Chapter 22: Dina's Mother

She was a small woman in a grey cardigan, and she walked down the quarry track alone.

The bikers opened a path for her without a word.

Ronan stood up out of the chalk dust and wiped his face with his sleeve.

"Mom," he said.

She stopped in front of him and looked at his split knuckles and his wet eyes.

"You found her," she said.

"I found her."

She nodded, over and over.

Then she put both arms around his waist and he bent down and held her, the biggest man in the quarry, in front of everyone.

When she let go, she looked at me.

"You're Roz," she said. "He told me on the phone. He said a girl got him to the end of it."

"I'm sorry," I said. It was the only thing I had. "I wore her necklace."

"Did you know?"

"No."

"Then it wasn't yours to be sorry for."

She said it plainly, and it loosened something in my chest that had been tight since the cabin.

I took the silver chain off the flat stone, where it still lay beside my father's urn.

The sheriff had photographed it an hour before.

She nodded to me now, and I put it in Mrs. Broadbent's open hand.

The woman looked down at the D on the clasp.

She turned it over once with her thumb.

"Her father gave her a ring like this when she turned sixteen," she said. "She lost it in a week. She never cared about things."

"He took it from her," Ronan said.

"I know."

She closed her fingers around it.

"Bring me home to her," she said. "Both of you. Not tonight. When it's done."

We told the deputies we'd come back in the morning.

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