“Because we were idiots.” Diana shook her head in disgust. “You have to understand. We all believed that Hannah drowned that night, even before we called the police. She was heading into the water when Parker left her. And yes, he made a terrible mistake by leaving her alone that night, but we had no idea what the consequences could be. Was one stupid decision really something he should have to spend the rest of this life in jail for? It’s not like he drowned Hannah, after all. So, we made a pact, as a group, not to tell the police that part of the story, in order to protect Parker.”

I stared at her, unable to comprehend what she was telling me. “But why on earth did you go along with it?”

This time when Diana looked at me, I could see something like pity in her expression. “Because James was the one who asked us to lie. He was distraught, but he wanted to protect Parker. And Hannah was his fiancée, after all. I thought it was his choice to make.”

James, my truthful husband, had been the one behind that terrible lie two and a half decades earlier. He had not only lied to the police but talked his friends into doing the same. He had lied to me. And now that lie was boomeranging back, and threatening to ruin his life and mine. Fury began to bloom inside my chest, wiping out the sadness and pity that’d been there all this time.

“But . . . why are you telling me this after all of these years?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I want to right the wrong, finally. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t feel like I owe any of them my loyalty at this point.” Diana smiled at me sadly. “Or maybe I’m a nicer person than I think I am, and I want to help James. I know the police are zeroing in on him as the lead suspect. In my interview yesterday, they asked if I’d ever seen him act jealous or violent, or if I thought he was capable of hurting Hannah. And the truth was . . . he wasn’t the last one of us to talk to her that night. Parker was.”

“Do you really think Parker walked away from Hannah that night? That he left her there to swim on her own?”

“I did then. Truly, I did believe that, or I’d never have gone along with that pact to lie to the police.”

“But now?”

Diana’s eyes darkened. “Now, we know that Hannah didn’t drown that night. Someone killed her and buried her in a grave deep enough that she wasn’t found for decades. So, now . . . I don’t know what to believe.”

“Would you be willing to tell the police what you told me? About Parker following Hannah? And about the pact you made to keep that a secret?”