He wanted to believe Molly when she had said she hadn’t known Howard but her body language betrayed her. Why had she lied to him and why had she fled his presence? He replayed their conversation in his mind, stopping at the point where she said he should keep the house. He hadn’t considered ever living here, but the last few days, he had felt more alive than he had since Sean’s death. Even before his son had died, he had felt disconnected. It was all the undercover work. No matter how hard he tried, he had felt like he was losing himself in the role. The one thing that had anchored him to his real life had been Sean. Sam paused in front of the bookcase and reached for the photo album, pulling it from the slot. Angling the spine across the edge of the mantel, he flipped it open to a random page. Sean grinned out at him, his little body coated in sand, a blue plastic bucket in one hand and a matching shovel in the other. Beside him was a lump of sand with a few sticks poking out of the top.
