Knowing all these things, Amanda stood beside me saying nothing, chipping old paint off the cubby beside her with her thumbnail. Maybe she was afraid to ask if I was going back. I didn’t know what fear was like for her, my strange little partner.

“I’m sorry about Sweeney,” I said. Amanda turned toward me too fast, betraying the terror I knew was there. I dipped the brush in the paint. “I know you liked her.”

“I did like her.” Amanda nodded. I saw her glance at my bare ring finger, quick as a flash. She looked away again. Cool and distant, or trying to be.

“They’ll be angry at us,” I said. “The Crimson Lake cops.”

“Mmm,” Amanda agreed.

“On the next case, we’ll have to keep our heads down,” I said.

I felt Amanda watching me. Tried not to smile. In time, the stiff, upright strip of color that she was in the corner of my vision seemed to slouch. She was leaning against the cubby, smiling, looking at the animals on the grass, feathers and fur gleaming in the dying sun.

No, I wasn’t going back to Sydney. To my wife. I loved Kelly still, of course. She was the mother of my child. But the woman that she had been before the fateful day that changed our worlds was gone now, and a new woman had taken her place. She was battered, bruised, and strained by what had happened. Her heart was broken, and her trust was gone. It wasn’t her fault. It was Kevin’s.

What Kevin had done had changed me, too. I wasn’t the same man. And to think that Kelly and I could go back, two completely different people trying to love each other in the same way we always had was a decision that was destined to fail. I didn’t want to have to leave that house again, packing my bags, saying goodbye to my daughter, starting over with that awful loss and loneliness newly heavy in my chest.

I belonged here. A different man with a different life. Displaced, but defiant, resolved to grow. I would work it all out eventually; how I could still be in Lillian’s life the way I needed to be. How I could form a new relationship with Kelly, if not as her husband, as her friend. How I could accept never being free of my accusation. I’d just work on it, one bit at a time. I wasn’t alone. There were people in my new life who would help me.

“The dog,” Amanda said, drawing me away from my thoughts. “What’s her name?”

I put down my brush, slipped my phone from my back pocket. I was already laughing as I brought up the music player.

“Watch this,” I said. “You’re gonna love this.”