Cameryn rolled down the window. “In a minute, Mammaw,” she said. “I just need a little time to myself right now. I’m… thinking.”

“But it’s almost noon,” her grandmother protested. “Since the crack of dawn you’ve been out looking at Lord-knows-what. Gruesome, horrible things. A dead body before the day’s even begun. It’s wrong, is what it is.”

“Mammaw, it was just a car accident.”

Where some older women had skin that wrinkled like parchment, her mammaw’s thick skin sagged into deep grooves, especially on the sides of her mouth, suggesting a perpetual frown. “Come inside. Have some lunch. Or breakfast, if you’d prefer. I’ll make you whatever you want. Food heals the soul.”

“Thanks, Mammaw. It’s just, right now, I want to be alone. I’ll be there soon, though, okay? I promise.”

Her grandmother shook her head and closed the door so that the plastic Christmas wreath swayed against the glass until it lost momentum and stopped. Pressing a button, Cameryn put the window up, and she returned to her own personal cocoon. She sat, staring, her mind drifting once again to the mangled wreckage she’d discovered on the road.

Blood. There had been so very much blood. She pressed her fingertips into her closed eyes, but the images still played behind her lids.

The gaping hole of Benjamin’s neck, the bulb of his vertebrae gleaming white, the feathers of steam from where the still-warm liquid met cold asphalt, the geometry book peppered with blood. Centrifugal force had caused Benjamin’s decapitation. Patrick Mahoney, Cameryn’s father and Silverton’s coroner, had explained this as they’d studied the remains. The car’s door had sheered off, and the body lay half in, half out of the mangled vehicle. Benjamin’s fingers curled against the snow, as if he were playing a keyboard.

“This young man didn’t wear his seat belt. A car protects the body in a crash, and without a restraint- well, you see what can happen,” her father told her.