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It was funny how quickly Kate Wise’s attitude had changed. When she had spent a year in retirement, she’d done everything she could to avoid gardening. Gardening, knitting, bridge clubs—and even book clubs—she had avoided like the plague. They had all seemed like cliché things that retired women did.

But a few months back in the FBI saddle had done something to her. She was not so naïve to think that it had reinvented her. No, it had simply reinvigorated her. She had purpose again, a reason to look forward to the next day.

So maybe that’s why she found it okay that she had now resorted to gardening as a pastime. It wasn’t relaxing, as she had thought it would be. If anything, it made her anxious; why put the time and energy into planting something if you were working against the weather to make sure it stayed alive? Still, there was a joy in it—putting something into the ground and seeing the fruits of it over time.

She’d started with flowers—daisies and bougainvilleas at first—and then went on to planting a little veggie garden in the back right corner of her yard. That’s where she was currently mounding dirt over a tomato plant and slowly coming to the realization that she had not had any interest in gardening until she had become a grandmother.

She wondered if it had something to do with the evolution of her nurturing nature. She’d had friends and books tell her that there was something different about being a grandmother—something that a woman never truly tapped into while serving as a mother.

Her daughter, Melissa, had assured her that she had been a good mother. It was an assurance that Kate needed from time to time, given the way she had spent her career. She had admittedly put career over family for far too long and she counted herself lucky that Melissa had not ever resented her for it—except for a period after she had lost her father.

Ah, the one downside to gardening, Kate thought as she got to her feet and dusted off her hands and knees. Thoughts tend to wander. And when that happens, the past starts creeping in, uninvited.

She left the garden, walking across the backyard of her Richmond, Virginia, home and to the back porch. She was careful to kick off her dirt-smeared Keds at the back door. She also dropped her gloves beside them, not wanting to get any dirt in the house. She’d spent the last two days getting the house clean. She was babysitting Michelle, her granddaughter, tonight and even though Melissa wasn’t a neat freak, Kate wanted to have the place sparkling clean. It had been almost thirty years since she’d been in the company of a baby and she didn’t want to take any chances.

She glanced at the clock and frowned. She was expecting company in fifteen minutes. That was yet another negative aspect of gardening: time easily slipped away from you.

She freshened up in the bathroom and then went to the kitchen to put a fresh pot of coffee on. It was about halfway through percolating when the doorbell rang. She answered right away, happy as always to see the two women she had been spending a few hours with at least twice a week over the last year and a half or so.

Jane Patterson stepped through the doorway first, carrying a plate of pastries. They were homemade Danishes and had won the Carytown Cooks contest for two years straight. Clarissa James came in behind her with a large bowl of freshly sliced fruit. They were both dressed in cute outfits that would work either at a brunch at a friend’s house or casual shopping—which was something they both did quite a bit of.

“You’ve been gardening again, haven’t you?” Clarissa asked as they set their food down in the kitchen island.

“How can you tell?” Kate asked.

Clarissa pointed to Kate’s hair, just below the shoulders where it came to a tapered end. Kate reached back and found that she had missed a bit of stray dirt that had somehow ended up in her hair. Clarissa and Jane chuckled at this as Jane took the plastic wrap off of her Danishes.

“Laugh all you want,” Kate said. “You won’t be when those tomato vines are loaded down.”

It was a Friday morning, which automatically made it a good one. The three women situated themselves around Kate’s kitchen island, sitting on barstools and eating their brunch and drinking coffee. And while the company, the food, and the coffee were all good, it was still hard to overlook the missing piece.

Debbie Meade was no longer a part of the group. After her daughter had died, one of three victims of a killer Kate had taken down in the end, Debbie and her husband, Jim, had moved. They were living somewhere out near the beach in North Carolina. Debbie would send pictures of the coast from time to time, just to jokingly rub it in. They had been living there for two months now and seemed to be happy—to be moving on from the tragedy.

The conversation was mostly light and pleasant. Jane talked about how her husband was eyeing retirement next year and had already started planning to write a book. Clarissa shared news about both of her kids, now in their mid-twenties, and how they’d both recently received promotions.

“Speaking of kids,” Clarissa said, “how is Melissa doing? She loving motherhood?”

“Oh yes,” Kate said. “She’s absolutely insane about her little baby girl. A little baby girl that I will be babysitting tonight, in fact.”

“First time?” Jane asked.

“Yes. It’s the first time Melissa and Terry are going somewhere without the baby. Like an actual overnight thing.”

“Has Grandma Mode kicked in yet?” Clarissa asked.

“I don’t know,” Kate said with a smile. “I guess we’ll find out tonight.”

“You know,” Jane said, “you could go back in time and babysit like I used to in high school. I’d bring my boyfriend over with me and as soon as the kids went to bed…”

“That’s pretty disturbing,” Kate said.

“Do you think Allen would be up for it, though?” Clarissa asked.

“I don’t know,” Kate answered, trying to imagine Allen with a baby. They had been dating seriously ever since Kate and her new partner, DeMarco, had wrapped the serial case right here in Richmond—the same case that had taken Debbie Meade’s daughter. There had been no real talk of the future; they hadn’t slept together yet and rarely got physical at all. She was enjoying her time with him, though, but the thought of bringing him into the grandmother part of her life made her uncomfortable.

“Things still going well with you two?” Clarissa asked.

“I think so. The whole dating thing still seems weird to me. I’m too old to date, you know?”

“Hell no,” Jane said. “Don’t get me wrong…I love my husband, my kids, and my life in general. But I’d give anything to be back on that dating scene for just a while, you know? I miss it. Meeting new people, sharing firsts…”

“Yeah, I guess that is pretty nice,” Kate conceded. “Allen finds the idea of dating strange, too. We have fun together but it’s…it gets sort of weird when things start leaning towards the romantic end of things.”

“Blah blah,” Clarissa said. “But do you think of him as your boyfriend?”

“Are we really having this conversation?” Kate asked, starting to feel herself blushing a bit.

“Yes,” Clarissa said. “Us old married ladies need to live vicariously through you.”

“And that also goes for your sort-of job,” Jane said. “How’s that going?”

“No calls for about two weeks, and the last one was just to help with some research. Sorry, girls…it’s not as adventurous as you’re hoping it is.”

“So are you back to being retired?” Clarissa asked.

“Basically. It’s complicated.”

That comment ended the questioning as they delved back into local topics—upcoming movies, a music festival in town, construction on the interstate, and so on. But Kate’s mind had gotten snagged on the topic of work. It was comforting to know that the bureau was still considering her as a resource but she had been hoping for a more active role after she had tied things up with the last case. But so far, she’d only heard from Deputy Director Duran a single time, and that was to get a performance review on DeMarco.

She knew how strange it seemed to her friends that she was still technically an active agent while also leaning into her role as a grandmother. Hell, it was strange to her as well. Throw in a slowly blossoming relationship with Allen and she supposed her life was quite interesting to them.

Honestly, she counted herself lucky. She’d be fifty-six years old at the end of the month and she knew that many women her age would be envious of the life she lived. She always told herself this when she felt the pressing need to be more active at work. And some days, it worked.

And as it just so happened, with her granddaughter coming to visit for the first time since her birth, today was one of those days.

***

One thing that made it difficult to balance her new role as grandmother with her desire to get her hands deep into another case was trying to think like a grandmother. That afternoon, she left her house and walked down to some of the thrifty little shops in the Carytown district of Richmond. She felt like she had to get Michelle a gift to celebrate her first overnight stay at Grandma’s house.

It was hard to push sidearms and suspects aside to focus on stuffed animals and onesies instead. But as she checked out a few shops, it became somewhat easier. She found that she actually enjoyed shopping for her granddaughter, even though she wasn’t even two months old yet and would, honestly, not care about any gift she got. She found it hard not to snatch up every cute thing she found and buy it. After all, wasn’t it the responsibility of a grandmother to spoil her grandchildren?

As she paid for her purchases at the third shop she visited, she received a text. She wasted no time in checking it. Over the last few weeks, she’d had a small hope every time she got a call or a text, thinking it might Duran or someone else within the bureau. She mentally scolded herself when she was disappointed to find that it was not the bureau, but Allen. Once she got over the sting of not being called upon by the bureau again, she realized that she was happy to hear from him—was always happy to hear from him, in fact.

“Allen, you have to help me,” she joked as she answered the phone. “I’m shopping for Michelle and everything I see, I want to buy for her. Is that normal?”

“I don’t know,” Allen said. “Neither of my sons have settled down and made me a grandpa yet.”

“Take it from me. Start saving up.”

Allen chuckled, a sound that Kate was growing to like quite a bit. “So tonight’s the big night, huh?”

“It is. And I know I raised a kid already and I know what to expect, but I’m a little terrified.”

“Ah, you’ll be great. You want to talk terrified…I’m going out with my boys for drinks tonight. And I haven’t had more than two drinks in a single sitting in about five years.”

“Have fun with that.”

“I was wondering if you might want to get together tomorrow for dinner. We can share our survival stories of tonight.”

“I’d like that. You want to come by my place at seven or so?”

“Sounds like a plan. You have fun tonight. Is little Michelle sleeping through the night yet?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Ouch,” Allen said, and ended the call.

Kate pocketed her phone, juggling her bags of purchases as she did. She smiled in spite of herself. She was standing in the sunshine in her favorite part of town, having just gone shopping for a two-month-old granddaughter, whom she was babysitting tonight. Given the way her day was going, did she really want the bureau to call at all?

She was walking back to her home—a three-block walk from where she had taken Allen’s call—when she saw a little girl with a My Little Pony T-shirt. She was walking with her mother hand in hand, just a few feet ahead of her, traveling in their direction. She was five or six years old, her blonde hair up in a ponytail only a mother’s care could create. She had blue eyes and a sharp end to her nose that looked rather pixie-like. And it was that feature that sent a spike of despair through Kate’s heart.

An image flashed through her mind, a little girl who looked almost identical to this one. But in this image, the little girl had dirt and grime on her face, and she was crying. The lights of police cars flashed behind her.

The image was so strong that it caused Kate to stop walking for a moment. She tore her eyes away from the girl, not wanting to appear creepy or strange. She clung to that image in her head and did her best to find the memory associated with it. It came to her gradually and when it did, it unrolled itself slowly, as if she were reading the case report.

Five-year-old girl, found three days after reported missing. Stored in a fishing cabin in Arkansas with the dead bodies of her parents. The parents were the fifth and sixth victims of a serial killer that had terrorized Arkansas for the better part of four months…a killer Kate had eventually taken down, but only after he had claimed a total of nine people.

Kate was aware that she was suddenly standing as still as a statue on the street but couldn’t seem to move. That case had haunted her for a while. So many dead ends, so many false leads. She had been running around in circles, unable to find the killer while he continued to add to his body count. God only knew what he had planned for that little girl.

But you saved her, she told herself. In the end, you saved her.

Kate slowly started to walk again. It was not the first time a random image from her past work had slammed itself across her mind and caused her to zone out. Sometimes they came casually, albeit out of nowhere. But there were other times when they came on strong and fast, like a post-traumatic stress flashback.

The image of the girl from Arkansas was somewhere in between. And Kate was thankful for that. That particular case had nearly caused her to step down as an agent back in 2009. It had been soul-shattering, enough for Kate to request two weeks off from work. And all of a sudden, for just a split second while walking back home with gifts for her granddaughter in her hand, Kate felt like she had been pushed back in time.

Nearly ten years had passed since she had rescued that girl. Kate wondered where she was—wondered if she had outlived the trauma.

“Ma’am?”

Kate blinked, jumping a bit at the sound of an unfamiliar voice in front of her. There was a teenage boy standing in front her. He looked concerned, as if he wasn’t sure if he should be standing there or running away.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look…I don’t know. Sick. Like you’re about to pass out or something.”

“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I’m good. Thanks.”

The kid nodded and carried on his way. Kate started walking forward again, ripped out of some hole in the past that she assumed had not yet quite closed up. And as she drew closer and closer to home, she started to wonder just how many of those holes from her past had been left uncovered.

And if the ghosts of her past would continue to haunt her until she, too, became a ghost.