Ten minutes later, the hill is swarming with cops. They march up and down the back steps with their bags and equipment, dumping everything onto the ground and stringing yellow tape around the edges of the water. They clomp up the dock and hang their upper bodies over the edge, shaking their heads and exchanging grim looks. They tip their faces up the hill to mine, watching from the living room window, and their expressions look much like Sam’s.

I step back from the glass, a giant solid plate overlooking the lake and trees that stretch up into smoky blue mountains. Like most people from the muddy side of the mountain, those cops down there resent my newfound life. They think I’ve abandoned my friends and my family and my morals for the comforts of a fancy house up on a hill.

Even worse, they make all kinds of assumptions about how I got here—by singling out a rich, older man and stalking him like prey, by offering up my body to a person I’m only pretending to love, by swiping aside every last lick of good sense to lay my head down next to a man everybody says got away with murder. Doesn’t matter that nobody could ever prove he had anything to do with Katherine’s death, or that he didn’t love her. As far as Sam and those cops are concerned, my sins are unforgivable.

There’s a rap at the mudroom door, a creak as Micah pushes it open a crack. “Hey, Charlotte.”

“In the kitchen.” I beat him there, pulling a cup from the cabinet and settling it under the spout, pressing the button without asking. When it comes to coffee, Micah’s answer is always yes.

Micah is a big bear of a guy who looks more like an overgrown computer nerd than a master diver. Tortoiseshell glasses, a swoop of muddy brown hair, a nose that on anyone else would be too large but that somehow works on him. Like Paul, he was born in high cotton, with looks and charm and money from a long line of tobacco farmers on his mother’s side. But he’s the only one of Paul’s friends who’s never—not ever, not even once—made me feel like Paul’s slumming by choosing me, which in my book means he can do no wrong.

“Sorry it took me so long. I was halfway to Sylva when you called.” Micah lumbers across the kitchen, taking in my hair thrown back in a messy ponytail, my makeup-free face and rumpled clothes. “Damn, girl, you look like hell.”