We are sitting in Max’s car, but the engine is off. The only sound is of us both trying to catch our breath. The pocket watch is on my knees, and the blood looks more like rust in the light of day. Max keeps looking over my shoulder, out the window, as if expecting Eve to come along at any moment, but nothing happens.

“Did she see us?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I was running.” His throat moves as he swallows, and his eyes drift to the pocket watch in my lap. “What’s going on, Jessa?”

My fingers tighten on the watch. “I don’t know. But I think…I think something happened to Sean. I don’t think he left.”

“And you think…Caleb?”

“I don’t know, Max,” I say. The lies are bigger than I thought. If he is truly alive, then this is a deception, and he’s done it to all of us. “I showed up at his house the day his mom kicked Sean out, and they’d been fighting. Sean had hit him. Caleb had a mark on his face, and this watch has blood on it. I assumed that’s why his mom kicked him out. But now Sean’s clothes are in the garage, in suitcases. His wedding band and his phone are still there, in the garage. And this.” I hold up the pocket watch. “She’s pulling things back out of Caleb’s boxes. What am I even doing up there?”

“It doesn’t make sense, Jessa,” he says, but his voice is low, unsure. “You think Caleb did something and took off because of it? Where would he go?”

“I don’t know.” I laugh to myself, a hollow, pained sound. “And here I thought he was just meeting up with some girl.”

“What girl?”

“Ashlyn Patterson. From sleepaway camp.”

Max frowns. “He didn’t go to sleepaway camp.”

I pull up her profile on my phone, show him the picture. “I thought this was her, but she said she didn’t know him.”

He shakes his head, then grabs my wrist and pulls it closer. “I know her.”

“How?”

He narrows his eyes. “I don’t know. But I know I’ve seen her before.”

“They were talking at the slopes, last year when we went skiing.”

He wrinkles his nose. Like he’s trying to place her there. Slip her back into focus. “No, no, I remember now. That game we drove to. Remember? The one when you got stranded in the boys’ locker room and Hailey had to bail you out?”

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. The phone call he got, when he left me. I thought it was from his mom, but what if it wasn’t? I try to remember where we had gone. It was up north. Out of the way. Was it her school? Somewhere nearby?

“When did you see her?” I ask, though the words feel like sandpaper coming out.

“With Caleb. After the game. By the locker room. We were leaving, you guys had already said goodbye, and I went back for a drink at the vending machines. I saw the two of them, but he was saying goodbye to her, nothing sketchy or anything. I asked him who it was, and he just said someone he knew growing up. Maybe through his dad?” He shrugged. “I don’t really remember. It didn’t seem important.”

I think about the letter I found, his name on the envelope, with no address—as if it had been left for him somewhere, and not sent. I think of all the secret places Caleb had brought me: the library, the burned-out house, that hike. And then I think of the places he never brought me, but disappeared to: when visiting Terrance in college, the man who showed up for him.

Nothing makes any sense, and I can’t pull the answers out of the air. I open the message, the one from Ashlyn Patterson, and I write: I know that’s a lie. But the message comes back as undeliverable. She’s blocked me from making contact again. My grip tightens on the phone. It’s her. It has to be her.

“How far is this town from here?” I ask Max.

He looks between the phone and me, and he makes a decision. He doesn’t ask any questions. He looks at the clock on the dashboard and says, “We can make it if we leave right now.”

“Then let’s leave right now,” I say.

The longer we drive, the more weight seems to fall around us, until we’re trapped in silence and our own thoughts. “Max,” I say quietly, and he jumps, pulled from whatever dream he’d been running through.

“Yeah?”

“Should we call the police?”

He clenches his jaw. “And say what?”

“That something happened in that house.”

“What happened in the house, Jessa?”

I think about it, really think about it. If something happened in that room, I believe Caleb may be in trouble. I think Eve knew about it, and that’s why she’s been spending so much time in the locked garage, looking for evidence. But I can’t figure out why she has me in that house, if she knows. There’s a piece that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense.

“I don’t know,” I answer Max. “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m wrong.” But it doesn’t feel wrong. The past begins to make more sense, the memories filtered through a different perspective.

“Look,” he says, reaching over the console for my hand. But once he has it, he’s not sure what to do with it, and he drops it again. Caleb is suddenly looming larger, between us in this car. “We’ll talk to Ashlyn and figure out what she knows, and then we’ll decide what to do. Okay?”

I nod, but as we pull into the high school parking lot, I realize the futility of our plan to find Ashlyn. Her school is massive. At least five times the size of our private school.

But Max seems undeterred. He walks up to the front doors, just as school’s letting out, and he starts asking.

“I’m looking for Ashlyn Patterson,” he says. He gets a few shakes of the head, a few tips of the shoulder, a few glances around, mumbled sorrys. But one girl stops and thinks. She makes a show of raising her eyes up under bangs, twisting her mouth, she adds an um for good measure—and I know it’s because of Max. That he is our ticket in, because of the way he looks, and asks kindly, and doesn’t push.

“She’s probably working at the paper.”

“The paper?” Max asks.

“The school paper?”

“Could you show me?” Max says, and the girl looks around for her friends for a moment, then shrugs.

She goes back inside, and Max walks beside her, and I trail behind. “It’s that door, see?” It’s open, and the hall is silent. “Sorry, I really have to go.”

“Thank you,” Max says. She nods. I don’t think she’s even noticed I’m standing here.

Ashlyn’s just inside the classroom, and she’s alone. There’s a large monitor in front of her, and her glasses shine in the reflection—but it’s definitely her. It’s the long blond hair, and the confident posture. A pen rests between her teeth. She doesn’t seem to notice us hovering near the entrance.

I knock once on the open door, and she jumps, the pen dropping from her mouth. “Can I help you?” she asks. It’s obvious she doesn’t know who I am, but she’s working it out. Her eyes flash in vague recognition, and she’s processing it as she stands. I can tell the moment she figures it out. Her body stiffens, her face pales.

“Ashlyn Patterson?” I ask, though I already know it’s her. I’m blocking her exit, and it makes me feel powerful. “We’re here about Caleb.”

She shakes her head, looking between me and Max. “I don’t know any Caleb.”

“I remember you,” Max says. “From a lacrosse game last spring. And she remembers you from a ski trip.”

She looks between the two of us again, presses her lips together, undecided.

“Look,” I say, “we’re just looking for answers. I just want to know how you know him. That’s all.”

“You’re the girlfriend,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“Jessa,” I say, nodding.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she adds, and then she looks away.

“How did you know him, Ashlyn?”

“Look, I just really don’t want to be involved, okay?”

Involved in what? is what I’m thinking. But I can’t just shake it out of her.

“I only want to know how you know him,” I say. “I found your things in his room.” That letter, at least, is a ticket in.

“My things?” she says. “I’ve never even been there.” Then she relents, falling back into her chair, shifting it back and forth so the squeak fills the room. “I met him by accident,” she says, “when he came by my house a few years ago. But I’ve never been to his place.”

“He came by your house, though?”

“Yeah. To see my dad. He’s an estate attorney, has an office out of his home, and Caleb and his mom meet with him once a year or so, to go over finances or something. I don’t know. Anyway, we were young, and we hung out a couple times. But we lived so far away, and I mean, neither of us could drive or anything.” She shrugs. “We just kind of…faded. I was devastated at the time. But it is what it is, right? We were just kids. It was mostly just emails and phone calls, anyway.”

“You never sent him any letters? On paper?”

She frowns. “Letters? No.”

“You didn’t ask him to come see you?”

“No. Not at all. It was the other way around.”

My stomach twists. I hate her answer. That Caleb was the one pursuing. “Then why did you pretend you didn’t know him?” I ask. “You could’ve just said that.”

“I told you. I don’t want to be involved. I did something for him. It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t think anything of it. But now that he’s gone, I don’t know. If anyone finds out, my dad could lose his job.”

“What did you do?”

But she’s already shaking her head, in denial. “I’m not even sure what I showed him, even. It’s just the setup of his trust. I figured he’d seen it before, so what was the harm?” Her hand goes to her mouth. “But now I don’t know. I don’t know what I did. He died a few weeks later, and I’m worried it was related, even though that doesn’t make sense. I’m worried it was somehow because of me.” She covers her face with both hands.

“What’s because of you?” I ask, but I know I’m coming on too strong, because I am. I’m angry, I’m strong, and I want answers.

“It’s probably not,” she adds, taking a deep breath. “It’s probably just because he’s dead, and he was my first boyfriend, and now my dad has to deal with the paperwork once probate’s up, and I’m feeling this weight of guilt. So, you see? I just want nothing to do with it. I don’t want to get pulled in. I’ve got colleges I’m applying for, and I don’t want my name in the news.” She points to the computers. “I’m studying journalism. I mean, the last thing I need is to become part of the news first.”

But I don’t see. I don’t see at all.

“What was he looking for?” I whisper.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. My dad says trusts are funny. They can say whatever the person wants, deciding when the beneficiary is able to get the money themselves. I figured he had already seen it, and was just checking details.” She shrugs. “It looked normal enough to me, though. Pretty basic. Guardian until twenty-five. All the typical stuff.”

“Twenty-five?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Honestly, that’s not so bad. My dad says for some people, it goes a lot longer.”

Caleb was looking at his eighteenth birthday as a way out, but it wasn’t. Still, I didn’t think that would be enough to make him take off, to set something like this in motion.

She takes my arm, and I smell mint from her breath. “Please don’t tell,” she says. I picture Caleb leaning closer, the scent of her enveloping him, the laughter on his face. Her hand is trembling. “My dad will kill me,” she adds. “Listen, Caleb asked to meet me when he was going to be up at our school last May, said he had some questions that he didn’t want my dad to know about. He asked if I could make him a copy of something, or take a picture. I almost did it, but I chickened out. When I saw him, I told him I couldn’t do it. Then he called again at the beginning of the school year. Like, the first weekend, asking if he could stop by. I thought maybe you guys had broken up and he was coming to see me, but when he showed up, he was asking to see the setup of his trust. Caleb had seen the paperwork from his grandparents before, I’m sure. It didn’t seem like a big deal. My dad doesn’t need to know about this.” I can feel she’s close to tears, and I don’t want to see them. They’re tears for herself, not for Caleb, and I have no room for anyone else’s guilt.

But something isn’t sitting right, in her explanation. “You mean his father, not his grandparents,” I say, my voice in a whisper, out of respect for the dead. “The money is from his father.”

She stops crying, shakes her head. “No, his grandparents. He’s got some trust from them.”

“Right, only you’re wrong—it’s from his father.”

“No,” she says, her voice rising, her spine straightening, and I think she’s the type of person who likes being right most of all. “That’s kind of the catch. It skips his father. It goes right to him.”

“What do you mean, it skips his father?”

“Just that. I don’t know why. All I know is that it skips his father.”

“His father is dead,” I say. I picture the suit in Caleb’s closet. The letter opener that’s been passed down. The pictures hidden in a box on a shelf. The thing he was missing in his life, that he slowly let me see.

She scrunches her nose. “His father is not dead. That’s why my dad’s in charge of it in the first place.”

Max is silent as we walk back to the parking lot. He puts a hand on my shoulder near the car, where I’ve frozen.

The dates line up. This is where Caleb disappeared to, that weekend he was supposed to be at the college visit, staying with Terrance. At least part of the time. He took his car and drove up here and asked Ashlyn to see the paperwork. What did he see? What had been set in motion that day?

And then there’s the other issue—the one that feels worse, like I’ve stumbled upon answers only to discover I don’t like what I’ve found. The knowledge that Caleb lied to me from the start. That the moment he told me about his father, rested his forehead against my stomach—a moment that made me feel infinitely close to him—was all a lie. And I’d fallen for a version of him who wasn’t real, who never existed.

That he must’ve had a moment where the truth was right there, so close to the surface, and he looked up in my eyes, and found me lacking.

My phone rings when we’re halfway home, and the name flashes Eve. I pick it up, and the voice on the other end feels closer, more personal. “Jessa?” she asks.

“Yes?” I say.

“Is there a problem?” she says.

I worry that maybe she knows where I am. That she knows there’s nothing but problems. In the silence, she continues, “I thought you’d be here after school.”

I look at the clock, realize that she probably expected me over an hour ago. I look at Max, who shakes his head. She must not have seen my car at his place.

“Yes, sorry,” I say. “I’m running late. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” I need what’s in that room. I need to dig all the way to the bottom, because it’s all that’s left from him.

After another ten minutes of silence, I ask Max, “Is it true, about his dad?”

His hands tighten. “He told me he was dead, too. Ashlyn could be wrong.”

“Right,” I say. But everything twists inside. The more I learn, the less I feel I know. The less certain I am about anything. This person I thought knew me better than anyone, and I hadn’t known anything real about him.

I feel distant, distracted. I look at Max, and wonder who he really is, too.

We park in front of Max’s house, so I can get my car. There’s a pang of worry, that Eve has seen my car here. I don’t want her to know I’ve been with Max all along. But I shake the thought. What are the chances?

“I’m going to show up,” Max says. “I don’t want you there alone with her.”

“Max—”

“I’m not asking for your permission, Jessa.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Just trust me, okay?”

After a long pause, where he stares at me waiting for a response, I slowly nod. “Okay,” I say. Something lurks inside Max’s words, as much as I want to rely on him. And I realize what it is: it’s Caleb. It’s the shadow of him, and all he kept hidden, and everything I thought I understood.

I drive around the block, stare up at the narrow house, trying to see the ghost of Caleb. His mother is waiting, and opens the door even before I knock.

“Where were you, Jessa?” she asks.

“School,” I say.

“Really,” she says, and there’s something in her eyes I can’t decipher. I wonder if she’s seen my car at Max’s place. Of course she must have. But I am bound to the lie, and so I stick to it.

There’s something I’m missing. Something I don’t trust, about anyone. I don’t want to give anything away. It feels like a tightrope, and the answers are dwindling.

“You’re almost done up there,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.

“Today should be the end of it, don’t you think?”

I nod tightly. This is it. My last chance, before all that is Caleb disappears for good.