Whidbey

This: why Mary-Beth had the hunch, this feeling—in case one dies—sometimes she could still see little Alfie in Calvin when he’d made certain faces. The Gateway to Grace Reentry Compound, where Mary-Beth Boyer would identify body, was an hour away, near Belle Glade, tucked between blank fields of charred cane and rotted muck soil which was, after all, the point. Mary-Beth allowed herself, for one moment, to imagine Detective Ulrich as a man who might save her. The anticipative look of Birdie in those goggles—the way she’d leaned forward with some hope, at last, in her body—nauseated Trace.