“You don’t tell anyone what you saw tonight, or I can have you arrested and charged with obstruction,” the sheriff had barked at me. His voice was gruff, but I barely noticed as I watched the dancing blue lights of the ambulance cast an eerie glow across the crowd. Like we were all underwater. I wanted to ask why it wasn’t a hearse. Natalie was long gone; there was nothing the ambulance could do. But instead the sheriff lectured me about details I had no desire to give anyone, including him.

Natalie’s mother wailed a dozen feet from me. When the EMTs wheeled her daughter’s body into the back of their vehicle, Dr. Shelby’s legs gave way. The mayor caught her, inches before she hit gravel, stony-faced as his eyes swept over the black body bag.

They didn’t know what I knew. That the scarf wrapped around Natalie’s neck, a gauzy white thing that had complemented her dress as she rounded the field atop that convertible, waving like a goddamn princess—no, like a queen—was pulled so tight across her neck it had left indents on her skin. Was it used to strangle her, or to hold her in the water?

My mind has been spinning a dozen scenarios, each more gruesome and horrible than the last. I’m on my second body since September, and I’m crumbling. It’s different when you know the deceased.

I finish the article unsatisfied. It refuses to use the word murder, when it is obvious to me that’s what we have. And here’s Maura, sipping her coffee and eating disgusting, runny eggs, saying “poor girl” and “sweet dear,” like Natalie’s death is some abstract thing miles away from her.

But it’s not. It’s right here, uncomfortably close.

I boil over. “You know, she was just like you wrote it,” I say. Maura’s eyebrows furrow. I keep on. “Natalie. Same place, same dress, same—” I stop myself from saying “manner of death,” remembering Sheriff Morrow’s instruction. “It was like the book,” I say instead.

Maura considers me. “I thought you hadn’t read the book, dear. Besides, you know I based it on a real murder. It was probably some crackpot copycat who watched the Netflix documentary. Or the poor girl accidentally drowned.”

“How do you accidentally drown during halftime, by yourself, in a pool?”

Maura shrugs. “Maybe she was unhappy. I didn’t know the girl, Celia.”

Suzanne bustles into the dining room, hurriedly breaking our standoff. “Come on, the mayor is making a statement,” she says, continuing into the sitting room and switching on the TV.