“Parker said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He looked distraught. Like he’d lost his best friend, which I guess is what he thought at that moment. But Hannah . . . she just laughed. And then she said . . . God, I wish I could forget it. She said, ‘Don’t be a child, James. You didn’t really expect this was going to be a happily ever after, did you?’ She was just standing there, laughing at me. Taunting me. She even took off that plastic ring and threw it at me. And then suddenly . . . my hands were around her throat.”

I stared at my husband. I couldn’t breathe.

“She stopped laughing, and she—she was trying to pull my hands off her. But I just . . . squeezed harder. And she made this choking sound. And I told myself to stop, to let her go . . . and then . . .”

“And then?” I whispered.

“And then her face just went blank. She was just . . . gone.” James looked at me then, and I saw that his face was slick with tears. “Parker had been grabbing my shoulders, trying to get me to stop. So I let go of her. But she just . . . fell. Collapsed onto the sand.” He shook his head. “She was dead.”

“Oh my god,” I breathed. “Oh, James.”

“Parker freaked out. He started crying and shouting at me. He kept asking me over and over, ‘What did you do? What did you do?’ But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, staring down at her body.”

I gazed at my husband, this man I had always thought I knew so well. It was like looking at a stranger.

“What did you do then?”

“I don’t remember much of what happened next. I’m pretty sure I was in shock. But, Parker—once he calmed down—told me we had to move her, that we had to hide her body. He helped me pick her up and carry her back into the campgrounds, but we could barely see where we were going. We carried her away from the campsite, and then Parker headed back to where the car was parked and got a shovel. He and I took turns digging, which seemed to take forever, and the whole time we were terrified that someone would see us. Find us there with a dead body, digging a hole to hide her in. But . . . we were lucky, I guess. No one ever came. No one saw us. In the morning, Parker told Nico and Diana that he’d seen her at the beach, and that he’d left her alone when she wanted to go skinny-dipping. Everyone assumed she’d drowned. And I got everyone to agree not to tell that part to the police, so that Parker wouldn’t be implicated.”

“And you just left her there?”