Dad sighs. “It’s going to get harder before it gets easier. If it is him, there’ll be a trial.”

“Do you think it’s him?”

“I hope it is,” he says. “You’ve been through enough.”

“So have you,” I say.

He squeezes my hand tighter than ever.

Chapter 125

The police haven’t spoken to me yet. Lorraine said they will eventually, but I guess I’ve given them all they need.

Hanna and Emily wanted to come over, but I told them I need to be alone. It’s easier when I don’t have to pretend, when I can stare at Mom’s pictures and imagine what she’s thinking, when Dad and I can sit in our shared silence.

That night, when my phone rings, I’m not expecting it.

“Have you heard?” Hanna says. “Go online.”

The link is everywhere, shared and shared and shared again. The same horrible image stares back at me, no matter where I look: a body marked with the number 15 and below it the word DEAD carved into its stomach.

She wasn’t local. A report says she was murdered in Sheffield.

By putting DEAD below the number, he was sending me a message. He was sending it to every single one of the left behind who wore that T-shirt.

We did catch him, but not before he killed again.

Chapter 126

I stay awake all night while the image of Mr. Collins’s last victim goes viral, people sharing it for fun, creating memes they laugh at because it’s what they do. Some of them have photoshopped me wearing my ALIVE T-shirt next to her.

I did this. I tried to be clever, and he outsmarted me. He might be caught now, but people will remember his message, and they’ll blame me.

I started this wanting to remind everyone of his crimes, to bring him back into the public consciousness. But is that exactly what he wanted too? Was he enjoying being famous again? Was he getting worse to stay relevant?

I feel disgusted that he was there the whole time, teaching me, taunting me.

Whenever I think my tears have run dry, they come again, and I don’t even try to wipe them away.

I imagine the left behind, a group that has only got bigger since I started this. As they sat, quietly swapping grief stories in my backyard, I saw how worn down they were. Still alive, still fighting, but missing the vital part that made their smiles sparkle and their eyes shine.

Whenever the conversations stopped, the silence hung so heavily around their necks, the unspoken horror of losing a daughter or a sister or a wife etched deeply into their faces.

And now there are more, a fifteenth family, and how can they not blame me? The image of all of us in those T-shirts accompanies every single report. What Mr. Collins did to her only makes sense because of us.