“Ugh. How can you be going back for thirds?” I asked Jameson as he heaped a small mountain of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

“If your mama learns to start makin’ lumpy potatoes from a box then I promise to cut down on my helpings,” he winked, sliding back in between Leah Mae and Devlin’s mom, Geneva McCallister.

We had a lot of extra faces around the extended table this year. Not only was there the new and improved Jonah Bodine, as Bowie called him, we also made room for Devlin, his parents, Leah Mae, Leah Mae’s daddy, Clay, and her future step-mama, Betsy.

We were an army in number, and I didn’t even want to imagine the hours of dishes that would be waiting for us after the feast. If any of us could move.

My parents had put all the leaves in the dining table and popped up three extra folding tables in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Bowie and I were cozied up to a card table in the kitchen with Gibson, Gram-Gram, and June. Above the table, we were playing it cool. Beneath, my leg was hooked over his and his hand was squeezing my knee.

“What’s the score now?” Gram-Gram stage-whispered to Gibson.

My mother had a very strict “no football rule” while we ate. June, Gibs, and Gram-Gram always secluded themselves at the table farthest from my mother so they could check their phones.

“Nine to six,” Gibson said, surreptitiously checking his phone.

“Saints?” Gram-Gram whispered.

He nodded. “You got action?”

“Fifty on the Saints.”

“Would you be interested in a side wager?” June asked.

Someone in the dining room barked out a laugh and someone else moaned about too many carbs. Jonah was lecturing Scarlett on how to mix her protein and carb ratios so she wouldn’t feel like a parade float.

This was Thanksgiving. This was family. And damn if it wasn’t just about perfect.

I squeezed Bowie’s leg under the table. “Wanna go upstairs to my old room and make out?” I whispered so no one else could hear me.

“As many times as I’ve had that particular fantasy, you’re gonna have to give me about an hour so I can definitely be sure that I won’t throw up on you,” he teased.

“Always a gentleman,” I said, batting my eyelashes at him.

“Get you another beer, Bow?” My dad laid a hand on Bowie’s shoulder, and I jumped away from him like I’d been caught with forbidden candy in my bedroom.

They both looked at me like I’d lost my dang mind, and I turned my attention back to my mashed potatoes. As nice as it would be to tell everyone that Bowie and I were seeing each other, to celebrate with everyone, the secrecy was vital. I wanted it all. My job, Bowie, Connelly’s respect. And I had to be strategic about getting it.

So for now, to all eyes and ears, I was Bowie’s next-door neighbor.

“Psst, Gibs. What’s the score?” Dad asked, leaning over the table.

“What are you doin’ in there, Harlan Tucker?” my mother called from the dining room.

“Just takin’ drink orders, my pearl.”

During the half-time we took between meal and dessert, I headed out to the garage to help my dad bring a new case of beer inside. Alcohol was required for appropriate digestion on Thanksgiving. We needed to prime our systems for the Moonshine Tasting tonight.

I was halfway between back porch and garage when I heard the next-door neighbor back out of his driveway in his very shiny Corvette—a thirty-year anniversary gift from his wife—and peeled out on the street. I shook my head as I picked my way to the garage. The dumbass never went anywhere under the speed limit. Fanny Sue had doled out three points on his last ticket as an incentive to slow the hell down.

I froze mid-step. And then ran around to the driveway. There were tire tracks in a swervy little line pointing down the street.

That’s what I’d been missing.

Dad was in the garage digging into a fresh case of beer.

“Connie Bodine’s accident,” I said without preamble.

I saw the guarded look come over his face when he closed the refrigerator door. “What about it?” Connie’s entire family—including the man I was sleeping with—was a few dozen feet away, and here I was bringing up the accident that killed her. But I had questions.

“I had the file to scan into the database. And something was bothering me about the pictures. Was it raining when she crashed?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Far as I know, the rains came after,” Dad said carefully.

“Then where were the skid marks? She was going what? Thirty-five maybe? Why wasn’t there any evidence of her braking hard, swerving?”

Dad looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here having this conversation with me. “Because she didn’t,” he said finally.

“You think she did it on purpose?” I asked, leaning against the hood of Mom’s SUV, mulling it over.

“Could have. Could have been an accident. It’s a tough road on a sunny day. The fog was probably a factor. Maybe she was distracted?”

“But you don’t think so.” I connected the dots. “Why would Connie have killed herself?”

“Didn’t say she did. What I do know is those kids did not need a mother who decided to abandon them. Jonah was a full-fledged drunk by then. Money was tight. They didn’t need a mom who gave up, too.”

“Say it wasn’t an accident. Why then?” I asked. Something was bubbling up and it scared me. “It was almost a year after Callie disappeared.”

My dad’s mustache twitched.

“You don’t think Jonah had something to do with it and Connie found out? Do you?” I was aghast. In my heart of hearts, I’d never believed that Jonah Bodine had killed Callie.

“You can’t be jumping to conclusions like that, Cassidy,” my dad said wearily. “Your job is to fit the pieces together, not make up an answer and try to prove it.”

“The pieces don’t make any sense. Mrs. Kendall is adamant that Callie killed herself. But Jonah disappeared for four days after Callie went missing and no one knows where he went except for knowing that he wasn’t where he said he’d be. Now, we’ve got an accident that could have been a suicide. Nothing fits.”

My dad sighed, his shoulders slumping with the breath. “I don’t think Jonah Bodine killed Callie Kendall,” he said finally.

“Why?” I felt the same way, but I didn’t have any facts backing it up. “What do you know that isn’t in any report?”

Dad put the beer down on the pristine workbench behind him and crossed his arms. “Connie was his alibi. He’d gotten himself shit-faced drunk the night Callie disappeared. Passed out cold on the couch.”

“Could Connie have been lying?”

“Could have been. But why? Jonah was no homicidal maniac. He was an alcoholic son of an alcoholic. He wasn’t the best father or husband in the world. But he was never physical. It didn’t fit that he’d go wandering out into the night and murder some girl.”

“Okay, and I do agree with you. But what if it wasn’t murder? What if it was vehicular manslaughter?” What if it was Connie and not Jonah who had hit Callie on some dark road that night? It would have meant jail time. An investigation. Most likely a lawsuit. It would have ruined the Bodines.

Dad nodded slowly. “A better possibility. One I considered seriously. The day after Callie disappeared, I stopped by the Bodine house. I did a walkaround of both their vehicles. No new dents, scratches, broken headlights. And he was alibied tight.”

Frustrated, I paced the concrete floor. “Nothing about this case feels right.”

“Sometimes we don’t get the answers we want, Cass,” Dad said.

“How are we supposed to live with that?” I asked. How were we supposed to live with the unknown, accept that we’d never know everything we needed to? Hell, I’d become a cop because it was a job that demanded the truth be discovered.

He picked up the beer and pointed it toward the door where half a dozen people were laughing loud and long in the backyard. “Family. Friends. Food. We put one foot in front of the other and stay thankful for the answers we do have.”

The conversation was officially over. Though my feelings about it were anything but resolved.

It was ironic. One family in Bootleg Springs that desperately wanted to believe their daughter chose to leave. Another was comforted by believing their mother had been taken.