I stood, washed my hands and splashed water on my face, then ambled to the bedroom. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, pushed aside my mother’s scarf, and retrieved John’s note, which I’d tucked away next to the photos last night. I traced my fingers along his handwriting.

Please don’t tell Vera. I’ll call you soon.

What had gone wrong?

I lay in bed all afternoon. I knew I should call Vera, should go over, hold her tight, but the guilt was too much, the sensation that I had done this, brought this tragedy to them.

Davis raced through my mind. His blond hair, his thick intellectual glasses, his body, nowhere near overweight, but softened from his graphic designer desk job. He wasn’t the sort to live at the gym, and I’d liked that about him. He didn’t seem the type to be able to kill, but he hadn’t seemed the type to hurt me, either.

Could he really have done this?

I remembered a day, early on, sitting on the sofa in our underwear at Davis’s place, before I’d moved in, our legs tangled like pretzels, a glass pipe on the coffee table, weedy ash scattered around like black snowfall. ‘Would you ever forgive a partner for cheating?’ he’d asked me.

‘You got something to tell me?’

He grabbed the back of my calf and squeezed. ‘Of course not. Just hypothetical.’

I pursed my lips. ‘As long as you’re not going to use this as your road map for cheating later …’

‘I would never cheat on you,’ he said. ‘Scout’s honor.’

I’d laughed, the gaping, guffawing type that only came out when you were deep in the chemicals of love. ‘Then I probably could forgive, if it was a one-off and not a whole drawn-out affair, and if the person, not you, since you would never cheat, confessed to me on his own instead of leaving me to snoop. You?’

His hand stroked the back of my leg. ‘I could forgive you,’ he said. And then the stroking stopped. ‘But I’d have to kill the guy.’

I’d laughed again. It had felt funny at the time.

Now my hands felt clammy, and my stomach twisted, tying itself up in knots. What if?

What if he’d found me, seen me, followed us to the hike, and then – somehow – tracked John?

It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t –

My stomach churned as I remembered the way Dusty’s leash had been cut, the pocketknife Davis always kept on him.

What if that had been his weapon?

A crude tool, a blade so short, he’d had to stab John six times to kill him?

Fingers shaking, I dialed Ellie’s number, praying I was wrong – but there was no answer.

I dialed her again. And again and again.