“I killed Keema and Andrew,” Stephanie said. She blurted the words between sobs, eyes fixed on the floor before her. “I was there that night. I knew about the affair already. I found out weeks ago. I was so mad I just killed them both. I was so mad, so humiliated. I’m so fucking humiliated.”

Stephanie held a fist to her eyes, seemed to want to beat at her forehead with it. Val lit the cigarette she’d been intending to have and started sucking hard on it, blowing smoke over her shoulder. I felt a sudden impulse to ask her for one, to do the same.

“Can you go back for me?” I asked. “When did you discover the affair, exactly? How did you find out about Andrew’s relationship with Keema?”

“I don’t know when it was exactly. You could look it up, probably. I sent her a message. He had been acting weird,” Stephanie said. Her voice was tiny. I held the phone toward her. “He was attached by a fucking string to his phone. It went everywhere with him. Even into the shower. My girlfriends said that that’s when you know—when they start taking the phone to the bathroom with them instead of leaving it hanging around the house. So I went through it. The only time I could get at the phone was when he was asleep. All the messages were deleted. All the texts. All the Facebook chats. I saw this girl I didn’t know in his list and I sent her a message.”

“Who this?” I said. Stephanie lifted her eyes to me.

“Yes. That was the message.”

“She didn’t answer.”

“No.”

“When did you know definitively that they were having an affair?”

“I went to the bar one night while they were both closing up.” Stephanie wiped tears from her cheeks, drew a long breath that came out shuddering. “I saw her get into his car. She should have left before him, but the two of them left together. He must have driven her home. He got back to his dad’s place an hour later. I was sleeping over, in his bedroom. He said they’d had a customer stay late.”

Val Gratteur eased a long stream of smoke through her lips. She tapped the end of the cigarette into a petri dish she’d taken from a refrigerator and folded her arms, eyes wandering over the girl in the chair.

“I was so embarrassed.” Stephanie’s voice rose high as the sadness crashed over her again. The humiliation seemed to be the hardest part. “I didn’t even tell anyone. Not Andrew. Not his dad. I just didn’t say anything. I pretended. Maybe I thought if I kept pretending, it…”

“It wouldn’t be real,” I finished for her.

She hung her head in her hands.