I started stacking away his food in the fridge and freezer, an outlet for my nervous energy. I’d come to tell Rick about my past, to explain things in a way that wouldn’t make it seem like I’d been lying about who I’d been for the last few years. That he hadn’t made a mistake by selling that house to me, with or without the large cash payment.

The last bag contained the cleaning supplies, and I wasn’t sure where he stored them. I thought, like me, he might keep his supplies in the cabinet under the sink. I opened both cabinet doors at once, but there was nothing inside except a stack of rags, like from a ripped-up shirt. The scent inside was sharp and astringent.

This was where the cleaning supplies had been, I was guessing. I pushed the rags aside to make room for his new containers—and a shock of blue caught my eye.

There were moments I could see coming.

Moments, like my mother claimed in her book, that felt instinctive. Otherworldly.

Heard it was a box cutter, Elyse had told me.

And here it was, under Rick’s sink. That box cutter I’d last used on Wednesday to open my mother’s box. That box cutter that was usually in my kitchen drawer.

Of course it would be here. I’d been searching and couldn’t find it anywhere.

Now it was in my hand.

“I told you, I got it,” Rick said.

I spun around quickly, though I was low to the ground, sitting on Rick’s tile, with him looming over me. It was the first time I’d heard him speak that way. Sharp and irritated. Not even when I’d shown up Friday night, hands covered in blood. Not even when he’d called the police. I saw him suddenly as Detective Rigby did: overbearing and capable of violence.

It occurred to me that I should be afraid.

But I had the box cutter in my hand, holding it up to him now. The blade tucked safely away, a scent coming off it, like bleach. The bright blue paint on the bottom of the handle.

“Why do you have this?” I asked, pushing myself up off the floor.

He staggered back a step, then two, feeling for the chair behind him. He eased himself down gently, just as I reached full standing. Then he shook his head, looking down.

“You know why,” he said.

“No,” I said, all my senses heightening, “I really don’t.”

I tried to picture this in his hand, in the night, in the dark. Seeing a man outside, watching my house. Sneaking up behind him—

“I found it that night.” His eyes rose to meet mine, and they were dark and glazed. There was a twitch at the corner of his left eye.

“Where?” I said. Because that was the hole in the story. How it got from my house to his hand.

“When I went out there. To check.” In the silence, I heard a grandfather clock ticking from somewhere down the hall. “It was there, in the bushes.” And then lower: “I recognized it.”

Yes, because he had given it to me.

“No,” I said.

It hadn’t been there. There’d been a body, and the blood, and then I ran—I shook my head, clearing the thoughts that were circling. “Then why is it still here. Under your sink?”

“You showed up in the middle of the night, and you asked me for help. I was trying to help.”

My entire body was thrumming, the images shifting. “No.”

“I cleaned it, but,” he continued, “I don’t know if they’ll search my garbage. You can’t just throw stuff out. You can’t just . . . disappear things.” Then he looked at the back door, partially open. He lowered his voice. “They’re watching, Liv. They’re watching the both of us. Wanting to know how some stranger ended up dead on the line between our properties.”

I closed my eyes, clinging to the facts. Something beyond panic was setting in. “You keep a gun in your bathroom. I’ve seen it.”

“I told you, Liv, not everyone here is . . . I’m getting old, I’m not fast enough.”

Like the danger was somewhere else and not in this very house.

But I kept going, needing there to be another possibility. “Detective Rigby said . . . she said there were rumors after your wife’s death, and I shouldn’t trust you . . . that it wasn’t a suicide.”

He froze then, looking so small, so sad. He exhaled, his body folding over itself. “Nina Rigby was a good kid. Her brother, though. He was part of the problem. That group, they got my boy into some things and . . . Liv, they were not good people.” He ran his hands down his face, a shudder working through his body, and then it was gone. “I was out in the shed when the gunshot sounded, I promise you.”

“The detective said—”

“Nina was eighteen,” he said, voice rising. “And I’ll tell you what people said. People said my story had holes. That I was close enough to hear the shot, and I waited too long to call it in, and that was true.”

“She said your son knows the truth. That he hates you, that he never comes back . . .” The words out of my mouth were vicious, hateful. I was scared. I was mean. I needed not to be responsible for Sean Coleman’s death.

Rick had been staring at his shoes, lost in his memory, and then he slowly looked up, his face transformed. “I will tell you once. One time. And then you will tell me.”

I nodded slowly. This is what I had come for, after all. To tell him. To find the truth.

“My son was in the room, and my wife was dead. It was an accident. It was. I believe that. She was cleaning and he came home, not himself. He was not himself, he was not. You could see it in his eyes, he was not . . . the boy I knew. I found them like that, and he looked at me like . . . like . . .” Rick shook his head. “I told him to leave right then. I handled it all wrong. I didn’t want to hear it, what he had to say. I made him leave, and he did. Nobody knows he was home when it happened. I handled it. But he didn’t come back. You want to know why? He can’t look at me because he’s ashamed. Because we lied, but not for me. Not for me.”

His eyes were swimming, staring straight at me. My own eyes were burning; I was scared to blink. Scared to look away. Scared of what to say.

“Now you,” he said.

“I didn’t do it,” I whispered, because that was the only truth I could believe, too.

“It could’ve been an accident,” he said. “Maybe you were protecting yourself. I’d seen you sleepwalking earlier that week. Tell me, were you sleepwalking then?”

I swallowed nothing. The truth, then, the thing he suspected but never said. The same thing Bennett suspected, that Detective Rigby must. That Calvin Royce feared. I didn’t deny it; didn’t lie—not to him.

He stood, took a step toward me, holding out his hands like he did that first night when he found me outside, like I was an animal that might spook. “I know it happened when you were younger. I know who you used to be.”

I backed up, placed my hand on the counter. “Detective Rigby told you?” It wasn’t fair, playing us against each other.

“No, no. Child, I knew when your application came through. Ran a background check with a cash offer like that.” He nodded to my arm. “The scars. I know who you are.”

I shook my head. “I was going to tell you,” I said. “I came here to tell you.”

“My wife followed your case. We remembered. She prayed, she—” He stopped abruptly, gestured for me to follow him down the hall, and I did, but still with that box cutter in my hand.