She’d expected to have to talk to Zachary Pointer through a wall of Plexiglas, like they did in the movies, but when she arrived in the section of the prison where he was incarcerated, she was led directly to the chaplain’s office.

“Reverend McConnell’s not here today,” said the uniformed guard, his hand on the office door, “but he said Mr. Pointer and you could meet in here. Zach’s already inside.”

Lacey felt unexpected fear rise up inside her. Being alone in a room with her mother’s murderer suddenly seemed comparable to being trapped in a kennel with a vicious dog. Surely, though, they wouldn’t let her meet with him if they had any doubts about her safety. Still, she hesitated before stepping inside the office.

“Go ahead in,” the guard said. “Just stop by the front to sign out when you leave.”

She opened the door and walked into a small, bare-walled waiting room containing five chairs upholstered in turquoise vinyl. Behind her, the guard closed the door and it felt as though he took all of the air in the room with him.

“Hello?” Lacey called.

She heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, and in a minute the man she had long despised stood in the doorway between the two rooms, wearing blue prison garb. She took an involuntary step backwards, but it was his face that turned ashen and held a look of fear.

“Annie?” he asked.

Lacey couldn’t speak. Why would he call her Annie? He hadn’t known her mother as anything other than an obstacle in his path as he tried to kill his wife. She pictured him at the battered women’s shelter, filling the doorway in his soaking-wet green peacoat. She remembered him pointing the gun, yelling “Whore!” and “Slut!” and she knew all at once it had not been Faye Collier that those words had been meant for.

“You were one of them,” she said with a calmness that belied the turmoil inside her. “You were one of my mother’s lovers.”

He seemed to shrink inside his blue uniform. His face bore deep lines and crevices that seemed to multiply at her words.

“You’re her daughter,” he said. “Lacey, is it?”

Her back was pressed against the door to the room, more for support than anything else. She was beginning to feel dizzy. “Was it actually my mother you meant to kill when you broke into the shelter?” she asked. “Was that who you were really after?”

He licked his lips, looking away from her for a moment, and she could see that he was trying to decide how to proceed. Finally, he motioned toward the interior office. “Come inside and we can talk,” he said.

“I’ll sit right here.” She lowered herself to the chair closest to the door. The vinyl made a sound like air being let out of a tire as she sat down on it.

He took a seat on the other side of the small room, and Lacey studied him. She would not have recognized him in a lineup. His dark hair had turned completely white during the past twelve years, and he was smaller, or maybe it was just the fact that he was not wearing a heavy coat or carrying a gun that made him seem diminished in size.

“I hadn’t expected…” He looked down at his hands as though he was not certain what to say. “They told me you were coming.” He smiled at her and she had to look away. The smile was too unexpectedly warm, and she did not want to be seduced by it. “I figured we’d have a little talk and I would tell you how sorry I was that your mother tried to protect my wife. But I realize now that the truth must be written all over my face.”

She couldn’t breathe. The light-headedness made her want to lean over and hang her head between her knees. Did she want to sit here and have him tell her things that were guaranteed to distress her even further, or should she simply tell him she’d made a mistake in coming and run from the room?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything bad about your mother.”

“Tell me,” she said. She had come this far. If she didn’t have this conversation with him now, not knowing what he had to say would always haunt her. “I already know she was…unfaithful to my father.”

He stared at her, licking his lips again. “I met her in the little shop I used to work in,” he said. “A little sundries store in Kill Devil Hills, over by…well, it doesn’t matter. I’m not even sure if it’s still there. She came in one time to buy a pair of sandals she saw in our window, and we started talking. She started coming in then, almost every day, just to talk, and to make a long story short, I fell in love with her. I had a bipolar disorder, although I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that I’d go on these jags of having loads of energy and feeling like the world was a pretty terrific place to be, and then, without warning, I’d plummet. Drop lower than low. But I could always manage to hide what was going on inside of me—to stay in control of it—as long as my life was on an even keel.” He looked down at his hands. They were folded in his lap, and he was rubbing one of the thumbs over the other. “I was in a manic phase when I met your mother,” he said. “A long one. And at first it was great.”

“Did she take you to the keeper’s house?”

He looked surprised. “You know about that?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Yes, that’s where we’d meet.” He looked apologetic. “I don’t like talking to you about this.”

“Go on.” She was picturing her father at the animal hospital, working hard as he always did, making money to support his family, while his wife was taking men to the keeper’s house without a thought to how she was hurting her family.

“I didn’t feel right about what I was doing,” he said, “but I was so driven. It’s hard to explain the effect she had on me.”

“She had it on a lot of men,” she said, wanting to take some of the wind out of his sails.

“Yes, I know that,” he said. “Not at the time, though. I thought we were so much in love that it somehow legitimized the infidelity. I convinced myself that it was all right.” He studied his hands again, the movement of his thumbs the only clue that he was nervous. “But as I said, I didn’t do well under stress and my mood started to go south. I wasn’t much fun for her anymore, I guess, and she wanted to end the affair. I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her, and I was so…so ill at the time, that I threatened to kill both her and myself if she left me. If I couldn’t have her, I didn’t want anyone else to have her, either. I was selfish and crazy and self-absorbed,” he said. “I think what happened was that Annie—your mother—became afraid that I might hurt my wife and son, so she made up some cock-and-bull story about getting a call from one of my friends or a neighbor or someone and got them into the battered women’s shelter where she worked. Of course, I knew where the place was because she’d told me all about it back when things were good between us. When I went there, Lacey, I was out of my mind. I intended to kill all three of them and then myself, but you’re right, that first bullet was meant for your mother.”

“And she knew it,” Lacey said. “She had to know that if she stepped in front of your wife, you were going to kill her.”

He drew in a long breath. “I believe—and will believe to my dying day—that she thought that if I shot her first, I would never get around to killing my wife and son. That they’d be able to escape before I could get to them. Everybody said she was trying to save their lives by stepping in front of Faye—my wife—and they were right. They just didn’t know what Annie knew—that I was there to kill her as well as them, one way or another. Once I shot her, it was like something snapped in me and I realized what an insane thing I was doing. That’s why I didn’t hurt anyone else.” He lifted his head to look at her and there were tears in his eyes. “Oh, Lacey,” he said. “I’m so sorry. The truth is, I’ve grown in here. I’m not just a healthier person, I’m a better person, and this place…” He waved his hand through the air. “The doctors and the chaplain…I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t landed in here. But I would give anything…anything if I could bring your mother back and erase everything that happened between us and return her whole and unharmed to you and your family.”

She did not want to believe him or to trust his sincerity. He was, after all, Rick’s father. But there was something in his eyes that convinced her he was telling the truth, that he was done with lies.

“It took a long time,” he said, “with a lot of shrinks trying me on a lot of different medications, but finally, they hit the right one. That was when I truly realized what I’d done. That I’d taken a life. That I’d ruined many other lives. I wanted to die. I tried to kill myself, but they make that hard to do in prison.” He offered her a rueful smile. “It was the Reverend McConnell who got me through it all. You probably don’t need to hear that,” he said. “That I got through it. Your mother’s story ended, and mine continued. I know how unfair that must seem to you.”

“What will you do if you get out on parole?” she asked.

“I want to enter the seminary,” he said, then smiled his apology again. “Does that sound like a line to you?”

She looked away. It would have sounded like a line if she hadn’t heard about it from his son first. “I’m not sure,” she said.

“I’d like to be a prison chaplain,” he said. “And if I don’t get out, it truly doesn’t matter, because I’ve been able to work here. Maybe I have even more credibility on the inside than I would on the outside. There are a lot of people in here in need of spiritual guidance. My son wants me out so badly. He thinks I can only do what I want to do if I’m released. He doesn’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“That I’m every bit as free in here as I would be out there,” he said. “I’ll have peace in my heart no matter where I am.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “And what about you, Lacey?” he asked. “How is your heart these days?”

Lacey couldn’t hold it together any longer. Lowering her head, she started to cry.