Sam swipes a hand down his face, his fingers digging into his temples. “Jax was at his sister Pamela’s house the night Sienna was murdered. He tends to do that when the weather turns nasty, crashes at her place, then takes off as soon as the sun’s up. She’s already given a statement, and I believe her. The Pentecostals are pretty solid in their belief that lying is a sin.”

And Pamela lives all the way on the other side of the lake. A good twelve miles from the marina, maybe more. Too far for Jax to hike back and forth in one night.

Which brings us back to where we began: Micah or Paul. Both have motive. Both insist they didn’t touch Sienna, but an innocent man denying his guilt would use the same words as a guilty man. Their arguments would sound the same.

Exhaustion washes over me, dragging down on my skin and bones, turning my thoughts sluggish. How did they do it? How did they keep a secret that monumental for twenty long years, feeling it heavy over your head all day every single day? Knowing that all it would take was one tiny nudge for the whole thing to come tumbling down, cracking open for all to see.

“And Diana?” I say. “How much did she know?”

“Paul and Jax are pretty tight-lipped whenever her name comes up. They’re very protective of her.”

Chet and I share a look. Of course they are. She’s been guarding their secret like a pit bull all these years. I’m sure as far as they’re concerned, silence is her reward.

Sam gathers up his things, his keys and notebook and cell, and Chet walks him out.

I sink onto a stool and think about what I’m going to do, now that the bottom is blown out of this marriage, now that I don’t have a job, a place to live, a bank account overflowing with cash. Maybe Paul didn’t kill a person. He didn’t shoot a bullet through another man’s heart or hold a woman under water until her breath ran out, but he still kept quiet about something so important, so momentous that for me there’s no way back. There’s no reset button on this thing.

“So, I talked to Tim McAllister earlier,” Chet says, stepping back into the kitchen. “His grandma’s place at Shady Grove is up for rent now that she’s moved down to Florida, and he’s giving us the first look. Fully furnished, and the price is right.”

“That’s because it’s in Shady Grove.”