“I’m sorry about everything,” she said. “I should have told you. I was going to tell you eventually, you know, that I was married. There just never seemed a good time.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Anyway, I wanted to say that.”

“Okay, then.” Brian shrugged. “I guess I should get back to it. I’m moving back in with my parents, so I want to help out and stuff.”

“There’s something else,” she said.

Brian waited. Jessica took a few steps closer, and when she was six feet away from him he could see that she had been crying. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s about Ron,” she said.

“What about him?”

“He’s missing.”

Brian took several seconds before saying, “Oh.”

“He was doing this job? This house outside of town. His truck’s there but he’s not around. He’s been gone over twenty-four hours.”

“Jesus,” Brian said.

“At first I thought, maybe he left me. Which, you know, might not be such a bad thing. But if he left me, he sure as hell would have taken his truck. He loves that truck more than he loves me. He’s not answering his cell phone or anything.”

“I don’t know what to say. Have you called the police?”

Jessica Frommer nodded. “Yeah. They’re looking into it.”

“What do they think happened?”

Jessica shook her head. “They don’t know. They said they found blood.”

“Blood?”

“Like, on the ground.”

“That,” Brian said slowly, “sounds bad.”

“That’d mean maybe someone hurt him,” she said. “At first I thought, and don’t be mad when I say this, but at first I wondered, maybe you had something to do with it.”

“Me?”

“Because of Ron beating you up and all. You’d have plenty of reason to want to get back at him.”

“Jess, I’ve been in the hospital.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I wanted to check first, before I told the police anything about you.”

“What?”

“The police asked if there might be anyone who’s got it in for Ron. And I thought of you, but I didn’t give them your name because I didn’t want to get you in trouble. I wanted to find out if you were in the hospital, and you were, so now I’m not going to give them your name.”

“Jeez, Jess, thanks for that.”

“But then I thought, did you tell anyone?”

Brian wondered if it was getting hotter out. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“Did I what?” he asked.

“Did you tell anyone about Ron beating you up?”

Brian thought about what his father had said to him. “You never, ever told me his name. You never, ever told me where he lived. And no matter how many times someone might ask you the question, it’s always no. You never told me.”