That explains Paul’s face when I told him about the opossum, at least. What it doesn’t explain is why he failed to tell me about it. Because I saw his expression in the mirror. I know he made the connection.

Chet shuffles his feet, gravel crunching underneath the soles. “Sam’s right, Charlie. Things are lining up too tight. Maybe you should...I don’t know...put some space between you and Paul. Just until the dust settles.”

I shake my head—not because I don’t agree, but because I don’t want to. These are some of the same things Sam told me a year ago, and I hadn’t listened then, either—and not just because of his crappy timing. It was because of the words he used when he dragged me into that corner of the country-club kitchen, the way he’d said them with his lips curled in disgust. That Paul was a monster and a murderer. That I was an idiot and a fool. There’s not a bride on the planet who would have listened to all that ugliness.

For me, it was as easy as breathing. I chose Paul that day, and Sam here still hasn’t forgiven me.

He leans a hip against the freezing metal of his car. “If you’re not going to listen to Chet or me, at least talk to Micah. Ask him why he told me Paul and Katherine’s marriage had hit some rocks, that their relationship wasn’t as smooth as Paul would like everybody to think. That toward the end there, there was a lot of fighting.”

This time, I can’t hold back on my frown. Micah tattled on Paul to an officer of the law. He told a cop that Paul and Katherine were fighting in the months before her death. And not just a cop—Sam, who from the very start suspected Paul. Who would like nothing more than to slap on some cuffs and cart him down to the station. Micah had to know what he’d be implying with such a statement. Why would he say such a thing?

Unless it was true. The thought whispers through my mind before I can stop it, but I can’t go there. If that’s the case, if Paul and Katherine’s marriage was falling apart when she drowned, then how could I ever believe another word he says?

I feel myself losing it, that grip on everything I’ve been fighting so hard to hold together—my belief in my husband, my marriage—and so I do the only thing I can think of. I say what I brought Sam here for and, in doing so, take the heat off Paul and swivel the spotlight onto someone else.

“I hear you found Sienna’s coat in Jax’s cabin but that her scarf was missing.”