Once she found out exactly how he had “messed it up,” she couldn’t unknow it. Lindsay’s reluctance to take even that initial leap had nothing to do with Hope and everything to do with Scott. How many times had she started to tell him the reasons for her doubts, but then stopped herself? She might not be ready to go all in, but she also didn’t want to lose him.

He reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. “I honestly don’t know what you want me to say right now, Linds. The last thing I want to do is add to your stress.”

“Look, I know you were all for her moving. And then you told me not to worry when she wasn’t calling or texting. But now she’s gone, Scott. Like, actually gone. I mean, how do you explain that?”

“Maybe East Hampton wasn’t far enough.”

“What does that mean?”

“To get the fresh start she was looking for.”

And then she realized what he was saying. It wasn’t far enough from Lindsay. It wasn’t enough of the “space” she had asked for. All those one-sided text conversations. He was saying that maybe Hope had gotten a $2,000 advance from Evan Hunter and decided to make a clean break. The puppy finally wanted to grow up.

“There’s no way she just took off like that,” she said. “When I looked through the bedroom window, I could see all of her journals still on the bookshelf—years of them. Remember that horrible game your sister brought over for game night?” In Lindsay’s view, it wasn’t even a game. It was a box of cards containing lists of stupid questions they all had to answer, but they were allowed to use one lie per card.

“You said it didn’t count as a game because there were no winners or losers, and you’re the most competitive person on the planet.”

“And proudly so, but that’s beside the point. What’s the one thing you’d grab if your house was on fire? I said my backup hard drive, and Hope said her journals.” The doctors suggested that Hope start journaling about a month after the accident, because they noticed a prominent callus on the left side of her middle finger, a so-called writer’s bump. Sure enough, it turned out that Hope was the kind of person who could pour words onto a page. It was during her very first journal entry that she decided to adopt the name Hope so she’d at least have a name other than Jane Doe. “She’s obsessive about them,” Lindsay said. “Have I ever told you why?”

Scott shook his head.