“It suits you,” Chase says. “Motherhood, I mean. I’ve never seen you look calmer.” But there’s something flat in the way he says it. Something’s wrong.

“Have you seen Alex? Where is she?”

“At the loft.” He runs a palm across his jaw.

“Good,” I reply. She can do less damage from there. When I came to Moses River, I wanted to believe in her, but she clearly didn’t believe in me. She took all the truth I gave her and twisted it into a weapon.

“She’s—” Chase begins, but then the door to my room opens, and Sully walks in. My grip around Will tightens. Sully’s out of uniform, wearing a faded Rockies baseball T-shirt and jeans.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I invited him,” Chase says, shifting his weight.

Feathery panic brushes the inside of my head. “Chase, what have you done?”

“Sully has the drugs now.” His words come out in a torrent. “I told him everything about Pim, about Alex, and her web of lies, and I gave him the tin. I didn’t see another way out, Ruth. So I told him the truth.”

My eyes lock on Sully. “I should never have brought those drugs into their house, but I’m telling you, I never moved them. They disappeared. Then reappeared somewhere else. And there’s only three people who live there—me, Chase, and my sister.”

Sully takes a step forward. “You’re not in trouble. Eli’s in police custody, and he hasn’t said anything about the drugs—probably doesn’t want to incriminate himself. I’ve submitted the tin to the police as seized.”

“Seized from who?” I ask warily.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Alex’s version of events doesn’t match yours and Chase’s. She acknowledged the drugs existed, but she didn’t bring them to me. Chase did.”

“But they weren’t mine,” Chase says, his eyes wide. “The only person who could have moved them was Alex. What I want to know is why.”

Sully eyes Chase for a long time with a look I just can’t understand. “I’ve always been a good judge of character,” Sully says, breaking the silence, “but everyone can make a mistake. She asked me to check into your past, Ruth. And I did. She also said she took you for an abortion when you were both young. I checked the records on that, too. But it wasn’t you who had the abortion. It was her.”

I glance across at Chase, who’s fidgeting under the balloon.

“She releases the parts of her life that are too heavy to carry,” I say. “She got herself in trouble as a kid, and it’s no surprise that even that story got twisted into being about me.”