When Greer asks her how she does it, Lorraine explains how she looks each day for three things to be grateful for, and how that grounds her in all the good still left in the world:Įven on my worst days, I can always find three.” She must have sensed my skepticism because she gave our clasped hands a gentle shake. Lorraine Johnson is clearly grieving but is also dealing with her emotions in an unmistakably healthy manner. Greer herself finds guidance in a place she doesn’t expect, when she interviews the mother of one of the teenagers whose deaths drew Greer home. The Dunnings’ are so stuck in their unhappiness that it takes a catastrophic event to jolt them out of their holding patterns. More than just a twisty murder mystery-with a revelation as to motive that surprised and moved even a jaded genre aficionado like myself-this is a meditation on grief and love and moving on that is just as heavy on empathy as it is on atmosphere. Will Greer be able to push through when her investigations begin to imperil both herself and the people she loves? It’s someone else’s investigations that lead to a breakthrough in the case, however, digging up an awful revelation that will jeopardize everything Greer has allowed herself to believe since Eliza’s murder. She’s tired of living in limbo, of hearing her sister’s voice in her head asking for answers. I was lost and had no idea how to be found.īut Greer refuses to give up. Putting my trust in someone I barely knew. Distrusting the people I loved, looking at familiar faces and seeing strangers instead. But as the days went by, I felt more adrift than ever, running in circles, looking for clues that weren’t there, finding answers that only led to more questions. I’d thought when I’d come back to Ludlow that I’d known what I was looking for, that my purpose was laid out clear as an X on a map. “Then what are you trying to do?” My mother worried her hands together, her raw knuckles scraping. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” I said, working to lower my voice. Her parents are especially aghast at the reopening of old wounds: Their investigations quickly raise as many eyebrows as they do questions. Almost against her better judgment, she falls in with an unlikely ally. Trouble is, she doesn’t really know who or what she’s looking for. Going home is painful, but Greer knows that she has to do something to prevent more murders. But Greer has always suspected that someone else was involved, and is enraged to hear that the Ludlow cops are calling these latest killings the work not only of a copycat but of an opportunistic drifter passing through town. He could hardly have been responsible for the eerily similar shooting death of two other teenagers, over a decade after he shot Eliza and Travis. Despite what her father claims, Roy is in prison, facing the death penalty. So when her father drunkenly calls one day telling her that Roy has done it again, Greer is less shocked than angry. Realizing that no one was listening to her, she left her small town as soon as she could, finally settling in Chicago to exist more than to live. Her insistence that someone else had to have masterminded the crime earned her only a trip to a therapist to discuss her emotions. Younger daughter Greer worked herself up into a frenzy after the arrest of Roy Mathews, refusing to believe that the sullen, not-too-bright teenager had just up and killed two people for no apparent reason one day. Dad has disappeared into alcoholism, while Mom obsessively cleans their Ludlow, Kansas home. The killer was swiftly apprehended, but the surviving members of Eliza’s family have drifted, unable to cope with their grief. She and her boyfriend Travis Pratt were shot to death while making out in his car. The Dunning family has never recovered from the murder of eldest daughter Eliza.
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