He takes a step closer to me and says, “Look, Dr. Foust. Between you and me, I don’t think you’re capable of murder. But the truth is that spouses don’t always make the most viable alibis. They’re subject to bias; there’s a motive to lie. The fact that you and your husband both claim you were at home when Morgan was killed isn’t an impenetrable alibi. A prosecutor may see right through that. Add to that witness statements, and we have ourselves a bit of a problem.”

I say nothing.

“If you help me, I will do everything I can to help you.”

“What do you want from me?” I ask.

He says, “The truth.”

But I’ve already told him the truth. “I’ve been nothing but honest with you,” I say.

“You’re certain of that?” he asks.

I tell him I am. He stares awhile.

And then, in time, he tips his hat at me, and he leaves.

SADIE

At night I find it hard to sleep. I spend most of the restless night awake, on alert, waiting for Imogen to creep into the bedroom. Every sound worries me, thinking it’s the opening of a bedroom door, footsteps padding across the floor. It’s not. It’s just the house showing its age: water through pipes, the furnace quickly dying. I try to talk myself down, reminding myself that Imogen only came into our room the one time because of something I’d done. It wasn’t unprovoked. I tell myself she wouldn’t come again, but that doesn’t come close to allaying my concerns.

I’m also thinking about the photograph Officer Berg showed to me. I wonder if, in the photograph, Will was consoling Morgan because she was already sad? Or if Will had said or done something to make her sad?

What power would my husband have over this woman to make her sad?

In time, morning comes. Will goes to start breakfast. I wait upstairs as Imogen, just down the hall, gets ready for school. I hear her moving about before she clomps down the stairs, her feet heavy and embittered, spiteful.

Downstairs, I hear her talking to Will. I move into the upstairs hall to listen. But, try as I might, I can’t make out their words.

The front door opens and then slams closed. Imogen is gone.

Will is standing in the kitchen when I come downstairs. The boys are at the table, eating a French toast breakfast that he’s made.

“Do you have a second?” Will asks, and I follow him from the room to where we can speak in private. His face is inexpressive, his long hair pulled back into a tidy bun. He leans against a wall; he holds my gaze. “I spoke to Imogen this morning,” he tells me, “about your concerns,” and it’s his word choice that gets on my nerves. Your, as in mine. Not our concerns. I hope he didn’t approach the conversation with Imogen that same way. Because then she’d hate me more than she already does.

“I asked her about the photograph you said you saw on her phone. I wanted to see it.”

He chooses his words carefully. That’s not lost on me. You said you saw.

“And?” I ask, sensing his hesitation. He drops his gaze. Imogen has done something, I think. “Did she show you the picture of Alice?” I ask, hoping that Will, too, saw the same thing I saw. The step stool standing vertical, far out of reach of Alice’s dangling feet. The half of the night I wasn’t kept awake thinking about Will and Morgan, I was thinking about this. How a woman could spring five feet from a stool and land with her head in a noose.

“I looked at her phone,” Will says. “I looked through all the pictures. Three thousand of them. There was nothing there like what you described, Sadie,” he says.

My blood pressure spikes. I feel hot all of a sudden and angry. “She deleted it,” I say rather matter-of-factly. Because of course she did. “It was there, Will. Did you check the recently deleted folder?” I ask him, and he tells me he did check the deleted folder. It wasn’t there either.

“Then she permanently deleted it,” I say. “Did you ask her about it, Will?”

“I did, Sadie. I asked her what happened to the photograph. She said there never was a photograph. She couldn’t believe you’d make something like this up. She was upset. She thinks you don’t like her.”

At first I say nothing. I can only stare, struck dumb by his statement. I search Will’s eyes.

Does he, too, think I made this up?

Tate calls to Will from the kitchen. He’s hungry for more French toast. Will goes to the kitchen. I follow along. “She’s lying, you know?” Otto, at the table, gives me a look as I say it.

Will dishes another slice of French toast onto Tate’s plate. He says nothing. His lack of a reply hits a raw nerve. Because if he doesn’t believe Imogen lied, then he’s suggesting I did.

“Look,” he says, “let me think on this a little while, figure out what to do. I’ll see if there is a way to recover deleted photos.”

Will hands me my pills and I swallow them with a swig of coffee. He’s dressed in a Henley and cargo pants because he teaches today, his workbag packed and waiting by the door for him to go. He’s reading a new book these days. It’s there, jutting out from his workbag on the floor. A hardcover with a dust jacket, the spine of which is orange.

I wonder if Erin’s photograph is inside this book, too.

Tate stares sideways at me from the table. Though I’ve tried to apologize, he’s still mad at me for what happened the other day with the doll and his game. I decide to pick up a new Lego kit for him today. Legos make everything better.

Otto and I go. He’s quieter than usual in the car. I see in his eyes that something is wrong. He knows more than he lets on, about the tension in Will’s and my marriage, about Imogen. Of course he does. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy. He isn’t stupid. “Is everything okay?” I ask. “Anything you want to talk about?”