They’d been so happy. He thought they were happy, at least. The Saturday date nights, dinners around town, expensive bottles of wine. The walks on Sunday down the Franklin streets, arm in arm, dodging baby carriages and young mothers in baseball caps, then with their own three-wheeled running carriage, the finest he could buy. The parties to which they were invited, their photos always making it into the society magazines. They were such a great couple, everyone said so. Such an adorable family.

Yet he’d screwed it up, again and again and again.

He was human. He was a man. He was even semifamous, and beloved among many.

Where were all the sycophants now?

His world had narrowed to three components: eat and drink, sleep, worry about Sutton by writing the story of a lifetime.

Eat was making itself known again. He made a late lunch with the last bits of the groceries. The tea tin was nearly empty; he scraped the last of the butter on his toast. He added the groceries needed to the iPad built into the refrigerator and clicked Order Now. The grocery delivery service would automatically bring the items requested in two hours. All hail modern technology.

As he chewed, the same refrains played, over and over. Where did she go? Where had she gone? Why had she taken money and disappeared?

How will it end? How will I draw the story through? Where is the next turn? Stay away from that saggy middle, it’s getting marshy.

At the end of the day, he had another hundred pages. This, this was his atonement. This was his punishment. He was bound to the story, to the computer. Bound to the idea of a lost life.

And while he wrote, while he hid, while he lost himself, the police made the case against him.

The Green Grass Across the Way

THE GREEN GRASS ACROSS THE WAY

Every case breaks. Especially when there are so many moving parts, so many edges, crevasses to climb in, dark, moist corners ripe for dissection.

The blackmail was a stroke of genius, truly it was. Everyone rushed off in the wrong direction, and here I am, left to pick up the pieces.

We’re reaching the endgame. I can’t imagine she won’t be found soon. And when she is, Katie, bar the door.

Isn’t that a stupid phrase? It’s a Southern thing. It means a tempest is brewing. A storm of epic proportion is about to blow in your door. A woman will lose her temper, a man will become a raging beast.

These are the inevitabilities of life. We are afraid to die, and so we are afraid to live.

Do you think Ethan is to blame? That he put his hands around the pale stalk of her gorgeous neck and squeezed until no breath would ever be drawn again?