swollen beneath bruises that darkened along her cheek and temple.

Tubes crossed her mouth.

Her left arm rested on a pillow, wrapped and splinted.

A monitor beat out numbers that Daniel suddenly hated because they were the only proof she was still here.

Then he saw the tiny scar under her chin.

She had gotten it at sixteen climbing over a fence after a stray dog.

She always touched it when she was thinking.

Daniel moved to the bed and took the edge of her blanket between two fingers because he was afraid to touch her.

“Hey, Clary,” he whispered.

“I’m home.”

The machine answered for her.

He stood there until Dr.

Patel quietly told him the sheriff wanted a word.

Daniel did not turn around immediately.

He looked at Claire’s hands first.

Claire taught self-defense to nurses on Saturdays.

She had started doing it after a patient’s drunk brother cornered one of her friends in the parking garage.

Claire was five feet four and gentle with nearly everyone, but she had a gift for becoming sharp when someone weaker needed protection.

If strangers had attacked her, she would have fought.

Her palms were bruised, but the nails were clean.

Not broken.

No skin beneath them.

No torn cuticles.

Daniel lifted her right wrist as gently as if it were made of ash.

A faint red band marked the skin beneath the hospital tape.

He lifted the left.

Same mark.

He lowered her hand and stood very still.

In the hallway, Sheriff Mason Bell waited near the nurses’ station with his hat tucked under one arm.

Bell had gone to high school with Daniel’s older brother.

He had eaten Claire’s peach cobbler at the firehouse picnic last June.

Tonight he looked at the floor instead of Daniel’s face.

“We’re treating it as a home invasion,” Bell said.

Daniel stared at him.

“Who told you that?”

Bell blinked.

“Evidence points that way.

Door unlocked.

House disturbed.

Some jewelry missing.”

“My wife doesn’t keep jewelry anywhere anyone could find it.”

“Daniel, I know this is hard.”

“No,” Daniel said.

“You know this is convenient.”

A nurse glanced up from the desk, then quickly looked down again.

Bell lowered his voice.

“Go sit with your wife.

Let us do our job.”

Daniel looked past him and saw the Hawthornes.

They stood near the vending machines in a tight half circle, dry and immaculate despite the rain.

Malcolm Hawthorne wore a charcoal overcoat and a silver tie.

He had the kind of face that belonged on plaques and campaign flyers: steady eyes, white hair, a sympathetic mouth he could turn on and off like a lamp.

Beside him were his four adult children.

Reid, the eldest, broad-shouldered and bored.

Vivian in a cream suit, her hair pinned back so tightly it seemed to pull her smile into place.

Graham, who ran the family construction company, checking his watch.

Luke, a lawyer with hands folded as if he were already in court.

And Owen, the youngest, standing half a step behind them with a paper coffee cup shaking in his grip.

Daniel had met them all at foundation dinners.

Claire had audited their books for six years.

She used to say the Hawthornes smiled with every tooth except the honest ones.

Malcolm approached first.

“Daniel,”