Grant Jerkins

Helen Patrice is a recovering alcoholic struggling through a twelve–step program. It’s time to make amends for a crime she got away with—a hit and run accident that killed the wife of school teacher Edgar Woolrich. When she finally gathers the courage to meet him, she can’t bring herself to reveal the truth. The ninth step begins with a lie—the first of many as their relationship grows.  Then one day, Helen receives an anonymous note: Does he know you killed his wife?

A red dirt road on a sweltering day. A car loses control, flips through the air. A woman crawls out, bloody and battered, staggers toward the boy on the bike, the one she swerved to avoid. But he runs away...

Kyle is ten in the summer of 1976, and his world is all about secrets-secrets hidden in the maze of cornfields, in caves, in the embers of scorched earth, behind creaking doors and down basement stairs...and in the darkest of hearts.

A murdered woman. A grieving husband. Between them, their mentally handicapped son with a long history of violent outbursts. It's a simple open-and-shut case. Or is it?