He smiled, his throat clenching. “Thank you.”

After he ended the conversation, Quentin went to his recent calls and scrolled through them. Most all of them over the past twenty-four hours were from Dean and Summer, but there was one that was unfamiliar, with a Westchester County area code. Could be Robin Diamond.

He thought about calling back, and it made him feel tired and hopeless, as though he’d been treading water for too long.

He slipped his digital voice recorder out of his pocket and turned it on. He’d been doing this ever since Dean had dropped him off at LAX—recording thoughts and observations that might make it into the podcast, a type of personal diary as he journeyed to the heart of the murders that so deeply affected his own life. It had been Summer’s idea initially, but he’d taken to it quickly. Probably too quickly. Recording his own thoughts was, after all, basically the same thing as talking to himself.

He cleared his throat and spoke into the recorder, the mic catching his voice along with the roar of traffic on Fifth Avenue, the bleat of horns. “All parents lie. That’s just a fact. For some of us, the lies are designed to preserve our innocence: Santa is real, for instance. Trying for a baby means praying really hard. Other times, the lies are deeper, more material. Parents tell us those lies not to protect us, but to protect themselves. They don’t want us to know who they really are.”

Quentin’s phone chimed. He looked at the screen. Another unfamiliar number. Another Westchester County area code. And when he answered the call, he heard a man’s voice he was certain he’d never heard before. “Hello,” the man said, “can you tell me who I’m speaking to, please?”

“Only if you tell me first.”

“This is Detective Nick Morasco, from the Tarry Ridge Police Department,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”

He swallowed. “Quentin. Quentin Garrison . . . Um . . . Is anything wrong?”

“Mr. Garrison, do you know a man named Mitchell Bloom?”

Quentin had the strangest sensation—as though he were outside the conversation, as though he were his future self, listening in. “Why? What happened?”

“Answer the question please, sir.”

Quentin thought about lying, but only for a second. He needed to tell the truth. He knew that. But first, he needed to be able to breathe. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I know him.”

Mitchell Bloom. When he’d spoken to Robin the previous day, Quentin had managed to pry one piece of information out of her—her father wasn’t retired. And as it turned out, he’d found a listing for a psychiatrist named Mitchell Bloom with a private practice in Tarry Ridge and paid him a visit there, during working hours.

“You went to his workplace?” Detective Morasco said. “To talk to him for your podcast? You didn’t call first?”