Collin began organizing the top bookshelf as he told me that, according to Aunt Taylor, she had run into Royella gambling at Table Mountain. Seeing the pastor’s pious widow at the poker table, whiskey in hand, had made Taylor worry that she was misrepresenting herself to Dad.

I recalled our family conversation during Aunt Taylor’s first morning at Foxglove, when Button had found the snake coiled in the old growth oak as we ate breakfast outside. “Didn’t Royella say she did charity work at Table Mountain?” I asked.

“Well the thing is, she and the pastor were supposed to be doing some work there,” Collin said. He picked up a dusty hardcover and wiped it with his sleeve. “Taylor says that on the website for their church there’s a link to donate money to build a school for the reservation kids. But that doesn’t explain the gambling.”

“But what does that have to do with the owl?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Taylor said she decided she’d better make friends with Royella that day at Table Mountain, you know, for Dad’s sake, to make sure she wasn’t a complete fake. She’s been keeping an eye on her.”

“And?”

“Well, she seems to have a gambling problem.” He crouched to work on one of the lower shelves. “Taylor doesn’t trust her at all.”