His tan had darkened that afternoon on the boat and his teeth looked shockingly white in contrast. I thought about teeth, how they were the only visible part of our skeleton. The thought distracted me. It took me a moment to realize what he was fiddling with as he spoke: my notebook. He’d been through my things. He was flipping through the pages right in front of me. He paused at the photo of Lonnie, but didn’t show it to her. Maybe she’d already seen it or maybe he meant to protect her.

“This is a lot, Ella,” he said, dropping my nickname just like that.

“I guess you’re going through our stuff? Making lists for some reason?”

“It’s for a project,” I muttered, “for a book.”

“Lonnie told me you were really interested in this serial killer, I guess you were going on and on about it at the artists’ retreat. But this—” He thumbed the notebook pages. He didn’t have to tell me the first half was just stupid little maps charting my route past the LeRoi house to theirs. “This is more than interested. You write down every time you walk by the house? Why the hell would you even do that?”

“Research,” I said, looking toward Lonnie, hoping for sympathy, but her head was still down.

“This doesn’t look like much of a book.”

I wished I could come up with an artist’s statement for some kind of experimental project like the ones I’d heard about at the retreat, but all I could think of was the man in the swimming pool with all the cards floating away from him. I couldn’t pay attention to what James was telling me.

“You must understand you can’t work with us anymore.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was in shock, my body shaking. I tried to imagine my life before Lonnie, but it felt blurry and vague—just wanting and hunger and loneliness. I didn’t have any other friends now. I didn’t have anyone.

“Listen, we wanted it to work out, but it’s just not going to, you must understand why.”

That you must understand. He wanted me to be complicit in my own demise, but I couldn’t be complicit. It wasn’t going to work. Thinking back over the summer, I could see Lonnie deeply unhappy, putting on a front. They both drove her crazy, she’d said so to me. If only last night hadn’t happened, I could’ve found a way to replace her.

Lonnie, on the pink sofa, all folded up. Was she heartbroken too? “Lonnie,” I said.

She lifted her head to look at me, but her eyes were the same dead pair from the night before. I knew it was over when she looked at me like that, but I didn’t want to accept it.