“If you hadn’t given me that hideous pink lipstick the first night I got here—”

“Which you didn’t wear.”

“Exactly. If Branford hadn’t found that in my purse and put it on, Roman wouldn’t have noticed his disguise.”

“We would have kept looking.”

“I know, even after twenty years of me being an asshole.”

“You weren’t an asshole—”

“I hated you.”

Mary didn’t try to interrupt. “Okay.”

Caitlin looked down at her fingers and pulled on the bandage over her missing nail. “You asked why I didn’t come to you after I was attacked. I couldn’t. I was so mad.”

“At me?”

Caitlin had to get it out, and she owed it to Mary to look her in the eyes. “I love you, Mary Lubbers-hyphenate-Gaffney. I’m saying it now so you don’t feel bad or take any guilt on yourself in any way, but I hated you.”

Mary looked away for a second, bit her bottom lip, then returned to Caitlin’s eye contact. “Okay. Why?”

“It’s the dumbest thing in the world.” Caitlin let the words out with a sigh. “You were the only one I told about my mother’s profession.”

Mary’s eyes opened wider. “As in, the porn star thing?”

“Troy Woods knew.” Caitlin looked up, tilted her head back. “He told Chief Hartman, and Hartman used it to embarrass me. The only way Woods could have known—”

“I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Mary put her hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, then ran them to eight and four. “I don’t even remember telling him.”

“We were at Nick’s English Hut. He said something about how we looked like virgins.”

“Ohmigod.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I was trying to get you laid.”

Caitlin reached over and touched her leg. “Stop, Mary. I didn’t tell you that to make you feel bad. I need you to understand how alone I felt and why I didn’t come to you then. I was looking for someone, something to blame, like how Angela Chapman reacted when she saw Lakshmi.”

Mary threw up her hands. “I am the world’s worst friend.”

Caitlin put her arms around her. “No, I’m the world’s worst friend, or at least I was. That ends today. Look at me: I’m a hugger now.”

Mary laughed through her tears, squeezed Caitlin back. At some point, Caitlin’s need to blow her nose broke the moment. She reached into the door pocket, pulled out a missing persons flyer with Chapman’s face on it and blew.

“Let’s go see the place,” she said.