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“You mean had Dad never found you languishing in the locker of that Sûreté detachment in the middle of nowhere?”

“I mean when he recognized my brilliance and begged me to help him solve the most difficult murder ever.”

“Anywhere,” said Annie, who’d heard this before.

“In the world,” agreed Jean-Guy.

He released Honoré, who sprang out of the room, thumping down the stairs and outside, banging the screen door behind him.

“The lady in the lake,” said Annie.

“Oui. And by the way, I wasn’t actually in the locker.”

“Only because you were too big to stuff in there.”

“Because I was too tough. And still am.” He bent closer to his daughter, smiling. “Daddy’s big and strong and won’t let anything ever happen to you, right, ma belle Idola, Idola, Idola.”

As Idola’s father held her flat, saucer-like eyes, she laughed. With abandon.

She was so like her mother that way. A light and easy heart.

“Dad did mention your contribution that day,” said Annie, toweling the child dry. “But it sounded more like ‘shit-head.’”

Jean-Guy laughed. “Sûreté code for brilliant.”

“Ahhh. Then you are definitely luminous.” She heard a snort of amusement as he turned and looked out the window at the village of Three Pines.

Harriet Landers let herself into the New and Used Bookshop and tiptoed up the stairs.

She needn’t have bothered. Auntie Myrna, in her signature huge caftan, was already up and in the kitchen of the loft, brewing coffee. Her partner, Billy, beside her, frying eggs and bacon.

Harriet had smelled it when she’d opened the door to the bookshop and thought it might be coming from the bistro next door.

An emerging vegan, her kryptonite was bacon and eggs. And real cream in her coffee. And croissants. She was too afraid to ask Sarah the baker if there was real butter in them.

It seemed her magical thinking, while not extending to incantations, did extend to croissants.

“Ready?” asked Billy, after they’d finished breakfast.

Harriet had showered and dressed, and made up the sofa bed in the living area.

She took a deep breath. “Ready.”

Auntie Myrna, unconvinced, folded her into her arms, and whispered, “It’ll be all right. We’ll be there. You look beautiful.”

Harriet smiled, and didn’t believe a word of it.

Jean-Guy had his back to the bedroom and was looking out the window at the peaceful little Québécois village.

Annie could see that he was no longer in the bedroom of her parents’ home in Three Pines. He was standing on the frigid shores of a lake that had just thrown up a corpse. The memory was never all that far away. And it was never really a memory.

That day had changed everything.

It was the day a disgruntled little shit of a Sûreté agent had met the distinguished head of the most successful homicide division in the nation. It was the day the man who would become Annie’s husband had met her father.

What would have happened had they not met? What would have happened had the lady in the lake not been killed? Had her father not chosen to investigate it himself?

What if he had not gone into the basement of that far-flung Sûreté detachment? A place not flung quite far enough.