“I did, yes. Before coming here.” I hope I can get my jobs back if he does fire me, but there’s no guarantee. He may have complimented me a second ago, but he’s mercurial enough not to care. If I displease him, I’ll be gone. I know that much is true.

“The agency called the grocery store manager, your shift manager, and someone named Noah Palmer. He works with you. According to this, you’ve known him for years.”

My cheeks burn. “We were in the same foster home.”

“Coincidence?”

“I worked at the diner through high school. After I graduated I needed another job, and he knew they had an opening at the cheese counter.”

“Gouda,” he says. “Camembert. I do enjoy a good manchego.”

“It’s really not that kind of grocery store. They sell mostly mozzarella and cheddar. My job was to clean out the slicer between slicing the meats and the cheeses.”

“Why are you here?”

I glance back at the dark hallway. And then toward the fire. “You told me. You told me nine o’clock in your study.”

“Not here in this room. You could have been in the city where you grew up, selling mozzarella and cheddar. With your family.” He corrects himself. “With your friends. Instead you decided to move to the coldest, wettest place on earth. I want to know why.”

“You have my whole life written down in black and white right in front of you.”

“It doesn’t tell me anything about what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours. Did you think you’d hook up with the playboy Beau Rochester and get your picture in the tabloids? Precious little of that here in Eben Cape.”

My pulse speeds up. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you really saying you’ve never seen me on the news before?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you want to look in those pages so badly, look at my course load. All AP classes. Look at my hours at the diner and then at the grocery store. When would I have time to look up news articles about some random guy in Maine?”

He gives me a cynical smile, though I sense the derision is directed more at himself. “I didn’t always hide in the corner of the country. At one time I made more money than one man can ever spend in a lifetime—but I sure did try.”

“Doing what?” A memory of the drive up the mountain slams into me like a gust of wind. I remember seeing the wild sea. “Fishing?”

A bark of laughter. “You really have never heard of me.”

“Who are you?”

“Nobody. Absolutely fucking nobody.”

I glare at him. “Don’t mock me.”