Later, Alice heard that they found the clothes on the beach first, then found the body later that afternoon, lodged between rocks north of Buxton Point.

The police, as Alice knew they would, came to the house the following morning. Jake answered the door while Alice was cleaning up the dishes from breakfast. It was just one uniformed police officer, an Officer Wilson, who took his hat off when he entered the living room of the condo. He looked like he was in his early twenties; he had a large balding patch at the back of his head, and he had tried to make up for it by growing a wispy, blond mustache. Alice and Jake sat across from him as he took out a notebook.

“I’m sure you know why I’m here,” he said, his eyes on Alice.

“It’s about Gina Bergeron.”

“Right. Her mother said that she came here yesterday, and you were the one who informed her that Gina had gone swimming on Friday night.”

Alice nodded.

“Can you tell me about Friday night? Do you remember what time she was here?”

Alice told the whole story, omitting the part about Gina and her mother confronting her after dinner at the Bergerons’. And definitely omitting the part about biting Gina on the hand. She just said that she left their house and then later Gina showed up, acting drunk and wanting to go swimming.

“Was that unusual?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it surprise you that Gina was drunk, or that she wanted to go swimming? Was this something she typically did?”

“I don’t really know her that well, to tell the truth,” Alice said, repeating words that she’d said to herself in her own mind many times. “We were close friends in high school, and then she went to New York City, and she changed. I didn’t know her anymore.”

“You didn’t know her anymore because you didn’t see her, or because she’d changed so much?”

“Both, I guess. I barely had any contact with her. I saw her mother more, because she comes into the pharmacy where I work, and she was the one who wanted me to come over for dinner when Gina was back in town. I didn’t know why, but I think it had something to do with her being worried about Gina being on drugs, and maybe she hoped I’d be a good influence.”

“She said all this to you? Gina’s mother?”

“No. It was just what I thought.”

“Okay. So what was she acting like when she came here?”

“I couldn’t really understand her. She was slurring her words, and she asked me to go swimming with her, and I said that it was too late, and it was too cold, and that was it.”