“It’s not a big deal. We only took them if we were super stressed, or like, on special occasions or whatever. That’s not even the point, anyway, because Nick said no.” He rubs his forehead. “I don’t know how long we were up there. Might have been minutes or seconds. I can’t make myself forget it but can’t seem to remember, either. Nick started apologizing, and Elizabeth almost started to cry, but she was still blocking the stairs, so Nick ran outside to the deck. All I did was grab him. I was trying to contain things, so I ran after him and grabbed his clothes to hold him back. His shoe wasn’t tied, and it was slick up there, you know? I was trying to stop him. I grabbed his shirt but lost my grip and he went flying right into the banister. It smashed clean through. He went over. That was it.”

Jonah bangs the heel of one hand against his head. “He just wanted some privacy, Dad. You were always hovering, riding his jock. Maybe if you’d given him some space.”

“That’s ludicrous. I hardly knew the kid.”

“Yeah, but you were always doing shit for him, taking him fishing or whatever. What the hell? When’s the last time you offered to take me fishing?”

“I asked you after the funeral, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but before. Before Nick came around, you didn’t want to do anything together. Suddenly you’re obsessed with my friend and we’re all buddy-buddy or whatever.”

“Enough about the fishing. That has nothing to do with this.”

“Doesn’t it?”

I picture them on the boat, swapping coded looks, and this leads me back to the thread that pulled me into this rabbit hole in the first place. These two: the boys. “Jonah, you can tell me: Where was Nick in this love triangle?” I ask.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well?”

“Even now. Even in this, it just has to be about someone else, doesn’t it? Nick wasn’t the third in our triangle, Dad. You were.”

My eyelid twitches, my jaw clenches and tension surges—but this time, it’s not a homicidal urge. This time, it’s the absolute denial of linear time, the desire to reverse the present and choose another face-to-face, another outcome, a different moral to my story, because this isn’t how my story goes. I ask, “Why didn’t you call the cops?”