Janna offers tea, and I follow her to her kitchen. It’s painted a light peony pink. Its open shelves hold a collection of jade-colored glassware. It feels like we’ve stepped into springtime. I love it.

“I’ve cried my eyes out,” she says, pouring the tea from a pink vintage teapot. The scent of jasmine fills the air. “All of this seems like a bad dream.”

She’s shaking, and I pat her hand.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“Thank you,” she says. “I haven’t seen Sophie for a few months, but we talk all the time. She’s my girl. Was my girl.” She takes a quick, deep breath. “My best friend. I went through some tough times with a guy before I met Richard—that’s my husband—and Sophie got me through all of it. I can’t believe she’s really gone.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m here because of something her father told me. It may or may not have some relevance to what happened on Saturday.”

I leave out the words rape and murder. I’ve changed it into what happened because this nice girl across the table from me in this fantasyland kitchen doesn’t need all the ugly that would come with having those truths specified just now.

“Mr. Flynn?” she asks. “I’ve never met him.”

I’m a little surprised by that, but he never said he knew her personally. “He says that Sophie and Adam went through some hard times in their marriage and that you might know something.”

She stirs stevia into her tea. “Any time with Adam would be a hard time,” she says. “But that’s me. Adam and I were oil and water. Just not the right mix. Sophie loved him, for the most part.”

“What do you mean, ‘for the most part’?”

“She could put up with his constant scheming to get ahead. He viewed life like it was like that old board game. Risk? My brothers and I used to play it. High stakes. Conquer the world. You know, war.”

I know the game. Risk was Kip’s favorite. I remember a time when Kip and Adam and the other boys played a game of Risk that lasted an entire weekend. The basement smelled like pizza and a locker room. Mom had a fit when the game was over. Dad thought it was funny and was a little proud that Kip played so hard to win. I wonder if Kip thought about Risk when he was off in Afghanistan.

“What about problems in their marriage?” I ask.

“None that I could really see,” Janna says.

“Her father thinks that Adam was having an affair.”

She sips her tea. “He probably was. He’s the type to do it. Not because he didn’t love Sophie. I mean, she was everything. Beautiful. Cute figure. So talented. He might have strayed a little, but it wasn’t major.”

“‘Strayed a little’?”

“Some weird stuff too,” she says with a shrug. “Sophie used to tell me that she wondered where he was after work. Thought he was off with some waitress from a restaurant near the factory or maybe with some recent finance graduate on a rotation at SkyAero.”