Still, no one looks at me. Anger rises like a quick tide: I want to bury them in it.

“I’m telling you, you didn’t know her. We were friends when we were little. She was fucked up. She killed my dog with rat poison.”

This, finally, startles Joe into speaking. “She what?”

“She lied about it for years, and tortured me for refusing to forgive her, and then before she died, or before she was killed, she left me proof, just so that I would know for sure.”

Joe stands, scraping the chair back from his desk, and I run out of air and stand there panting and sweating, and I realize I’m about to cry.

“Can we talk in private?” Joe sounds as polite as a stranger. I have no choice but to follow him, like a child.

Outside, a blaze of heat and sun warms my face. The door swings shut behind us with a bang-snap. Across the parking lot, Sunny Jay’s is already open. I wonder if Condor’s inside. And if he is, I hope he doesn’t come out and see me like this.

“Look.” I take a deep breath. “I know what you’re going to say. Okay?”

“I don’t think you do.” He sounds worried. He screws up his mouth like he’s trying to digest. “You’ve been working too hard.”

My heart drops. He doesn’t believe me. Not even a little. “Joe, this is important.” My throat is so tight I can barely choke out the words. “Kaycee Mitchell died. And everyone has been lying about it. For years.”

But he isn’t listening. He squints into the distance. “I’ve known you a long time, Abby. You’re a friend. You know that, right? Since our very first day at CEAW, when I told you I hated your shoes. Remember?”

I can’t keep the tears back anymore, and I don’t try. I stand there, humiliated and exhausted and furious, feeling as if in just a few words he’s stripped me of my skin and left me raw and open in the hot wind. My father is dying, and Joe won’t listen; I came back to bury the past, but instead the past is burying me.

“I’m worried about you,” he says. “You need a break. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

“I don’t need a vacation! I need you to listen!”

“You’re not well, Abby.” His voice gets a little harder. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened our first year.”

Despite the sun, a sudden chill runs through me. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” When he turns to me his eyes are dark. “You stopped sleeping. You started drinking too much. You were pulled in a thousand directions—you thought Bromley had encoded messages in the invoices, for God’s sake—”

“I’d been awake for seventy-two hours.” My voice cracks on the still air. “Look, I know I lost it. I was eating Adderall. I was a mess, okay? I admit it. I admitted it then.” And you, fucker, promised never to hold it against me. “But this is different.”