“So, um, what are we doing up here? Besides missing the party that Bill Sitterly paid two grand apiece for us to attend.”

I pulled my knees to my chest, crinoline crunching around me. I pointed off into the distance, where we had a bird’s-eye view of the party. The dance floor, the dancers, the food. The music, quieter but still lovely, floated toward us.

“So, you wanted to watch the party instead of attend the party?”

I smiled. “My first job, at fourteen, was right down there, at the Tavern, washing dishes.”

Elliott made a face. “Not a good place for a little girl.”

I shook my head. “Everyone was really nice to me.”

Elliott nodded.

“But I used to come up here sometimes after my shift and watch whatever was going on. The bar scene, happy families getting ice cream, and, once a year, this party. I was a girl with little family and no money and no opportunities that I could see at the time, but I could come up here, and I could watch the rich, fancy people of Juniper Shores dance on that dance floor, and I would dream about being one of them one day.”

Elliott stared at me, and I could tell he was really listening.

“And I guess I just think it’s funny to realize that all that time I was wishing to be over there”—I pointed to the party—“maybe the best stuff was really happening up here. Because up here, I’m just me. No one is talking about my choices or my checkered past. I think there’s an irony in the fact that I used to crave being in those glittering lights, when, really, anonymity was probably better. You know what I mean?”

He nodded. “Alice, they don’t get to decide who you are.”

“Don’t they? I mean, an anonymous Instagram account is now dictating everyone’s next moves. These people who say I killed three husbands and am running a cult kind of do shape public perception.”

“But public perception isn’t truth.”

I thought back to Julie and her plan to clear Bill’s name. That entire scheme hinged on public perception, and I realized that I was a little jealous that the women under my roof were putting so much effort into fixing Bill’s reputation but hadn’t considered fixing mine. Although I wasn’t wrongfully imprisoned, so perhaps that was selfish.

“Sometimes I think about going somewhere new,” I said, sighing. “But then, even still, even now, I can come back to the top of this billboard and suddenly be a kid again. There’s something about a place with your history, that knows all your secrets, that’s kind of hard to move on from.”