“After he shut the trunk he drove back to his house, I guess. I could tell he parked in a garage by the way the engine sounded in there, and then I heard him pulling down the garage door. I thought he was just going to let me die in there. I didn’t move. I didn’t even try to see if there was a way out of the trunk, a release lever or something.”

“There probably wasn’t,” Harry said. “His car was pretty old.”

“It’s not that . . . Sorry, I know. You’re right. I still wish I’d tried. I just lay there, praying that the next person who came along wasn’t him, and then my prayer came true. It was you.”

“Do you remember telling me his name, that it was John Richards who did that to you? You could barely talk.”

“I do remember that. Of course, it wasn’t his real name.”

She shivered a little, even though it was still pretty warm out, the sky purple hued and filled with stars.

“It was the name he was going by. And it was a smart thing to do,” Harry said. “Remembering his name. Telling me right away.”

“Do you keep thinking about it?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “Every minute of every day. It’s a loop in my head. What he did to my father and to your sister, and then to you.”

“What he almost did to me.”

“Yeah, I think about that, as well. He could have killed you, then killed my stepmother.”

“He could have killed you.”

“He could have, yes.”

They were quiet for a few steps. They’d taken several turns, and the houses were now larger and spread farther apart. “It’s not far, now,” Caitlin said. “This was good. I needed to talk about what happened with someone who was there. Everyone keeps tiptoeing around me.”

“They’re just worried.”

“I know they are.”

They turned again, down a street lined with tall trees, their leaves bristling in the light breeze. “I’m right down here,” Caitlin said, and pointed toward a white Colonial, lights on in all the windows. “Want to walk around the block? I don’t want to stop talking.”

“Okay.”

As they walked, Caitlin asked Harry about his plans, and he told her he didn’t have any, except that he wasn’t going to stay in Maine.

“Will your stepmother be upset?”

“I’m sure, but I can’t go back to living with her. I feel for her, because of what she went through, but there’s still a part of me . . . It’s hard to explain, but I don’t entirely trust her. I feel like there’s more to the story between her and Jake than I’ll ever know.”

“You think she was in on it?”

“No, not really. I don’t know.”