He held me tight, and his voice rumbled in his chest. “While you were gone I realized the things that upset me most about you are the things I love. Your independence. Your spirit. Your desire to get to the bottom of everything. I have a feeling whatever you learned about your sister, and whatever you plan to do about it, will probably be things I don’t like. But maybe we don’t have to agree. We just have to trust our differences.”

I looked up at him. “Somewhere in there you used the love word.”

He kissed me. I melted against him, and my hands crept under the hem of his shirt to rest against his firm, warm skin.

His lips trailed a path to my ear. “Do you have to pick up the girls tonight?”

“Nobody knows I’m back yet, except you.”

“Stay here.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How hungry are you?”

“Starving.” I kissed him again. “But not for dinner.”

Before I left the next morning, I made coffee, and Teo prepared toast and eggs. Over breakfast I finally told him the upshot of my confrontation with Wendy.

He listened carefully and waited to respond. “It sounds like you’re going to back off, unless she tries to come home.”

I was glad we hadn’t had this conversation the night before, because just being with Teo and not having to explain had helped me pull myself together. We’d pretended my sister wasn’t in the room. We’d made love, grilled and eaten dinner, then slept together as if nothing, most notably our differences, would ever separate us again.

Biz had even given up his prime spot on Teo’s bed and curled up on his new doggie sofa at the foot.

This morning I’d opened my eyes to find Teo propped up on one elbow smiling at me.

“Not at my best in the morning,” I’d said, turning away from him.

He rolled me back. “Let’s see if that’s true.”

It’s possible I might have been wrong.

Now our lovemaking felt like something from a distant past. My sister was front and center once again.

“I haven’t decided for sure what I’m going to do,” I said. “I couldn’t record what she told me. So I don’t have proof she killed Calvo. Just Ex’s story.”

“And now, hers.”

“She swore she didn’t intend to kill him, that the gun went off when he threw himself at her.”

He nodded, as if he’d heard that before. “So here’s what you could do. You could tell the sheriff everything you know and let the law take it from there. Wouldn’t it feel good to let go of responsibility once and for all? All these decisions should never have been yours in the first place.”

“I told her to stay away. We won’t see her again.”

“Think. What’s to stop her from showing up at Holly’s wedding in twenty years, or Noelle’s? Or worse, when they’re teenagers and as impressionable as hell. Calvo’s death will be old news by then, and your story will be suspect because you waited so long to tell it, and who knows? You might be suspect, too. Can you really trust her to stay away?” He shook his head. “Can you trust her not to kill somebody else?”