The first thing Minn did when Wolf left with Isaac was take a shower. After that, she slept, and by the time she woke, night had long since fallen. But it was spring break, and regular hours didn't matter, especially when she had pressing questions.

Isaac had been somewhat difficult to convince, unwilling to go anywhere with Wolf at first, but after much conversation (and Minn's promise to visit the following day (a promise she didn't even know if she could keep)) he was at last persuaded. Thankfully, Isaac's mood had remained stable, no sudden swings or erratic comments, and he'd even joked a little with Wolf. Watching her brother and Isaac interact had warmed Minn, reminded her of the way Wolf spoke to her son. Wolf might not have ever had his own kids, but he had a certain way of talking to young people, an on-their-level manner rather than some form of implied condescension any teen with half a brain would see through. Some adults were patronizing like that, Minn knew; she worked around a lot of them. They maintained a superiority over the adolescents they instructefd, and while their students tended to ultimately follow along, they didn't respect such grown people. Minn herself had never been that sort of teacher, holding her knowledge and stature over her students; part of that had been her personality (she'd not gone into teaching for love of control but for the ease of working with young people, the ability to avoid dealing with most other adults) but another part of it had been reality. Minn wasn't scary. She'd always known she couldn't win students over with authority. She was physically small and detested confrontation, was far more content to advise and aid than push and force. Her career had felt successful because she'd never really conflicted with anyone, and she knew it helped that she taught an elective, a class students didn't need in order to graduate, so there was never too much pressure for her students to do well or even to pass her class.

Her perceived caring aura was what Isaac had been drawn to, she supposed. He'd been somewhat wrong about her, though. Minn didn't exactly care about her students the way some of the more passionate teachers did, the ones who believed it was their life's vocation to reach into and mold the hearts of young people, the ones who dedicated huge swathes of time to coaching and sponsoring and lesson-planning and a host of other commitments. She cared enough, during the day, but when she went home at night, when she took her summer and winter and spring vacations, she thought little of her students, paid more attention to her own simple tastes and needs, her own family.

The years of her life had passed, somehow. She was uncertain where the time had gone. Here she was, thirty-seven, and out of nowhere something interesting had happened. Her life had been strange in the beginning (though she'd not known it as a child), and all the way up until she'd conceived Peter, adolescence and young adulthood had been tempestuous and even fun at times. But after she'd had her son, she'd made a promise to build a decent life for them, and she'd put all her effort into securing her job and creating their home, doing all the mundane yet normal things parents and grown people do. She'd dated very little, and she'd done the responsible things like save and put into a retirement plan and ensure she had a life insurance policy and a will and a college fund for Peter and all those other sorts of things.

Now, it felt, all of it was falling away from her, and whatever financial stability she had couldn't help with the rift she'd created within her family. She'd not seen this coming, and the months of therapy hadn't quite helped her to accept it.

She had to help Isaac. It could set things right; she was sure of that, never been more sure of anything in her life, in fact. And the first step was looking into fostering him, getting him out of Circle Ridge. She hadn't mentioned her thoughts about fostering to Wolf, who'd surely (maybe rightfully) attempt to dissuade her. And she also hadn't wanted to mention the idea in front of Isaac without even knowing whether she could follow through. Now that no one was around, though, Minn had all the time in the world to sit with a cup of coffee and get online, start researching and sending some messages.

But she also wanted to understand what exactly had happened in Tennessee.

Double-checking that her doors were locked, Minn took a moment to turn on a few gentle lights and water some of her plants while her pot of coffee brewed. She realized she'd not eaten anything since that morning, too, and toasted herself a bagel. The house felt dark and empty, as it'd felt for weeks, now, nearly three months. Peter hadn't been in the house for three months, and while Minn missed him terribly, she knew that besides his own home, his uncle's house was the next safest place for him to be. Even though Wolf lived nearly a half hour away, Minn knew her son was in the best hands. Peter loved his uncle, had always gotten along with the man. In fact, with his naturally dark hair and thick eyebrows, he looked more like Wolf than he did his own mother and often assumed similar mannerisms.

When they themselves had been teens, Wolf and Minn had finished high school to then attend a local university. They'd worked menial jobs and managed to pay for a crappy apartment together. They'd always gotten along well enough, and though Minn was by nature a quieter person than Wolf was, she'd played along with a lot of his wild ways. He'd kept a far busier social life than she, attending as many parties as possible in the various sorority and frat houses, swinging a fake ID to go out to bars and clubs until he could get a real one, skirting the law (quite closely a few times) with his drunk driving and underage substance abuse. He'd always tried to bring his sister around with him but had never had much success, and then after one particularly wild house party, Minn had lost herself in drink, found herself in a strange bed, and shortly after shown telltale signs of pregnancy. Wolf had been so angry with her "negligent behavior" (hadn't she been taking birth control? he'd wanted to know) that he'd at first tried to convince her to abort, but Minn, as despaired as she'd been, had found an unexpected solace in the notion that life grew within her, and at length, Wolf had come around. Neither of them had ever talked about who the father might be; neither of them had wanted to broach the subject.

So Peter had been born, and Peter had grown, and Minn had found a purpose she hadn't previously known she'd ever want. Her son had always been a kind child, a clever little boy who'd enjoyed reading and experimenting with bugs and plants outside. He was a bit of a wanderer, really, even up through his middle school years, never quite keeping strong friends but always content to be himself. With the teen years had arrived a bit of rebellion, a dip into the alternative, some piercings, some hair dye, some music and gaming and attire Minn hadn't entirely liked but also hadn't bothered to question; Peter himself never changed. He was always still her kind, clever son, and she'd been around enough teenagers to know their passing phases and interests as well as how lucky she was to have a genuinely good one.

Isaac was like him in some ways, trying to appear hard when he was surely soft. Peter had never gone quite as dark as Isaac in his presentation, but then again, Isaac seemed to have experienced some real trauma in addition to an unfortunate, unstable upbringing.

Minn settled at her computer, mug on a coaster nearby, bagel on a plate, cat on her lap within three minutes of sitting down. She spent a bit of time, first, in looking into the foster care system, holding off on what actually interested her more, waiting for some reason she couldn't quite explain, almost the way one saves a preferred task for last in order to sweeten the doing when it finally arrives. But the morbid curiosity grew, until she at last had to satisfy it, and so she began searching for the recent murder of a young boy in Tennessee.

The articles were abundant though they weren't entirely forthcoming on detail. Most of them were from the fall when the incident occurred, and while some of the lurid bits about the state of the murdered child were included for shock value, due to the ongoing nature of the tragedy's investigation, there was little else. There was certainly no mention of Isaac by name, although Minn dug long enough to find a few social message boards that mentioned "that one kid they were questioning" and "if he didn't do it, then who did?" There were a few irreverent threads and responses about "that creepy kid's" likely involvement, but it seemed that if commenters were referring to Isaac, no one quite knew his name. In all, she found little more than she'd already known, and yet the personal attachment she now felt toward this crime pushed her to keep trying.

Eventually, the woman emerged from the dark rabbit hole of the internet but only after losing nearly three hours of time to it and coming up with little more than an increased hostility toward the world.

Minn shut her laptop and sighed. She'd managed to put out a few emails about foster care, but she'd done little else, and even though she'd slept half the day and figured she could stay up all night, a certain lethargy overwhelmed her. It was the tiredness of depression, tugging at her as it did in those moments when she allowed complacency. Maybe she'd just lie in bed and stream something. As she slogged up the stairs, the woman began to actually miss the events of the previous night. She'd been scared by all that had happened with Isaac—at the time, she'd even feared for her life. How stupid that all felt, now, almost as if none of it had even actually happened. Twenty-four hours earlier, she'd been stuck in that horrible trailer, surrounded by trash and uncomfortable as anything, wondering whether she'd ever get to go home, and now that she was home, she didn't even want to be there.

She wished Wolf hadn't taken the boy away.

Peter's room was across the landing from her own. The house was a two-bed, two-and-a-half bath, and it'd always been the perfect size for the pair of them. Minn stood and stared at his door for a brief moment, and then she opened it and flipped on the light, illuminating her son's belongings, the bits and pieces of his life, the things that he'd collected and loved and worn and created. She wasn't going to touch any of his stuff. She'd never been that sort of mother, anyway, one to pry into her child's crafted world, to clean his room for him or sift through his personal life. Peter would be home soon enough, she was sure. He'd come around. Wolf was surely working to convince him, and the young man would figure things out. He just needed some privacy right now, and as much as Minn hurt over his silence, she knew that it couldn't last forever. She was his mother, and he couldn't cut her out.

Isaac—he needed a mother, poor thing. He'd probably gone his whole life without really knowing what it felt like to have someone who actually cared about him. He was being fostered at the time of that boy's murder, and according to him, those foster parents had just given him up the minute he'd gotten into trouble.

A light blinked in Minn's brain: the foster parents! They'd know about Isaac and what had happened then, the likelihood of his being involved, more than anyone else, wouldn't they? And it hadn't been all that long; they were probably still where he'd left them. The drive to Tennessee was probably only about five hours; there was still plenty of time left before break was over. She could easily be there and back again in about three or four days. All she needed was their name, and she was fairly sure she could find them . . . perhaps Anne could help.

Yes. The idea was there, now, and she was determined.

"Beetle," she commented to the cat rubbing against her ankle, his name the one Peter had given him eight years prior as a kitten, "I'm going to figure this out. Just you wait. We'll have him home soon enough."