d hope he was miserable for the rest of his life.”

“And yet, Melissa would be dead. Nothing would change that.”

“True.”

“So doesn’t Melissa have a right to be alive? Even if it meant Drake had to die?”

I gave a vigorous shake of my head. “It didn’t have to be one or the other. They could both be alive today. Melissa should have filed for divorce like she said she was going to do. It should never have gotten to the point where murder was the only way to freedom.”

“There comes a point of no return.”

“I disagree. The momentum should be stopped before things ever reach that point.”

“And if they are not stopped?”

“Well, then terrible things can happen.”

“Like murder? Or suicide?”

Her words cut through me, opening lacerations across my heart.

“You should know better than to judge, Tish.”

I knew she spoke the truth. I couldn’t condemn Melissa for killing Drake. I’d also committed murder. God had forgiven me long before I’d forgiven myself. Still, I knew Melissa would have to pay for her crime as I had. I prayed the judge would be as lenient with her as mine had been with me.

“Before you think anything bad about Melissa, I want to tell you a story, Tish. A story with a very sad ending. A story of ruined lives and crushed dreams.”

A yellow caution light blinked furiously in my mind. Emotional overload seemed only moments away. I stood. “I don’t want to hear it, Candice. I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

She reached out and grabbed my hands in a steel grip. “Sit and listen. There isn’t much time.”

I shrank down into the chair, submitting to the urgency in her voice.

“I was raised down the peninsula, five or so miles south of Port Silvan,” Candice began. “Our house was small. Five of us in two bedrooms. Often, my brothers or my father would find their way into my bunk. But that was not to be discussed. That was not to be acknowledged. I never spoke of it after Mother explained that men were just that way and I should give it no mind.”

I shuddered as she drew me into her picture.

“Indoor plumbing was a luxury my parents couldn’t afford. But that was no surprise. My father was the town drunk. He’d gone to seminary as a charity case, hoping to become a priest. He claims my mother was the devil come courting, a seductress that lured him to his doom, then flaunted her pregnancy so the priests would force him to marry her. And so he punished her for her sins day after day until she was nothing but a hollow shell.”

Candice spoke with a soft, singsong voice, as if she were telling a bedtime story written by the Brothers Grimm.

“So you see,” she continued, “when Paul LeJeune came to the peninsula, I saw him as my savior. Yes, I knew why he was in Port Silvan. To grow marijuana. Silvan Green, they call it. The finest north of the Rio Grande. But I could close my eyes to his illegal activities if it meant a safe, clean bed and food on the table. Of course, we grew other cash crops and raised cattle as part of the farming operation. There was real dignity in being his wife.”

I wanted to block my ears. I didn’t want to hear anything that would make me judge Candice, not even things that had happened long ago.

She must have noticed my inner struggle. She raised her voice a fraction of a decibel. “But a few years into our marriage, times got tough. The law cracked down on marijuana growers on the peninsula. It was hard to hide the plants from helicopters. Paul got caught and did a short jail stay. He asked me to care for the plants while he served time. I barely argued with him.

“I kept things going until he got home. It was hard to put the business back in his hands. I’d done well and made good money with some new connections and growing techniques. But my personal success cut to the core of his manhood. He became abusive, beginning with mild verbal slights. It wasn’t long before those slights became insults. And the insults, character assassinations.

“Then one day he hit me. But it was nothing worse than what I’d grown up with. Maybe I had it coming, like he said. So I forgave him. Another day, it happened again. I let it go. Once, he slapped me on the face so hard, I spit blood. But I turned the other cheek, like any good Christian. And he hit that one too.

“Time went on and he’d driven me back to the kitchen like a proper wife. I took up photography to give myself something to do. One day it occurred to me to start documenting Paul’s activities. Maybe I’d become dissatisfied. Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was getting a conscience. Maybe I wanted revenge. Whatever it was, I secretly snapped photos of the crops, the trades, the dealers, the drop-offs, the pick-ups. I had the goods on an entire drug network. And one day, I ran. I’d heard your grandfather gave shelter to battered women. So, up the steps of his lake home and into his arms I went.

“He fell in love with me, and I with him. But my marriage to Paul would always be there, keeping us apart. Your grandfather begged me to divorce. But with the beliefs my parents had drilled into me from birth, my marriage was an irreversible mistake that God required me to live with no matter the cost to my soul.

“One day, I went back to my house. I can’t remember why. I wanted to get some things I left behind on my first escape. Paul was there. He was in the garage, putting seeds into soil and setting up heat lamps. Sid was there too, helping him. Paul saw me and followed me to the bedroom.

“‘Whore,’ he said.” Candice’s voice dropped eerily low to mimic her husband. “‘Did you come to steal from me to pad your love nest?’ I didn’t answer him. That made him angrier. He grabbed my arm.”

Candice’s face twisted with hate as she relived the scene. “‘You filthy, low-life slut.’ He’d been drinking. I could smell it on his breath. ‘You don’t deserve to live.’

“He wrestled me to the floor. I screamed the whole time, right up until the stockings he’d pulled from my dresser drawer were tight around my neck and I couldn’t breathe. I think I passed out. When I opened my eyes, Sid was slapping my cheeks trying to get me to wake up. Paul was groaning over on the floor and holding his face. Sid had punched him to get him off me.

“‘Thank you, Sid,’ I said to him. ‘You can go now.’

“‘You sure you’re going to be okay?’ He was so polite and kind. I nodded yes. Then Sid left the room. I took out the pistol that I kept in my top drawer. You never know when a drug deal might go bad. I loaded it. Then I pointed it at Paul. He looked at me and started laughing. ‘You crazy wench. I’m going to kill you.’

“‘Kill me if you can,’ I said. Then I pulled the trigger.”

My hands gripped the arms of the chair. I felt as if I had been in the room with Candice. As if I’d witnessed the chilling death of her husband. Great desperate gulps of air supplied oxygen while I looked for the nearest exit. “I have to go. I have to go. Don’t tell me any more.” I staggered toward the front door.