Chapter One
The little girls who found the body of the missing boy were not angels, although that is how the newspaper described them, the following morning, beneath the headline. I saw the photo, after all, and the seven girls were only girls. They had no haloes or transparent wings. They had no heavenly warmth or sweet, scarless faces kissed individually by God. What the girls did have were muddy pantlegs and boots; bright jackets buttoned against the wind of a Sunday hiking trip; name tags in crooked calligraphy made just that morning by their Lutheran youth group sponsor. Teresa and Joy, Maura Kay, Mary Anne. Two Jennifers and a Missy. When I close my eyes, I picture the girls stepping back, a warped semicircle, as the body of the murdered boy, his bones and tattered flannels, alters their lives forever. Their hands folded clumsily for prayer. Their seven mouths a silent chorus of ohs.
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