When we finally pulled up to my house, there were two other vehicles outside my driveway, and I could see the shape of a person inside each. They didn’t step out of their vehicles until both Detective Rigby and I had turned in and parked.

The detective greeted the two men casually as they approached, and I realized she had asked them to meet us here.

This was evidence in a murder investigation, after all.

They both appeared around her age—one with red hair buzzed short, the other with dark blond hair and the start of a beard.

She conferred with them quietly while I unlocked the front door. “Please wait,” she called up to me, as if I shouldn’t step foot in my own house without her guidance.

The man with the red hair circled back with a camera, presumably to document where I’d found the letter. The other accompanied Detective Rigby up the porch steps. At closer look, he was even younger than she was—the facial hair covering for a baby face, with freckles and big blue eyes. I hadn’t heard him speak a word, and he deferred to Detective Rigby in every movement.

“There,” I said, pointing to the entryway table.

“Please don’t touch it,” she said, my hand hovering. I had already handled it, shuffled it around, hooked it under my arm as I carried the stack of mail inside. But I didn’t argue.

Detective Rigby snapped on a pair of gloves, unfolded the letter, read it to herself. I watched as her brown eyes scanned the words line by line. Then she handed it over to the man beside her, who seemed to be in charge of storing it. He handled it like a rare, breakable thing, placing it inside a Ziploc bag. I wasn’t sure they knew what they were doing, whether they’d ever done something like this before. Whether we were all out of our depths here.

“It sounds like he was trying to warn me of something,” I said.

She snapped off her gloves the same way Dr. Britton had in the ER. “What makes you say that?”

His literal words had made me think that, but I felt like, with her, she was always trying to get me to admit to something. Like our interpretations of events exposed something deeper about each of us. “He asked me to contact him,” I said. “He said it was important, that he’d come a long way to see me.”

The other man waited stoically in the entrance. The only sign of movement was his eyes as they shifted between me and the detective.

“You can take that,” she said to him.

He nodded and left, the sound of his footsteps fading away as he descended the porch stairs.

Detective Rigby paced the foyer, breathing slowly. “I’ve been reading a lot about what happened to you twenty years ago.” She whistled through her teeth. “That was really something.”

“I don’t remember it,” I said, my typical response. It used to stop the conversation in its tracks when I was younger, whenever adults brought it up. Made them say something like Probably for the best, which I guessed it was. Something we could agree on, nodding sagely together.

“I can understand why you changed your name,” she said. “There sure was a lot of talk.” The detective looked around my house. At the open arches, the light-colored walls, the new sofa. “Had a bunch of money come your way after?”

I pressed my lips together and nodded. Didn’t want to get into the fact that my mother had wasted a lot of it away, that it was mostly gone, that it had given me a fresh start and now even that was in jeopardy. This house was all that was left, and I was, I thought, understandably protective of it.

She pointed to the entryway table, which was now bare. “Anyone else know about this?”

“Rick,” I said.

“You called him before calling me?”

“You didn’t answer,” I reiterated.

“Mr. Aimes—” she began, and I thought: You don’t know everything.

“Detective Rigby,” I cut in, “which street was Sean Coleman’s car found on?”

She cut her eyes to me without speaking, like she wasn’t sure how I’d gotten that information. She clearly didn’t know I had heard about the car. She didn’t know Nathan had come here on his own.

She pursed her lips, then spoke. “We found his car along the side of the road on Haymere.”

“The street behind us?” I asked. So he had walked. I pictured him parking and walking. Haymere Lane diverged from the same main road cutting toward town, but it didn’t seem that close. “Do you think he walked to deliver that letter?” Could that be why he was out here that night? And then—what? Someone killed him on his way back? It didn’t make sense. Why not just drive by and deliver it from his car in the daylight? But I could think of no other reason for him to be out in my yard. He’d kept himself hidden, and then this letter was in my mailbox.

The detective started pacing again, and I started to see it not as a nervous tic but as a way to process her thoughts. “No, I don’t think so. You said his letter was at the bottom of the pile of mail, right?”

“Yes,” I said, and then I understood. He had not been there that night to deliver the letter. He already had been, before the mail arrived on Friday. Probably after I’d ignored him at the grocery store. He’d known I wouldn’t take well to him sneaking up on me. He’d already tried that approach. So he’d left me the letter, and then he’d come back. To . . . what?

To watch me from the borders of my yard? Or did he change his mind—was he coming closer?

What had he wanted to tell me? And why had he been killed?

“Can I take a look around?” she asked, facing away. “See if there are any other signs that he might’ve been snooping around in here?”

She said it so nonchalantly, as if I didn’t know exactly what she was after. Like Rick had warned, they were going to get a warrant to search one of our houses. Easier if we gave permission. She wouldn’t find anything, anyway. But we weren’t there yet.

“You already did,” I said, “that first night.” I’d let her in then, let her feel like I had nothing to hide.

She turned toward me, blinked slowly. “That was before I had reason to think he’d been watching you.”

A chill ran up my spine. What more did they know that they weren’t giving away?

“No,” I said. “I had to cut my day short for this as it is. I’ve got to catch up.”

I held the door open, gesturing her out. She paused, and for a moment I thought she wouldn’t leave, that she was going to pull out a warrant right then. But she didn’t.

“A word of advice, Olivia. Stop telling Mr. Aimes things related to this case.”

And with that, she left.

I knew there were two basic theories if Sean Coleman had been hanging around outside our homes:

The first was that Rick had seen him watching and hurt him.

The second was that it had been me. Either in self-defense or not. But I’d given them the letter; I’d cooperated. I’d lost any hope of anonymity in the process.

There was no way to stop it now. I had to protect myself.

TRANSCRIPT OF 911 CALL FOR SERVICE

DATE: OCTOBER 17, 2000

TIME STAMP: 5:47 A.M.

DISPATCH: 911, what is your emergency?

CALLER, UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God, it’s my daughter. She’s gone.