He flips through the pages and finds them filled with girlish script but the sun isn’t bright enough for him to read what’s been written. He digs in his pocket for his phone; the light from the screen illuminates a page. He reads quickly as if the words might disappear before his eyes. He feels sick, dirty, as he begins to comprehend the story unfolding in the pages.

A whistle blows in the distance, the train marking its arrival to the crossing west of town where the long white arms come down, stalling traffic for a good ten minutes. Thomas, resolving to put an end to this entire mess, slides the book into his coat pocket, turns and strikes solid flesh. His first thought is Jim Landry has come here to confront him. He knows he is no match for an angry man, a father no less, who is thirty years younger, stronger and bearing a grudge.

Instead he finds himself face-to-face with John Dover. The teacher. “What are you doing here?” Thomas asks. The gruffness of his voice masks the pounding of his heart.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Dover says, the hood of his coat pulled up over his head and his hands tucked into the pockets to ward off the cold. “I saw you sitting outside my house.” In the distance the train calls out again, a rusty foghorn. “Why?”

“Just out for a drive and getting some exercise,” Thomas says, taking a few steps to the right, uncomfortably aware of the bloodstained gravel at their feet. Couldn’t someone have rinsed it away?

“But why stop in front of my house?” Dover asks. “What possible reason would you have for doing that? Is there, maybe, something you want to ask me?”

Thomas examines Dover’s face carefully. Through the dimness he sees no anger, no hostility, but there is concern, possibly fear. Why would John Dover be frightened of him? “I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Thomas says and starts moving along the tracks, eager to get far away from the rusty patch of earth and away from John Dover.

But Dover isn’t going anywhere and joins Thomas. Together they walk silently along the tracks, a cold breeze pushing them along. Thomas eyes the ground in front of him, still searching for the key.

“What she’s saying isn’t true,” Dover says.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Thomas says but his pulse quickens. He casts a wary glance toward Dover.

“The police brought me in for questioning again last night. They took my computers and my phone. I know what Jordyn is saying about me. It isn’t true.” Dover is walking so closely to Thomas that their shoulders graze. “I wasn’t anywhere near here the other night.”