“She has these recurring nightmares where she wakes up with amnesia again. After years of developing a life and some kind of identity, it all suddenly disappears—poof, into thin air. She keeps those journals so she can never lose a sense of herself again. Think about that. There’s no way she would leave without them. Ever.”

“Unless—and I’m playing devil’s advocate here—unless she really did want to start all over again from scratch. How many times did she tell you that she wished no one knew about her memory loss? She could go somewhere a lot cheaper than the Hamptons and leave everything about Hopewell in the rearview mirror. She could even pick a new name. It’s not like she ever made the other one official.” The roll of her eyes did not stop him from completing his point. “Look at it this way: if you didn’t know Hope, and all you heard was that she suddenly moved to a new town with a fake backstory, and ran off with a cash advance and a rug, what would you think?”

Lindsay could see the logic of his argument. The Becketts, Miriam, Lindsay’s father . . . they all helped out Hope as an extension of Lindsay. Lindsay was probably the only person who had made affirmative efforts to check on her after she moved, and Hope had signaled that even that was too much.

“Except I do know Hope,” she said.

“Or . . . you know the person Hope pretended to be around you to make you happy. Maybe she wants to be someone else.”

The subject of Hope was never a comfortable one in their relationship, so she forced herself to take a few breaths to consider Scott’s perspective as he reached across the table to stroke her wrist with his thumb. Something about the feeling of his strong hands against her skin always calmed her down.

“Look. It seems to me that it’s the bloodstain that’s really scaring you. Don’t you know some magic lawyer trick to find out whatever the police know?”

Lindsay was somewhere between a decent-plus to hotshot-minus defense attorney, meaning she was far better than the average lawyer. But like her father, Scott seemed to perceive her as one of those mythical television criminal lawyers who could simply show up in a power suit and red lipstick, toting a giant handbag, and TCB—take care of business. Real life didn’t work that way, at least not for Lindsay.

“No, I don’t even have a client to be a lawyer for. Until the government uses its powers against someone, there’s no action to fight. Basically, this Decker guy can be as lazy and apathetic as he wants, and there’s nothing I can do.”