“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe not. All I want to do now is find out the truth. I’ve been suspended from work, handcuffed next to a corpse, and implicated in a murder. And”—I shrugged—“now that I don’t have a job to go to, it’s important to keep busy.”

She still wouldn’t look at me. “I used to laugh when the suggestion of you having an affair came up. The idea that someone like you, someone as nervous as you, someone whose emotions and anxieties are so close to the surface, could pull it off.” She took a tissue from the box next to her bed and appeared to be dabbing at her eyes. “Now, I don’t know anymore.”

“The lipstick,” I said.

Sarah froze, said nothing.

I couldn’t tell her that I’d already explained this to Angie. “It was when I was handcuffed,” I said. “Trixie gave me a kiss goodbye, before she ran off, with my car, leaving me there to be found by you. Maybe she thought it was the least she could do for the trouble she’d caused me.”

I knew I wasn’t being totally honest here, at least not about how I had perceived Trixie’s kiss. It had seemed like more, on her part, than a simple kiss of apology, or goodbye.

And I didn’t quite know what to make of that.

“Everything started to go wrong when you decided we should move to Oakwood,” Sarah said. “You got into that trouble, you met Trixie. If you’d never moved us out there, you never would have met her. And you wouldn’t be in this mess you’re in now, and I wouldn’t be heading in to my first day in the home section, having been humiliated in front of the entire newsroom.”

There was that.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see how you might put it together that way. But I need to follow this through now. I can’t just sit here.”

She turned around, her eyes red, her makeup smeared. “I think I liked it better when you were home, writing your books.”

I nodded. “It’s when I’m allowed to go out into the world that I start getting into trouble,” I conceded. I thought maybe she would laugh at that, but there was nothing. I took a breath, and asked, “Do you want me to pack a bigger bag?”

Sarah bit her lip, looked out the window. She lowered her head, glanced at her watch, and said, “I’m going to be late for work.” She sniffed. “One doesn’t like to be late the first day of a new job.” She had to move right by me to get out of the room, and as she passed she reached out and touched my arm for just a moment. “Be careful,” she said.