It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.

I've always been fascinated, obsessed even, with books and TV shows about unsolved murders, cold cases, forensic science, mysteries, and so on. Many times when I get inspiration for my work, it's from something in one of these books or TV shows, or perhaps some newspaper article about a specific case.

It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.

He spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between his words.

The room was darker and smelled of evergreen, as though my mother had been dreaming of trees.