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She offered the answer anyway. The words sounded scripted. “I will not go into detail, Hazel, but I’m going to call what I have a mental health disorder, which, for some people isn’t debilitating, but for me it isn’t good. Sometimes I deal with psychosis and violent behavior, and that’s why David will sit here with us. Lots of people do much better than I do on medication. In fact, many people can function in the real world just fine. I’m not what you could call functional. Medication has changed over the years, but I’ve been unwell for so long that there’s not a lot of hope for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes locked on mine. “I don’t bother with apologies. Ask me what you want. Get to the nitty gritty. Let’s not waste time feeling sorry for ourselves and the impossibility of having a relationship. You can deal with understanding things if you want on your own time. I’ve come to terms with everything.”

I nodded. “Right. Okay. Um. What happened during some classes my father taught all those years ago, shortly before he disappeared?”

“The sheriff asked me the same.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I had no idea, and at that time, I didn’t. Since Sheriff Calloway’s visit, some things have come back to me. David and I have been taking notes.” She looked at him. “David, let’s give those to Hazel now.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Susan.”

“I don’t care what you think. We are giving the notes to Hazel.”

David sighed and made his way over to a simple desk. Made with blond wood, the legs were spindly and there was one drawer in the middle of the slim top. David opened the drawer and gathered a yellow notebook. He held it for a moment.

“Give it to her.”

“I haven’t cleaned it up.”

“It doesn’t matter. She can sift through it herself to find the truth.” Susan looked at me. “There is truth in there. Horrible things happened, but my memory isn’t to be completely trusted.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure how I could figure out the difference, but it was something.

David handed me the notebook. As much as I wanted to read it, I was also afraid to take it. Only five minutes earlier, I hadn’t known this woman. It was like I’d been forced to swallow all the years that had passed and deal with the indigestion, while she’d tasted them along the way.

“Read the first few lines aloud,” Susan commanded.

I took the notebook and looked at the first page. There were notes down the page, done in blue ink. But there were also illustrations made with sharp points and unintelligible scribbles. There was no way to see anything clearly. Just looking at the page was unsettling.

I cleared my throat. “Rogue taxidermy! Rogue taxidermy. That’s what he called it. It was good at first, but he pushed it too far and he cracked …” I looked up at Susan. “Cracked.”

“Went psychotic. Lost his mind. I drew sketches.”

“Who?”

“Keep reading.”

I never understood if mental illness contributed to creativity or if creativity could just be a part of an ill mind, but Susan was a gifted artist. I knew who the sketches were supposed to be.

My father was at the top of the page. His dark hair was always short, but the front seemed to fall onto his forehead. His dark eyes appeared angry in the sketch, his thin lips even tighter than normal.

Minnie looked almost the same—a beautiful, exotic young woman. Susan had drawn her with a hesitant smile and big eyes.

But everyone else had been given less than happy expressions. Still, though, I could recognize them.

Jeff Ranke looked like the younger version of the grease monkey that I knew now. Thalia had been stunning, even with a sour expression. I remembered Silas now even better and felt a wave of sadness over the fact that the first set of bones had belonged to him and, from all indications, he’d been living as a homeless man in Tucson. Danielle had been cute—but her decades-long constant frown and attitude toward everyone else had made her only unpleasant to be around, no matter what she might look like. I didn’t remember her being cute. Johnny Clark, his long brown hair kind of greasy, just like I remembered it. From this vantage point, I couldn’t understand why I thought he was cute. It wasn’t that he wasn’t, but his look did scream rebel.

I remembered the people almost like the sketches in front of me, but it was the last sketch on the bottom corner of the page that I thought the most interesting. It was the most detailed rendering and illustrated a beautiful woman.

“You are good at self-portraits.”

Susan’s focus was on me, but her foot had started tapping nervously. “That’s not me, Hazel. That’s your mom.”

I was tired of all these emotions coming at me like horror movie jumps. There was no time for a discussion about my mother, but I sure did think she’d been pretty.