I’ve barely moved when a heavy, gloved hand falls to my shoulder.

“There was something I wanted to ask before you go.”

The tone of his voice is oppressive as he says it. It’s chilling. Between my legs, my pelvic floor weakens. Urine seeps into my underpants. I turn reluctantly back to see the shovel rooted to the ground now. Jeffrey leans on it, uses it for support, tugs on the cuff of his gloves to be sure they’re on tight.

“Yes?” I ask, voice quivering.

Headlights veer this way and that through the trees. But they’re in the distance, moving away instead of drawing near.

Where is Will?

Jeffrey tells me that he’s come to talk to me about his dead wife.

“What about her?” I ask, feeling the way my vocal cords vibrate inside of me.

But as he starts to speak of Morgan, a change becomes him. His stance shifts. He gets choked up speaking about Morgan. It’s subtle, a film that covers his eyes, rather than tears that run from his nose and across his cheeks. His eyes glisten in the moonlight, in the glow off the snow.

“There was something wrong with Morgan,” he tells me. “Something had her upset. Scared even. She wouldn’t say what. Did she tell you?”

It seems so obvious, so transparent. I shouldn’t have to be the one to put the idea in his head. But maybe the idea is already there, and he’s only being cunning. Sly as a fox. I think he or his ex-wife had something to do with it. The proof is in her house, in her own confession. But how can I admit to eavesdropping on their conversation in the church sanctuary, to breaking into the other woman’s house and going through her things?

I shake my head. “Morgan told me nothing.”

I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan well enough for her to tell me why she was upset. I don’t tell him that I didn’t know Morgan at all. It’s easy to see that communication wasn’t Jeffrey and Morgan’s strong suit because if it was, one would think he’d already know that Morgan and I weren’t friends.

I ask, “What makes you think she was scared?”

“My company has gone global recently. I’ve spent a great deal of time overseas. It’s been difficult, to say the least. The time away from home, yes, but more so the difficulties of learning a new language, culture, of trying to integrate into a foreign country, succeed at my job. I’d been under a lot of pressure. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he says, apologetically almost. There’s a hint of vulnerability there.

I don’t know what to say to him, and so I say nothing.

I don’t know why he’s telling me this either.

Jeffrey goes on. “I guess I’m just trying to say that I was overworked, burned out. Completely overwhelmed with work. I haven’t been home much lately. Any time spent at home was often beset with jet lag. But something had Morgan upset. I asked what it was. But she was selfless to a fault. She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was nothing. She wouldn’t burden me with whatever it was. I asked,” he admits, saddened. “But I didn’t ask enough.”

It strikes me that this isn’t the face of a madman I see.

This is the face of a grieving widower.

“I heard on the news that there were threatening notes,” I say.

“There were,” he says. “Yes. The police found notes in our home.”

“Forgive me for saying this. It’s not my business. But your ex-wife. Is it possible she had hard feelings about a new woman in your life?”

“You think Courtney did this? Sent the threats, murdered Morgan.” He shakes his head, says decisively, “No. No way. Courtney is the type to fly off the handle, yes. She’s rash. She has a temper. She does stupid things.”

And then he goes on to tell me about some night Courtney came to the island with the sole intent of stealing her own child. She almost got away with it, because she had keys to the home Jeffrey and Morgan shared since it was once her own home. After everyone was asleep, she let herself in, went to their daughter’s bedroom, roused the little girl from sleep. It was Morgan who caught them as they were making their way back outside. Courtney had plane tickets in her possession; she’d somehow already gotten a passport for their girl. She planned to leave the country with their daughter. “Morgan wanted to fight for full custody. She didn’t think Courtney was fit to parent.”

The day at the memorial service comes back to me.

My temper got the best of me.

I was angry.

You can’t blame me for trying to take back what’s mine.

I’m not sorry she’s dead.

Were these words double-edged? Maybe not a confession to murder, but rather a reference to the night she tried to steal her own child.

“Taking a child away from her mother...” I say, letting my voice trail off. What that is—taking a child from her mother—is motive to kill. Except I don’t say it like that. Instead I say, “If anyone ever got between me and my children, I’d be beside myself.”

Jeffrey is resolute. “Courtney isn’t a murderer,” he says. “And the threats Morgan received were...” But he stops there, unable to put into words what exactly the threats were.

“What did the notes say?” I ask hesitantly. I’m not sure I want to know.

There were three notes, Jeffrey tells me. He doesn’t know for certain when they arrived, but he has his assumptions on one. He had watched Morgan make her way to the mailbox one afternoon. It was a Saturday a month or so ago. He was home. He watched out the window as Morgan went down the drive.

“I had a habit of staring at her when she didn’t know I was watching,” he confesses. “It’s because of how beautiful she was. It was easy to do. Morgan,” he tells me, smiling nostalgically at the memory of his wife, “was easy on the eyes. Everyone thought so,” and I remember what Officer Berg said about the men in town having eyes for her. About Will having eyes for her.