“Again, we have no reason to suspect, based on the coroner’s report, that—”

I pull the earbud from my ear when Jake walks into the cafeteria. I can’t listen to any more of that anyway.

He looks around for a minute, then he takes the chair next to me without going through the line for a tray. I guess none of us are really very hungry today.

“Is that the press conference?” He glances at Amira’s phone.

She nods and offers him an earbud.

“No thanks.” Jake takes my hand, and Amira arches one brow at me with a tiny grin. “My mom just texted to say that your mother exonerated me on live TV. Right at the beginning.” He glances at the phone again. “She said that the only paternity test the police had run so far had come back negative.”

Which means she cleared Jake without naming him as a potential suspect. Because unlike the Crimson Cryer, my mother is a professional.

Amira gives him a half-hearted smile. “Congratulations, I guess?”

Maybe I should see if the police department will run a DNA test on me, to prove my innocence.

Then again, when it comes back negative, they’ll probably accuse my mother of wasting taxpayer dollars and using her position to help her daughter. Or even of falsifying the results.

I swear, I’m not even capable of optimism anymore. Over the past week, the internet has taught me that most people aren’t good at heart, and that mob mentality never leads people to do something positive for the world, like adopt puppies and kittens en masse.

Why must mobs always carry pitchforks and burn people in effigy? Why can’t a mob, just this one time, carry cotton candy and throw out air kisses? Or candy, like at a parade?

People are always more pleasant when they’ve had a little sugar.

If I’d thought that having Jake’s name cleared would clear mine as well, I would have been sorely disappointed. Fortunately, based on my new embrace of pessimism as a life choice—nay, a religion—I was expecting no such thing.

The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that people seem to believe he’s not the father, yet rumors still claim that I’m Lullaby Doe’s mother, is that they must think I cheated on him. The irony of that burns deep into my soul.

I’m still fuming about it when I walk through my front door to find my mother standing in the kitchen, leaning over the island with her back to me. She turns when I close the door, and the startled look on her face tells me I’m not who she was expecting.

“Beckett.” She’s still wearing her badge.

There’s a uniformed cop behind her, and when he turns from the sink holding a glass of water, I realize it’s Doug Chalmers.