He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he told himself that something must be done, or all of his careful planning would be for nothing. If he was going to ignore the fact that Glory Dixon could reveal his secret, then he might as well have called the police the night of the crime, instead of going to all the trouble to conceal it.

Planks creaked upon the porch as it gave beneath his weight. He knocked, then waited, wondering what on earth he would say if someone actually answered. Then he knocked again and again, but no one came. He looked around the yard, assuring himself that he was still unobserved, and then threw his weight against the door. It popped like a cork out of a bottle, and before Carter could think to brace himself, he fell through the doorway and onto the floor before scrambling to his feet.

Now that he was inside, his thoughts scattered. Betty Jo’s death had been an accident. What he was thinking of doing was premeditated murder. Yet the problem remained, how to hide one without committing the other. He stood in place, letting himself absorb the thought of the deed. And as he gazed around the room, his attention caught and then focused on the small heating stove in the corner.

It was fueled with gas.

He began to smile.

An idea was forming as he headed for the kitchen. His hands were shaking as he began to investigate the inner workings of the Dixons’ cookstove. It didn’t take long to find and then blow out the pilot light. As he turned on all the jets, he held his breath. The unmistakable hiss of escaping gas filled the quiet room.

With a sharp turn of his wrist, he turned even harder until one of the controls broke off in his hands. Let them try to turn that baby off, he thought, and hurried out of the kitchen.

Carter wasn’t stupid. He knew that almost anything could ignite this—from a ringing telephone to the simple flick of a light switch when someone entered a room. And while he had no control over who came in the house first, he could at least make sure the house didn’t blow with no one in it.

With his thumb and forefinger, he carefully lifted the receiver from the cradle and set it to one side. The loud, intermittent buzz of a phone off the hook mingled with the deadly hiss behind him.

Now that it was done, an anxiety to escape was overwhelming. Carter ran through the house and out onto the porch. Careful to pull the front door shut behind him, he jumped into his car and drove away while death filtered slowly throughout the rooms.

It was dusk. Dew was already settling upon the grass, and the sun, like Humpty-Dumpty, was about to fall beyond the horizon as Rafe Dixon drove into the yard and parked beneath the tree near the back door.

J.C. came out of the barn just as Rafe crawled out of the cab. Glory swung her legs out and then slid out of the seat, stretching wearily from the long ride. It felt good to be home. She couldn’t wait to get in the house and trade her ropers for slippers, her blue jeans for shorts and the long-sleeved pink shirt she was wearing for one of J.C.’s old T-shirts. They went down past her knees, and felt soft as butter against her skin. They were her favorite items of clothing.

Their errands had taken longer than she’d expected, and she’d told herself more than once during the day that if she’d known all her father had planned to do, she wouldn’t have gone. She leaned over the side of the truck bed and lifted the nearest sack into her arms.

“Right on time,” Rafe shouted, and motioned his son to the sacks of groceries yet to be unloaded from the back of their truck. “Hey, boy, give us a hand.”

J.C. came running. “Daddy! Look! I found another arrowhead today.”

Both Rafe and Glory turned to admire his latest find. Collecting them had been J.C.’s passion since he’d found his first years ago. Now he was an avid collector and had more than one hundred of them mounted in frames and hanging on the walls of his room.

“That’s a good one,” Glory said, running her fingers over the hand-chipped edge, and marveling at the skill of the one who had made it. In spite of its obvious age, it was perfectly symmetrical in form.

“Groceries are gonna melt,” Rafe warned.

J.C. grinned and winked at his little sister, then dropped the arrowhead into his pocket. He obliged his father by picking up a sack and then stopping to dig through the one Glory was holding.

“Hey, Morning Glory, did you remember my Twinkies?”

The childhood nickname made her smile as she took the package from her sack and dropped it into the one he was holding. But the urge to laugh faded as quickly as the world that began to slip out of focus.

Common sense told her that she was standing in the yard surrounded by those who loved her best, but it wasn’t how she felt. She could barely hear her father’s voice above the sound of her own heart breaking. Every breath that she took was a struggle, and although she tried over and over to talk, the words wouldn’t come.

Struggling to come out of the fugue, she grabbed hold of the truck bed, desperate to regain her sense of self. Vaguely, she could hear her brother and father arguing over whose turn it was to do the dishes after supper. When sanity returned and she found the words to speak, they were at the back porch steps.

“Daddy! Wait,” Glory shouted, as her father slipped the key in the lock.

Even from where she stood, she knew it was going to be too late.

“Hey, look! I think I just found your keys!” J.C. shouted, laughing and pointing at the puppy, coming out of the barn behind them.