We pulled into my driveway. I hustled Marshall and Gabrielle inside, then sent them on through to the great room and did a lap around my house, making sure all the blinds were closed. I had no idea where the daughter was. She might still be at the party, or off to meet her mother, or living some unimaginable life of her own. She would not be coming back here to watch me, though. I was terribly afraid that there was no reason to watch me anymore. I closed the blinds anyway, praying I was wrong.

The second I joined them, Marshall and Gabrielle began asking questions, talking over each other. I talked loudest. The words pushed out of me, silencing them.

“I killed him.” Or the mother had, with my help. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure there was a difference. I didn’t care right now, though surely there would be a reckoning for this. One day. Now all I could care about was Robert.

Whatever Marshall and Gabrielle had been expecting me to say, this wasn’t it. Marshall’s whole body jerked, as if I’d given him a small electric shock.

She asked, “You did what?” her disbelief writ large.

“I killed Spencer Shaw,” I said, to be completely clear. Once that was out, the rest came fast, as if I had a million rancid words trapped in me and my admission released them. I started from the moment I’d first seen her, dreaming that a witch was peering in our bedroom window.

When I got to the part where she took Robert, Marshall’s eyes widened, as if it had just occurred to him to wonder where my baby was. Or perhaps he was realizing he’d been in the building when my boy was taken. Gabrielle’s hand came up to cover her mouth, pressing hard. She looked to Marshall, but he was staring at me, his lips gone white. When our eyes met, his were so, so sorry.

I kept on, telling them about the gift bag, the pills, my fraught phone conversations with the mother. We’d settled around the breakfast table, but as I talked, Marshall got up and began banging about in my cabinets searching for all the things he needed to make coffee. Gabrielle got out her phone and began rapid-fire thumb-typing into it. I wasn’t sure if she was texting or taking notes, but it was clear that she was listening intensely, even though she didn’t look up from her screen. It was easier without their eyes on me.

As the coffeepot burbled, Marshall gathered all the objects I’d told them about, first dumping the phone, the charging cord, the empty pill bottle, and the dosed flask out of my purse.