EPILOGUE

Jessie watched Abby and her new friends on the swings at the playground off Houston Street. It was good to be back in the city.

Here she could be anonymous. That was good for the author of a bestselling self-help book. It was also good for a woman the FBI publicly thanked for helping to stop a serial killer in his tracks. The media had gone nuts trying to interview her, but Jessie had refused all requests. There was no way she was going to talk about Emil, or anything that had happened.

Of course, the police and the FBI had blamed Emil for all the killings. There was some talk that he might have had a younger—or at least, a shorter—accomplice. But forensics experts determined that the razor found on Emil’s body at the bottom of the gorge had been the one used in all of the killings, though the last victims also had their throats ripped out by what appeared to be teeth—evidence that Emil was psychopathic, the FBI had said. Curiously, however, there was no DNA found on any of the victims, something Chief Walters had found very odd. For a while, she kept trying to find out what had happened to the boy Jessie had taken in. Jessie had just replied that Aaron had gone away; she had no idea where he was. It was the truth. Still, the chief kept insisting that the child had played a role in all of this, even as the FBI declared that Emil Deetz was the sole killer. The evidence against him was overwhelming: the razor, Aunt Paulette’s testimony, and Jessie’s and John’s stories about how Emil had tried to kill them. It seemed clear that Emil was the Sayer’s Brook serial killer. And so the case was closed.

And Jessie was pleased about that.

She’d spent the year after the murders in a state of grief. But her grief had pushed her to finish her book, which turned out to be even more successful than her first. Part of that, no doubt, came from the notoriety of the Sayer’s Brook murders. But Jessie always refused to go into details of that time. Her sister, her brother-in-law, and her neighbors had been killed. She insisted on a veil of privacy, and the media, by and large, respected that.

Being back in the city helped. There had been no way she could stay in Sayer’s Brook. She had thought it was the place where she needed to start over. As it turned out, she’d already been in the place she was supposed to be. It had felt very good to come back to the city.

Mom had told her once that she could do anything if she put her mind to it, so Jessie had set about rebuilding her life, piece by piece. The first step, she realized, was to respectfully bid Mom’s house good-bye. A year later, it still hadn’t sold, and neither had Monica’s house—murder houses often lingered for long periods on the market. So, until the royalties from the book started pouring in, Jessie might have had a hard time of it financially, except that Mr. Thayer had left all his money to her and to Monica and Todd—and whoever survived would inherit the other’s share. The money turned out to be a great help just when Jessie needed it most. Dear old Mr. Thayer. He had been so kind to her. But it couldn’t replace what Jessie had lost: a sister. But she realized sadly that she had lost Monica many years before all of this.

Meanwhile, Abby was flourishing in her new school, where she’d made friends easily and quickly. There was no longer any need for imaginary friends.

Aunt Paulette had moved to the city with her, and had managed to land a book deal of her own, about how to use the tarot and psychic intuition to help deal with life’s problems. It was good to have Aunt Paulette nearby after everything they’d been through.

But for a while, Jessie had kept some distance from John. She believed him now when he said that he had never intended to cause her any hurt by withholding his connection to the FBI and to Emil. But there had just been too many secrets in Jessie’s life, and just too many disappointments with men. So for a while, Jessie went solo. She needed the space.

But lately, she’d been e-mailing and talking on the phone with John. He wanted to see her. So she told him he could come to New York. She’d have dinner with him. She had no idea what, if anything, might come of their friendship. But she owed him a great deal; he had saved Abby’s life. John had had his own grief as well. Caleb had been a friend of his, as well as an employee. And his nose would never quite be the same after being broken. He sent Jessie a photo, and she thought it made him look rugged. She was looking forward to seeing John. After all, he was the only one in the world besides herself who had lived through, and remembered, the full story of what had happened that night in the woods and at the gorge.

She thought of Aaron often, though her dreams and visions of him were gone. Jessie slept peacefully through the night now. No more nightmares. But in her waking moments, that little face with its big brown eyes often came to her. She knew that Aaron had done some very bad things. But he’d been just a child—a child who’d lived in some kind of netherworld between life and death, between good and bad, between right and wrong. He hadn’t known what he was doing. She was glad that Emil had been given the blame for everything that had happened, because ultimately, he was to blame.

As was she. Jessie would have to live with the guilt that because of her rash involvement with Emil Deetz, thirteen people had been killed. People she loved—for all their problems, Jessie had loved Monica. And Todd . . . how Jessie grieved Todd. He had tried to do right by her. And kind old Mr. Thayer and her dear friend Inga. Jessie felt the weight of all their deaths, and carried their memories with her every day, even those who had been cruel to her, like Bryan and Heather and Gert Gorin.

But she had a choice: either to let the grief and the guilt take over her life or find a way to live so that she honored all those who had died. In the past, it had been Jessie’s guilt and grief—and fear and doubt—that had kept her a prisoner. It had also kept Aaron from resting in peace, keeping his spirit trapped between this world and the next. Jessie now resolved that grief and guilt and fear and doubt would no longer rule her decisions or color her life. There was nothing to fear, she had discovered, nothing at all. That was the basic point of her book.

And if ever she needed a reminder of that basic truth, all she had to do was look at the little crayon drawing that she’d had framed and hung over her desk.

It was a little stick figure of a boy holding the hand of a stick figure of a woman.

At the bottom of the drawing was printed one letter.

A.