As the ghost of Lexie Pine stepped off the path, her white shoes pressing down the grass, as Marshall’s and Trey’s voices swirled nonsensically around me, I fell strangely calm. This felt fair. This felt right, that I should be so haunted. I had not fought hard enough for her. I’d earned this. I wondered if Trey would see her, too. I wondered if he’d see her face and tell the truth.

“Look,” I said, soft. Too soft. “It’s Lexie.” The buzz of male voices continued. Neither of them heard me.

She was only steps away now, coming directly to our table, not the hostess stand. Her face was set in lines both beautiful and terrible.

“Hey,” Mills called. “Hey!”

He saw her, approaching. He saw her, and so she was real; it was as if a gauze were stripped from my eyes.

This was not Lexie Pine. Lexie was dead. But oh, I knew this broken girl. I knew her face.

The white rectangle that she held, it was not a clutch purse. It was a flat white envelope. Exactly like the one Coral sent me. It was even now falling to the ground as she dropped it, the gun she had hidden behind it aimed and ready.

Her shadow hit us. At the bar Mills was already in motion. Trey started to glance behind him.

“Kelly, wait!” It was all I had time to say before the boom of gunfire filled the courtyard.

Her bullets hit Trey like punches to his back—one, two, three—knocking him forward into the table. Trey looked so surprised. At almost the same moment, red bloomed between Kelly’s breasts, knocking her back, and her arms jerked her gun off target. Her next bullet kicked up a tuft of grass.

There was now a steady rhythm of unendurable sound, Mills and then Maxwell firing in short, controlled bursts. Her white dress bloomed with more red poppies as she fell backward, dropping her gun as Trey grabbed the tablecloth and slid sideways out of his chair, pulling our drinks and the little dish of olives as he went.

He lay on his back on the green grass. I stared at my husband, frozen. He looked perfect, his white shirt pristine, tie still knotted. Unharmed. Her bullets must have stopped somewhere inside him.

“Kelly!” I said again. Now I was rising, but in such slow motion. I felt my legs knocking my own chair over. In my peripheral vision, I saw our fancy-haired waiter moving so much faster than I could, blanching, screaming, turning to run, dropping the cheese plate he was bringing us.

“We’re security! Security!” I heard Mills yelling.

I was trying to untangle my feet from my fallen chair. I had to get to Trey. He stared up, blue eyes meeting mine. He was not afraid. He looked, if anything, surprised.