“What are you calling about, then?” I ask. “Are you all right? Is Aubrey okay?”

I hear ice in a glass. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re fine. Everyone’s fine.”

I should end the call, but I don’t.

“Then what is it?” I ask.

“I’ve been thinking about Hodge and what he did.”

I hate hearing my molester’s name. It always feels like the jolt of a cattle prod. In print, on a report, or from the lips of another party.

Like Adam Warner. Just now.

“We’re not talking about that, Adam,” I say. “I don’t want to.”

“You don’t get to own all of that,” he says. More ice clinking. “You don’t get to be the decider of what is yours and what can’t be someone else’s experience.”

“I don’t follow you, Adam. This call is over.”

“Don’t!” he says, his voice louder and more urgent. “What happened to you that day was only one side of it. Do you know what it did to me?”

You became a hero. That’s what, I think. But there is a churlish quality to those words when I think them in my head.

“What?” I ask. “What did what to you?”

“Finding you,” he says, his voice now fading.

Next, I hear ice cubes being released from a metal tray, and the sound of liquid pouring. He’s getting more booze into his system.

“I’m very grateful for that,” I say.

“Not about you,” he says. “This is about me right now. I want you to know that as long as I live, I’ll look back at the day I found you as the greatest moment of my life. There was no pretense. No trying to get something for nothing. No game playing. You need to know that finding you was the best I’ll ever do.”

His words touch me. He’s right. I’d never really thought what the experience might have been for him beyond the award he got and his picture in the paper. I may have cheated death because of him. Nothing Adam would do would ever surpass the moment he found me that day. There was no ulterior motive behind my rescue. No jockeying for a better job. No manipulation. His finding me was untainted by anything. It was pure and selfless.

“There’s something else,” he says.

There’s something in his tone that makes me want to run. But I don’t. I do what I’m best at—what makes me effective as an investigator. I listen.

“I have always had feelings for you, Lee. Okay? I just wanted to say that to you because things are spinning out of control, and you deserve to know.”

This isn’t expected. Or wanted. My head spins.

“This call needs to be over,” I tell him.

And it is.