I had no clue what I was doing. Was I helping Jonah? Leading him astray? There was no time to predict. I only knew that once we made the decision to cover tracks, there was no reversing course. By the time I could see straight, it had been over an hour, at which point I panicked. What kind of psychopath waits hours to call the cops? Who cleans and disinfects in the meantime? Crazy people and criminals, right? I could’ve pretended to have just discovered Nick’s body, but the thought of lying to the police sent me into a dissociative state. Like Kayla and Jonah, I wanted it all to go away. I just kept thinking: floating market, pearl-tipped toes.

Robert couldn’t know that I’d deceived him. If he found out, he’d have every right to leave me, or commit me, or report me—yes, report me, because I’d made myself an accessory to something that might now be a crime—and so, quid pro quo, I agreed to let Jonah confess his own way if he agreed to erase me and Kayla from the story altogether.

Two hours after Robert had left for the gym, I helped Jonah pack a duffle bag with all of our cleaning supplies and every object that had come into contact with Nick that morning. Later on, Jonah threw some of it away and washed the rest at his mother’s house. When Robert finally returned from the gym, he was so happy, insisting I choose a dinner spot. He wanted to make me happy. We had a chance to reset, too. So I picked a Thai restaurant where I could eat noodles and drink broth and drink spirits in a secret ritual unfolding in my mind. Every time I swallowed, I thought, floating market, pearl-tipped toes, tabula rasa.

A week after the disaster, Kayla left the country as planned, and she’s out there now, exploring and seeing and being herself as a person at the market, in a temple, in the world, and she hasn’t been decided yet. She still gets to decide.

And Jonah was spared from something awful, whether something as abstract as gossip or as fixed as an involuntary manslaughter charge. A felony record. A lifetime of doubt. I’ve decided if there’s a possibility Jonah will find the freedom to forgive himself—maybe even to believe, in time, that his worst day wasn’t his fault—I’d probably make the same choices again.

As for Robert—a week or so later, I came home to find him nursing a migraine, staring at the wall. He told me Jonah had moved out, alluding to a difficult conversation they’d had. It became clear Jonah had kept his word. He’d told Robert about the argument, the shove, the accident, but left me and Kayla out of it. He’d taken the fall.