Micah leans to his left, sliding his still-full mug onto a side table. “You know, when Paul came home that first day, telling me about this woman he met while getting gas, I was thrilled for him.” He says it like a compliment, his voice warm and affectionate, but I’m not fooled. I see the way his shoulders have gone stiff, that muscle ticking in his jaw. “You didn’t see him that first year after Katherine died, how those rumors tore him apart. Diana was ready to put him on suicide watch. It was that bad. But then you came along, and he started smiling again.”

“Twenty years. You sat on this secret for twenty years. You and Paul literally stood by and watched a man go batty from the guilt. And for what? To save your own skin?”

“Oh, come on. Jax was never a friend. He was someone I tolerated because Paul liked him. And it’s not like we planned it or anything. This wasn’t premeditated. We were young and we were stupid, and may I remind you once again this was Jax’s fault. Jax was behind the wheel. He was driving.”

That feels right, Jax behind the wheel. Only...my head explodes with images, with sounds. An argument threaded through with blaring music and laughter. Fists flying.

Thunder booms overhead at the same time a bolt of lightning splits the night, turning darkness into day like God flicked on a flashlight, there and gone in an instant. Barely long enough for me to pick out a cluster of trees, a pile of slick firewood on the back deck, a drenched Jax—right before everything goes black.

Jax.

Something prickles up the back of my neck—shock, disbelief, a disturbing kind of unease. What is Jax doing here? How long has he been watching? I stare at the glass, searching for his shape in the shadows, but all I see is the reflection of the room, Micah twisting around on the couch.

“What?” he says, turning back, studying my face. “What did you see?”

“Nothing. The storm’s close, that’s all. That lightning hit right outside.”

The room goes deathly quiet, an empty, heavy sound that expands and fills me with dread. I think about what I should do now that I know the truth. I could run. I could leap over the couch and arm myself with a kitchen knife. But I can’t make my body move because it’s Micah. Paul’s friend and mine. The one person who never made me feel unwelcome on this side of the hill. When he smiles at me, I smile back, half wondering if this is a dream.