So, not an option. Also not an option: letting Marland get away with Danielle’s murder. She doesn’t know if he did it. But the police don’t know about him, and here he’d threatened her directly. He had to be a suspect. But the moment she accuses him, even if she does it anonymously, the police will start to search for the connection between Marland and Danielle and Ned, and Marland, who was so oddly obsessed with her being involved, will tie her to all this. And college will be over for her, for Ned. What would the admissions officers make of their entrepreneurial spirit? She starts thinking of the first line of her apologetic essay: I really learned the meaning of friendship when I kept my mouth shut and then interacted with the dealer of my friend’s prescription drug ring.

She bursts into tears. A shadow falls across her and she looks up. Ned’s dad, standing there.

“Are you all right?” he says in his low tone.

“Yes,” she says. “No. But I’m supposed to say yes.”

Gordon sits down next to her. “None of this is easy.”

“No. Harder for you and Ned, of course.”

She can feel the weight of the phone in her boot. If she sits the wrong way, the phone might slide out, and what would she say? Oh hey, sorry. Just stealing this phone of your dead ex-wife. It was concealing evidence. If she did nothing, she broke a law; if she took it to the police, even if she made a deal where she wouldn’t be charged or prosecuted, it would still all come out. She wouldn’t be in jail, but she likely wouldn’t be in college. Could a deal with the cops be kept secret, truly secret, where a college couldn’t find out? They were minors. But it was such a huge risk. Her whole future at stake. It was nice to sit here and listen to Gordon’s deep voice and be caught between two horrendous decisions but not make one yet.

“How well did you know her?” she asks suddenly.

Gordon’s eyebrows go up, and although he and Ned are so different, they have those same eyebrows. “Well, I married her.”

“But not for that long. I mean. Forgive me, but…”

“No, you’re right. It was a short marriage. But both of us thought it would be forever. We thought we could overcome all the obstacles. The distance. The cultural differences. I quite loved her.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she says.

The smile widens. “I’m sorry, too, because I think she made a good life for herself and I should have shared in that, helped her build it.”

Julia nods. “It must have been hard to leave Ned, though.”