He took it from me, frowning. Turning it over in his hand.

“I have more,” I said. I had everything. I tallied the evidence, pushed the folder I’d brought across the desk in his direction. The matching account number from my grandmother’s checkbook. It had to be enough. “There’s proof that my grandmother paid down her mortgage with this money right after they died. And,” I said, taking out my phone, my hand shaking, “proof that Sadie was hurt at the party last year. Detective, she was there.” I pulled up the photos I’d just taken, handed him my phone, the words tumbling out too fast. Trying to walk him through the course of events—the bloodstain from the bathroom, my belief that someone had taken her from the house, wrapped her in a blanket, lost her phone in the process.

“They used my car. My trunk,” I said, a sob caught in my throat. “The crime scene was there. Not here. She didn’t jump.”

The corners of his mouth tipped down, and he shook his head. “Avery, you have to slow down.”

But that wasn’t right. I had to speed up. Sadie didn’t want a fucking bell, a sad quote. She wanted this. To be seen. To be avenged. And he wasn’t paying attention. What did I need to do to get him to see?

He stared at the photos on my phone, his hand faintly shaking as well, like I’d transferred my fear straight to him. His eyes drifted to the window behind me, and I knew what he was thinking—the Lomans would be back soon.

He had to believe me before they arrived.

“There have to be people in the department who remember the accident,” I said. “Who know something. It was a long time ago, but people remember.” It was horrific, that was what the first officer on the scene said. I had the article with me in that folder on the desk. “Maybe we can talk to the person who was first on-scene. Maybe there’s some evidence that didn’t make sense.” Another piece of proof to link the cases together.

I opened the folder, pulled out the article—so he would remember. Detective Collins had once told me that he knew who I was, what I’d been through—that it was a shitty hand to draw. He was older than me. He must’ve remembered this.

“Can I . . .” He cleared his throat, holding up my phone. “Can I hang on to this?”

I nodded, and he tucked my phone into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one out, a lighter in the other hand. “Bad habit, I know,” he said. His hand shook as he flicked the lighter twice before it caught. A slow exhale of smoke, eyes closed. “Sometimes it helps, though.”

I imagined the smoke soaking into the Lomans’ walls, the ornate carpet beneath our feet. How they’d hate it. I almost spoke, on instinct, and then stopped. Who cared?

In the article, there was a black-and-white picture of the road—how had I not seen it before, the same image Sadie had taken on her phone? The arc of trees, so different in the daylight—but it matched.

The article also had a picture of the wreckage left behind. The metal heap of a car crumpled against a tree. My heart squeezed, and I had to close my eyes, even after all these years.

I skimmed over sentences, paragraphs, until the part I remembered—that had been seared into my mind years earlier.

“The first officer on the scene gave a statement to the reporter,” I said. Reading the words that I’d wanted to forget for so long. “Here it is. ‘There was nothing I could do. It was just terrible. Horrific. I thought we had lost them all, but when the EMTs arrived, they discovered the woman in the backseat was still alive. Just unconscious.’ The loss will be felt by everyone in the community, including the young officer—”

I stopped reading, the room hollowing out. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words. Watched, instead, as everything shifted.

He raised his eyebrows, flicked the lighter again. Held it to the base of Parker’s medical paper, letting it catch fire and fall into the stainless-steel trash can.

I stared once more down at the article in my hand. The truth, always inches away, just waiting for me to look again.

The unfinished sentence, our paths crossing over and over, unseen, unknown. Officer Ben Collins.

CHAPTER 29

Smoke spilled from the top of the garbage can, the air dangerous and alive. “You knew,” I said, stepping back.

Detective Ben Collins stood between me and the doorway, not meeting my eye. Systematically dropping page after page into the trash. Each piece of evidence I’d given him, every piece of proof. One after another into the burning trash. He had my phone. My flash drive. The evidence of the payments—

The other payment, the one Sadie had found and copied, stored on the flash drive alongside the payment to my grandmother. That had gone to him. “The Lomans paid you off, too,” I said.

Finally, he looked at me. A man cut into angles, into negative space. “It was an accident. If it helps, he didn’t mean to do it. Some kid speeding past me, driving like a bat out of hell in the middle of the night. I didn’t know it was Parker Loman when I took off after him—he didn’t see the other car coming. The lights must’ve blinded them to the curve. Both of them ended up off the road, but the other car . . .”

“The other car—” I choked out. My parents. There were people inside. People who had been taken from me.

How long had he waited to call the EMTs after Parker Loman stepped from the car? Had Parker asked him to wait while he pressed his hand to the cut on his forehead, seeing what he had done? Or had Grant Loman called in, explained things, convinced him to let his son go—that there was nothing to be done now, no use ruining another life in the process—a plea but also a threat?

Had my parents bled out while he waited? Did they fight it, the darkness, while a young Ben Collins weighed his own life and chose?

The garbage can crackled, a heat between us as we stood on opposite ends of the desk.

“Avery, listen, we were all young.”

I understood that, didn’t I? The terrible choices we made without clarity of thought. On instinct, on emotion, or in a drastic move, just to get things to stop. To change.

“I think about it often,” he said. “I think we all do. And now we’re doing the best we can, all of us. It was terrible, but the Lomans have supported this town through thick and thin, giving back whenever they can. I made a decision when I was twenty-three, and I’ve been trying to make peace with it ever since.” He held one hand out to the side. “I’ve given everything to this place.”

His eyes were wide now, like he was begging me to see it—the person reflected in his eyes. The better person he had become. It was true, if I gave it any thought—he was always the person involved, who volunteered. Who organized the parades, the events. The person people asked to join committees. But all I could see was the lie. It had been built into the very fabric of who he was now.

“They’re dead!” I was yelling then. Finally, a place to direct my anger. Instead of sinking further into myself. Instead of succumbing to the spiral that caught me and refused to let go.

He flinched. “What do you want, Avery?” Matter-of-fact. Like everything in life was a negotiation.

I shook my head. He was so calm, and the crackle of the flames was eating away at the air, destroying everything again.

I needed to get out of this room, but he was blocking the way.

He stepped to the side, and I instinctively moved back, toward the wall. “We’ll talk to Grant, work something out. Okay?” he said.

But he had it wrong. Of course he couldn’t do that.

“Sadie,” I said, finally understanding. Her flaw was my own—she’d trusted the wrong person. My life was her life. She must’ve taken this same path, landed at his name—and believed he would tell her the truth. “You killed her,” I whispered, hand to my mouth at the truth, at the horror.

He had been the man who had brought her to the party. The man no one had seen.

His eyes drifted shut, and he winced. “No,” he said. But it was desperate, a plea.

I could see it playing out, what she would do—three steps back, finding Ben Collins in the article, just like I had done. Asking him to pick her up, directing him to the party. Sadie, empowered by what she’d uncovered, believing she had everyone right where she wanted them—for one final, fatal strike. She’d hidden away the money trail; all she needed was him. The money she had stolen from the company—for this. For him. Never seeing the danger in the places where it truly existed. “All she wanted from you was the truth,” I said.

He blinked twice, face stoic, before speaking. “What good would that do now? I’d be burying all of us. And for what? We can’t change the past.”

For what? How could he ask that? For justice. For my parents. For me.