“Sure,” Roux said, exactly the way she’d said it when I’d asked if she’d read The House of Mirth. Agreeing, even though both people in the conversation knew that it was bull.

“I would have,” I insisted. “But he’s what, sixteen? It’s fine. He and Maddy eat popcorn and talk about tastemakers, which is apparently a real job now, and listen to music. Nobody’s drinking, nobody’s high, nobody’s getting pregnant. Not on my watch.”

Roux’s arms were crossed, but she gave me a grudging nod. “I told him not to get embedded. I’m here on business, and I don’t want weeks of moping when it’s time to go.”

Now we actually were on common ground; I understood moody teenagers. But more important, it sounded as if Roux would not be around long. “Oh, is your work short-term?”

“I hope so,” she said, which could mean anything.

I asked, “What do you do anyway?”

No one in the neighborhood seemed to know. According to Char, who had of course followed up, Roux’d been vague at book club. She’d said something about web design to Lisa and hinted to Sheridan that she got big-time alimony. Tess had come away with a vague impression that Roux was some kind of artist, maybe a dancer.

“I don’t want to talk about my job,” Roux said dismissively. “It’s not going very well, to be honest.”

“Bah!” Oliver said, disgusted. All the toys were off the shelf now. I got up and came over, since Roux apparently wasn’t going to help him. She got out of the way as I approached, walking back toward the sofa.

“Okay. Well. If it it’s not about scuba lessons, why did you come by?” I got onto my knees to put all the toys back in handfuls. She was silent, staring at me in an assessing way I didn’t like. She drew herself up tall, literally looking down on me, and I felt a subtle power shift. She was calm again, and I had relaxed my defenses, talking kids and diving. Now I was on my knees. I thrust another handful of toys onto the shelf and scrambled to my feet.

“You know why,” she said, and with those words she changed. Her whole body changed. Her shoulders set. Her neck elongated. Her hands fisted and then flexed. “I came so we could finish.”

“Finish what?” I said. My heart rate quickened, because I did know.

“The game,” Roux said, the very words that I was thinking. She tilted her head again, such a quick and birdlike movement, inquisitive and foreign. “Don’t be coy, Amy Smith.”

“I have no inter—” I was halfway through the sentence before it registered that she had used my maiden name. I hadn’t been Amy Smith since I was nineteen and married James Lee for fifteen minutes. It wasn’t a name I’d ever used again. “What did you say?” The question came out involuntarily. I realized my hands were twisting together. I made them be still.

“Amy. Elizabeth. Smith,” Roux said, very slow. “Yes, I know your name. I know you. Do you know me?”

I didn’t.

I bent and began picking up toys again for Oliver, though he’d only thrown a few, staying on my feet, though. I needed to give my eyes a place to look that wasn’t her. The teething keys rattled in my shaking hands. Oliver giggled, oblivious, thinking it a game, grabbing the keys the second I set them on the shelf. I picked up another handful of toys, thrust them onto the shelf, bent to gather more.

“What do you want?” I said to Rattle Bear. Because she had to want something.

“Justice,” she said. The one word. Quiet. Strong.

I froze, my gaze pulled to her face. It was set in avid lines as she watched the word sink into me. Rattle Bear tumbled out of my hands onto the floor. I found myself straightening.

“Justice,” I repeated, and the word felt strange and heavy in my mouth. As if it were French or Spanish. Not a word I knew or owned.

“There it is,” Roux said.

“There what is?” I asked, and she spread her hands, almost apologetic.

“Your real face,” she said. “I’ve been looking for it since I got here. God, you’re hard to read. But you do know me, Amy Smith.”

I didn’t. “What do you want?”

Time stretched as she stepped toward me, once, twice, and I realized I’d stopped breathing.

She said, “The wrong kid went to prison. You were driving.”

“I don’t remember who was driving,” I said. My old lie. It came out automatically, so fast it was said before I realized that this denial was wrapped around admission. I shouldn’t have reacted at all, shouldn’t have telegraphed that I knew exactly what she was referring to. I wasn’t sure why this mattered, but I felt its truth on instinct. I tried to backtrack, but my hands had twined together again, twisting hard, and inside I could feel that fat moon rising. “I don’t know what—”

“Yes you do,” she said, so flat and sure that my denials died inside my mouth.

She knew. This was happening.

No, it had already happened. The world had already shifted.

My body flooded with an enormous, shaking feeling. It was something like relief, if relief could be so cold it burned. For the first time in years—decades, even—I was in a room with a person who saw clear through to the bad in me. I could feel that gaze, crashing through me, into me, all the way down.

“You know me,” I said.

“I do,” she answered. Coming close again, but now there was no flirting in it. It was a terrible proximity.

She was so close that all I could see was her pale face. I hadn’t realized how much work it was, to hold truth in and under, to stay silent, every day, every day. My buried past was so much larger than the space I’d sunk it in. She’d started days ago, at book club, dredging at me. Now it was rising, pouring up and out of me. It filled the room, enormous, roaring all around us.

“You were driving. You killed Dana Shipley,” she said. “I know. I saw you. I was there.”

I shook my head, a violent, physical no. Because she could not know this. The police had canvassed for witnesses, but all the people in the nearby houses had been asleep. The crash had woken some of them, but by the time they got up, grabbed robes, came to their windows or their porches, Tig and I had already left the Ambassador. We’d been all the way across the road, beside Mrs. Shipley’s car.

“I was,” she insisted. She stepped even closer, moving slow, eyes on mine. I could not look away, my unsaid words still locked tight in between us. But she knew, as certain as if I had already released them. “I saw you climbing out from behind the wheel. You let that boy go to prison.”

I could feel my head shaking, back and forth, back and forth. At my feet Oliver said nonsense to his bear. I heard him, but from very far; in this moment it was only her and me.

“No one saw,” I said, but had she? The police canvassed for witnesses, but had they talked to children? Exactly how old was she? The roads had been deserted, but there’d been windows all around us, dark and silent, each its own glass eye.

“I was there,” she insisted. “When the cars met, the sound of metal ripping was like screaming. Remember?” Roux asked, and I could hear it. “That smell, from the tires, burning against the road,” she said, and I could smell it.

She leaned in even closer, her blue eyes widening and glistening. Now I was right back in it, back inside that night. My house, my tidy room, even my baby, babbling softly to his toy, faded further into darkness. There was only the taste of my own salt, choking me. Only the bite of asphalt on my knees. I saw myself reflected in her eyes, pale blue like Mrs. Shipley’s. Like Lolly’s, wet and bright as damaged forget-me-nots. I could hear Lolly’s piping voice. Amy, Paul is cry.

She said, “It’s all right, you can say it. I already know.”

I was driving.

God, those three words. I could feel them roiling through my body. I’d been waiting for permission to loose those words since I was fifteen years old. I’d wanted to say them, to save Tig with them, undrown the truth, let it be alive.

Roux said, “You killed her, and you sent that boy to prison for you.”

I could feel the breath that made her words touching my face, and she was the voice in my head, saying everything I’d repeated on a loop when I was out in California. When there weren’t enough drinks or drugs or sun-browned boys in all the world to stop the truth revolving in my mind. When there was never, never peace or silence. All that she’d set loose roared through me and around me, and words came with it, fast and soft.

“I never meant for it to happen. I never meant to lie. I didn’t remember that I was driving. Not at first. I never meant. I never meant. I swear to God.”

“But you killed her,” her voice said, and it was more than her voice. It was my own. It was the voice of God.