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“That’s interesting,” I said. “But it still doesn’t get us any closer to figuring out what any of it has to do with Deadwater Lake or whether anyone was helping Derrek Sidney.”

We’d gone in circles like that for hours. I tried deciphering the marks in Sidney’s copy of the book at least twenty ways. I read the numbered words in order on a single page.

“That whenever molecule, aborted, missing, the, crop.”

I wrote it out on the whiteboard and stood back to read it again.

“It’s gibberish, Mercy,” Dad said.

“Maybe it’s like an instruction from word to word. Like here. Page 217. There are five superscripts. Ten, six, two, twenty-two, one. What if it’s this word marked with ten? Wanderer. Then what if you’re supposed to count six words forward. Never. Then two words forward. Plant-based.”

“It’s still nonsense. Maybe this is over our heads. Maybe we need to call my contact with the FBI back. They have professional codebreakers.”

I shook my head. “Do you really think some sycophant of Derrek Sidney’s had the sophistication to develop a code that could only be deciphered by a professional? Derrek Sidney would have been the one who had to decipher it.”

“Unless Sidney’s the one who developed it and his pen pal had to decipher it.”

“Still,” I said. “My instinct tells me it has to be simpler than that. I feel like it’s staring me in the face. I just can’t get my brain there.”

Dad chuffed. “Welcome to my world, Mercy. It’s like that for me every day now.”

He meant it as light sarcasm. But his words landed on me like bricks.

“Dad.”

“It’s okay,” he said, holding a hand up. “We don’t have to have that conversation today. That’s not what I meant.”

“Maybe we just need a break. We’ve been looking at these words, these phrases, so long they’re starting to lose all meaning for me.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But, honey, there’s another possibility I think we need to reconsider.”

He rose out of his chair. He stood at the whiteboard and grabbed the eraser. With one forceful stroke, he wiped half the board clean. He took two more swipes, leaving it blank and gleaming.

“We’re making an assumption that the witness is telling the truth,” he said. His voice took on a familiar cadence. I’d heard this pattern of speech my entire life. Dad used to rehearse his closing arguments and sometimes his cross-examinations, having my mother role-play the witness. She was good at it. Though my Aunt Viveca had gotten all the accolades, Sandra Baldwin was every bit the actress her tragic sister was.

“We’re talking about Geneva again?” I asked.

“We’re talking about Boone,” he answered. “We already know he lied about how much contact he had with Derrek in those last years. Do we really believe he didn’t know he had this book in his collection?”

“He has explanations for all of it,” I said, feeling uneasy.

“Explanations aren’t answers though,” Dad said. “He has a vested interest in making you believe he’s trying to help. If he’s the one culpable in what happened to those girls, I mean.”

“So then why not just throw me out the first time I went to see him? Why give me access to that storage unit? To these letters? Every lead I have is connected to them now.”

“Maybe he knew the letters alone were useless. Maybe he figured he’d throw you a bone. Make it look like he’s being cooperative. Throw suspicion away from him. He thinks on his feet; I’ll give him that. You find the book. Then, he brings it to you. Again. Good way to throw off suspicion. Mercy, for all we know, Boone’s the one who marked this thing up. He could have done it two days ago if he had wanted. Did you have a chance to look inside it when you pulled it off that bookshelf?”

“No,” I admitted. “The girlfriend stopped me.”

“Right.”

He had a point about all of it. Yet I still had a gut instinct that Boone wasn’t involved.

“The postmarks, though,” I said. “Boone hasn’t lived in or around Helene.”

“The postmark locations are only a theory,” Dad said. “They could still just be a coincidence. And if I’m right that they’re a red herring. If Boone just gave them to you knowing they had no connection to anything, then it doesn’t really matter who sent them or from where.”

“Except I don’t believe that,” I said. “There are too many references to lines in The Traveler’s Guide. They’re connected somehow. I’m sure of it.”