Is there anything you haven’t told us about your relationship with Taryn?

As he lay in bed, Loomis’s words were on a M?bius strip, continuously running through Jack’s brain. The only other time he’d been interrogated by the police was when he was twelve years old and had shoplifted a cheap bracelet at the mall for a Mother’s Day gift. After a stern warning, the police officer had let him go. He had been terrified by the encounter and had never again shoplifted.

He was three decades older now and still every bit as terrified by the police.

Thanks to Cody Atwood, they knew Taryn was in love with him. They knew about the Amherst conference. It wasn’t so much the questions they’d asked that rattled him as the damning blankness of their expressions. He’d seen Charlie wear that same look, an unforgiving poker-player’s face that could make any suspect squirm. A dead-eyed stare that seemed to cut straight to your soul. With her intimidating stare, Detective Loomis had telegraphed that same authority.

Is there anything you haven’t told us about your relationship with Taryn?

Loomis had said they were “exploring all possibilities,” and one of those possibilities was murder. That was why they were in his office. They were there to scare him into confessing to a crime he’d never committed.

Or had he?

That terrible possibility struck him as he lay in bed. What if he had done it? The night Taryn had died, he’d gulped down wine and chased it with Ativan to help him sleep. Ever since the Christmas when that same combination had caused him to take a midnight drive that he’d never remembered, he had avoided mixing the two. But that night, after Taryn had texted him she was pregnant, he’d been desperate for sleep. Had he taken another late-night drive without remembering it? Was he, deep in some reptilian part of his brain, capable of murder?

As soon as Maggie went downstairs to make coffee the next morning, he grabbed his iPad from the nightstand. Quickly he scanned local sites for any updates on the investigation.

The headlines still covered Taryn’s death as a probable suicide, buttressing the story with articles about the growing number of young people who killed themselves and how one in five college students was so stressed out that they considered ending their life. One piece listed the possible causes: academic pressures, physical and mental health problems, failed relationships, loneliness.

They’d neglected to include one more cause: impregnated and abandoned by one’s professor.

He was relieved to read that Taryn’s phone had not been located, but it was only a matter of time before the police subpoenaed her mobile carrier and gained access to her text messages—and his.

He glanced at the night table, where the bottle of Ativan was still sitting. How many had he taken that night? He couldn’t remember.

He googled Ativan and clicked on a drug-advice website.

Ativan (lorazepam) is an antianxiety agent (benzodiazepines, tranquilizer) used for the relief of anxiety, agitation and irritability, and insomnia and to calm people with mania, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder . . .

Adverse Reactions: Ativan may cause the following reactions: clumsiness, dizziness, sleepiness, unsteadiness, agitation, disorientation, depression, parasomnia, amnesia . . .

Parasomnia. Sleepwalking. Taking nocturnal trips without awareness or recall.

The night Taryn had died, he’d sat alone in the dark living room, sipping pinot grigio just to calm his nerves. By the time he’d finally climbed the stairs to bed, that wine bottle had been empty. Even then, he couldn’t fall asleep and had reached for the Ativan to knock him out. The next morning he’d awakened alone with a megaton hangover and Maggie already off to work.

He scrolled down the page and clicked on another link about Ativan. It was a site featuring true-crime cases, and what he read there drove an icicle through his heart.

. . . the defendant had no memory of the hours before the killing. He recalled that he took ten milligrams of Ativan, was unable to sleep, and took an additional pill. “The next thing I remember,” he testified, “was awakening with handcuffs on my wrists.”

He had stabbed his wife more than twenty times.

Maggie was sitting at the kitchen counter, watching TV, when he came downstairs. She looked up and frowned at him.

“You look exhausted.”

“I had a bad night—couldn’t get to sleep.” He poured a cup of coffee and took a shaky gulp. “What are you watching?”

“The news. It’s about your student, Taryn Moore. The one who came to see me for a physical.”

He took another nervous sip of coffee and tried to keep his voice steady. “What’re they saying?”

“They still don’t know why she killed herself. They said she’d been accepted into the doctoral program and was looking forward to that. You must have helped her with the application. I mean, you were her adviser, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So you would have known her pretty well.”

His chest tightened. “Meaning what?”

“Did you see any warning signs? She must have confided something about her personal life. They said she’d recently broken up with a boyfriend. Did you have any clue how distraught she was?”

“She, uh, may have mentioned the breakup. But it seemed to me she was moving on with her life. Going to grad school and all.”

Maggie said, “She was in perfect health. Smart, gorgeous, her whole life ahead of her. It’s just so hard to understand.”

Casually, he crossed to the coffeepot to refill his cup. “What do the police say?”

“The reporter said they haven’t ruled out the possibility of foul play.”

“Foul play? They said that?”

With the remote, Maggie flicked through the channels and stopped at NECN, where the story was now being aired. He felt a small shock at the photo of Taryn smiling radiantly, her eyes bright and daring, her hair lit by the sun. The shot shifted to Detective Frances Loomis as a reporter asked her: “So this is still an active investigation? Could it be something other than suicide?”

“The manner of death is still to be determined by the medical examiner,” Loomis answered.

Maggie muted the television. “Did you know the girl’s boyfriend? The one she broke up with?”

“No. I mean, she did tell me they’d broken up.”

“What did she say about him?”

“Why does it matter?”

She glanced at him. “Why are you so jumpy?”

“Look, this whole thing is kind of upsetting to me. Can we not talk about it?” He looked at his phone, scanning the latest emails, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. No new accusations, no anonymous threats.

The TV screen again filled with the image of Detective Loomis’s poker-player face. Maggie turned up the volume just as the reporter asked: “Is there any indication this isn’t a suicide?”

“I have no further comment at this time.”

Maggie shut off the TV and looked at him. “That detective is being weirdly noncommittal, don’t you think? Could it have been murder?”

“What makes you even think that?”

“It’s just the way she answered the question. Very cagey. Oh well.” Maggie took her coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it. “I’m sure the police are checking out the big three.”

“The big three?”

“Like they talk about on true-crime shows. It’s the three pillars of guilt that police always look for in a murder investigation: motive, means, and opportunity.”

Motive, means, and opportunity. Jack was already at one and climbing.

CHAPTER 39

FRANKIE

The twins are once again going out for the night, and from the kitchen, where Frankie sits with her laptop and papers, she can hear her daughters chattering in their bedroom about which skirt and which shoes to wear, and should the lipstick be red or pink? At eighteen, the twins are old enough to choose their own clothes and their own boyfriends, and even if Frankie doesn’t approve of their choices, she tries to keep her objections to herself. Forbidden fruit is the sweetest of all; the travails of the Capulets and Montagues taught every parent that much. Frankie blocks out the twins’ inane debate of hair up or hair down. Instead she focuses on the typed pages spread out across her kitchen table. Here is the essay that Taryn Moore wrote in the weeks before her death. Might it contain clues to the turmoil in her own life? The document is still just a draft, with Taryn’s handwritten corrections scratched in the margins.

HELL HATH NO FURY: VIOLENCE AND THE SCORNED WOMAN

Stories about women betrayed by men abound in both Greek mythology and classical literature (Ariadne, Queen Dido), commonly ending in death for the women, often by their own hands in piteous acts of self-destruction. Some, however, like Medea, choose an alternate path: vengeance . . .