Roland Ashford was a bloated failure. The man had what I’d describe as a goblin body; small arms, thick hunch. He wore his shirt too tight and his conscience too loose. He hosted his house in a rickety shack that could hardly be called home, a wooden carcass rotting politely in the shadow of a dying oak. The porch slanted like it was trying to escape the rest of the structure. A busted window welcomed me to this humble half abode, glass teeth missing from its crooked grin.

  His ageing trophy wife, Sheryl Begit, didn’t even bother to transfer his last name. That detail clung to my mind like a burr on cheap wool. A woman who keeps her maiden name in a town like this isn’t making a statement; she’s preserving an exit.

  The air inside was stale with boiled cabbage and something sweeter underneath: vanilla candles trying their best to smother the scent of decay. Family photos lined the walls in neat rows. Lillian smiled from each one, a porcelain cherub framed in dollar-store gold.

  “She simply couldn’t have run off… she, well she just loved it here.” Sheryl squeaked through teary breath. Her mascara had declared independence and marched south in two inky columns. She twisted a lace handkerchief like she was trying to wring confession out of cotton.

  “She was the happiest girl we ever knew,” Roland grumbled. I couldn’t make heads or tales of his ego; thick, foggy glasses made his eyes an impenetrable prison of emotion. The lenses were so clouded they could’ve doubled as bathroom mirrors in a condemned hotel. When he looked at me, I saw only my own warped reflection staring back: a private dick bent out of shape.

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  “I’ve no doubt that Lily was happy here,” I said, keeping my voice low and level, “but it is imperative to consider all options. Had she made any… comments? Mention of some new friend maybe, or-”

  “No.” Sheryl was looking anywhere but towards Roland as he sputtered this shite. “We knew all of her friends from church and we decided early on to home school.”

  Though three we were, there was a fourth hanging over our party; a Rembrandt specter prying the two apart. It hovered in the negative space between them, thick and bruised, chiaroscuro.

  “You say last contact was December fifth, and she was-”

  “Going to church,” Roland snapped. “How many times must we suffer the same questions? When will anyone actually offer justice?” His tongue held tight those final syllables, and to my ear that word was poison, a noxious gas which permeated the room. Justice. He said it like a man ordering a steak, expecting it rare and bleeding on arrival. I felt a resounding disgust pound at my chest.

  “So, she only went to one place her whole life,” I said. “Where was god when she was left out in that desert alone?”

  Roland removed the thick panes from his soul’s window, and an empty hatred shot me. His eyes welled with the nectar of misery, but no retort reached through his mind to mouth. Sheryl flinched like I’d fired a gun. Maybe I had.

  I took my leave, having done enough damage for the day. The front door groaned farewells behind me like it was relieved to see me go. Outside, the afternoon light was jaundiced, sickly. The wind dragged dust across the yard in lazy spirals. Somewhere, a dog barked with the persistence of an unpaid debt.

  With nowhere else to turn, I felt it time to question the witnesses of the “accidental” trio.