As I contemplate a third go-round of the windows and doors, Will calls to me from the top of the stairs, asks if I’m coming to bed anytime soon. I tell him yes, I’m coming, as I give the front door a final tug. I leave on a living room lamp to give the pretense we’re awake.

I climb the stairs and settle into bed beside Will. But I can’t sleep. All night, I find myself lying in bed, thinking about what Officer Berg said, how the little Baines girl was the one to find Morgan dead. I wonder how well Tate knows this little girl. Tate and she are in class together, but that doesn’t mean they’re friends.

I find that I’m unable to shake from my mind the image of the six-year-old girl standing over her mother’s lifeless body. I wonder if she was scared. If she screamed. If the killer lurked nearby, getting off on the sound of her scream. I wonder how long she waited for the ambulance to arrive, and if, in that time, she feared for her own life. I think of her, alone, finding her mother dead in the same way that Imogen found her own mother dead. Not the same, no. Suicide and murder are two very different things. But still, it’s unfathomable for me to think what these girls have seen in their short lives.

Beside me, Will sleeps like a rock. But not me. Because as I lie there unsleeping I start to wonder if the killer is still on the island with us, or if he’s gone by now.

I slip from bed at the thought of it, my heart gaining speed. I have to be sure the kids are okay. The dogs, on their own beds in the corner of the room, take note and follow along. I tell them to hush as Will rolls over in bed, pulling the sheet with him.

On the wooden floors, my bare feet are cold. But it’s too dark to feel around for slippers. I leave them behind. I step out of the bedroom, moving down the narrow hall.

I go to Tate’s room first. There, in the doorway, I pause. Tate sleeps with the bedroom door open, a night-light plugged in to keep monsters at bay. His small body is set in the middle of the bed, a stuffed Chihuahua held tightly between his arms. Peacefully he sleeps, his own dreams uninterrupted by thoughts of murder and death, unlike mine. I wonder what he dreams of. Maybe puppy dogs and ice cream.

I wonder what Tate knows of death. I wonder what I knew of death when I was seven years old, if I knew much of anything.

I move on to Otto’s room. There’s a roof outside Otto’s window, a single-story slate roof that hangs over the front porch. A series of climbable columns hold it upright. Getting in or out wouldn’t be such a difficult task in the middle of the night.

My feet instinctively pick up pace as I cross the hall, telling myself Otto is safe, that certainly an intruder wouldn’t climb to the second floor to get in. But in that moment, I can’t be so sure. I turn the handle and press the door silently open, terrified of what I’ll find on the other side. The window open, the bed empty. But it’s not the case. Otto is here. Otto is fine.

I stand in the doorway, watching for a while. I take a step closer for a better look, holding my breath so I don’t wake him. He looks peaceful, though his blanket has been kicked to the end of the bed and his pillow tossed to the floor. His head lies flat on the mattress. I reach for the blanket and draw it over him, remembering when he was young and would ask me to sleep with him. When I did, he’d toss a heavy arm across my neck and hold me that way, not letting go the entire night. He’s grown up too fast. I wish for it back.

I go to Imogen’s room next. I set my hand on the handle and sluggishly turn, careful not to make any noise. But the handle doesn’t turn. The door is locked from the inside. I can’t check on her.

I turn away from the door and inch down the stairs. The dogs follow on my heels, but I move far too slowly for their liking. At some point, they bypass me and dash down the rest of the steps, cutting through the foyer for the back door. Their nails click-clack on the wooden floors like typewriter keys.

I pause before the front door and glance out the sidelight window. From this angle, I catch a glimpse of the Baineses’ house. There’s activity going on even at this late hour. Light floods the inside of it, a handful of people milling about inside. Police on a quest. I wonder what they’ll find.

The dogs whine at me from the kitchen, stealing my attention away from the window. They want to go outside. I follow them, opening the sliding glass door, and they go rushing out. They make a beeline for the corner of the yard, where they’ve recently begun digging divots in the grass. The incessant digging has become their latest compulsion and also my pet peeve. I clap my hands together to get them to stop.

I brew myself a cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table. I look around for things to do. There’s no point in going back to bed because I know I won’t sleep. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed, restless, worrying about things I can’t do anything about.

On the edge of the table sits a book Will has been reading, a true crime novel with a bookmark thrust in the center of it.

I take the book into the living room, turn on a lamp and settle myself on Alice’s marigold sofa to read. I spread an afghan over my lap. I open the book. By accident Will’s bookmark comes tumbling out, falling to the floor beside my feet.

“Shit,” I say, reaching down for the bookmark, feeling guilty that I’ve lost Will’s page.

But the guilt only lasts so long before it’s replaced with something else. Jealousy? Anger? Empathy? Or maybe surprise. Because the bookmark isn’t the only thing that’s fallen out of the pages of the book. Because there’s also a photo of Erin, Will’s first fiancée, the woman he was supposed to marry instead of me.

My gasp is audible. My hand comes to a stop inches above her face, my heart hastening.

Why is Will hiding a photograph of Erin inside this book? Why does Will still have this photograph at all?

The photo is old, twenty years maybe. Erin looks to be about eighteen or nineteen in it. Her hair is wild, her smile carefree. I stare at the picture, into Erin’s eyes. There’s a pang of jealousy because of how beautiful she is. How magnetic.

But how can I be jealous of a woman who is dead?