I toss a relieved look to Paul, but he doesn’t look up. He’s standing at the top edge of the tarp, staring down at the woman nestled in shiny black plastic. His face is as white as the terry cloth slung over Micah’s shoulders, and I wonder whose face Paul is seeing—this woman’s, or Katherine’s?

“Oh, baby.” I shove past the other officers, moving up and around to the other side of the tarp. “Oh, Paul.”

“I’m fine,” he mumbles, his face a death mask. He takes a step backward, his sneakers slipping on a patch of rock and dirt. “I’m fine.”

He’s not fine. This is Paul from last March, when he took to bed claiming to be under the weather, when I brought him hot tea and chicken soup that he left untouched on the nightstand, on a day I later found out was Katherine’s birthday. This is him pretending to be asleep so I wouldn’t worry, even though under the covers his entire body was trembling. Most days, it’s just me and Paul in our relationship, but for a few days a year, on her birthday or their anniversary or the anniversary of her death, there’s a third. The beautiful, funny, sexy, smart, perfect ghost of Katherine.

“What’s wrong?” At first I think Sam’s question is directed at me, until I see the way he’s watching Paul. I can see Sam thinking, processing Paul’s distress, landing on the most obvious reason. “Mr. Keller, do you know this woman? Do you know her name?”

Paul swallows, and then he shakes his head. “No. I just thought...”

“You thought what?”

A gust of sudden wind blows up the hill, whipping Paul’s hair. He looks at me, and his cheeks, already pink from the cold, turn even pinker. We don’t talk about Katherine; that is the unspoken agreement between us, and now here she is, standing between us like a live grenade.

“You thought what?” Sam says again.

I take a step to my left, blocking Paul’s view of the body. “Shut up, Sam. If you’d stop to think for one freaking second, you’d know what he thought. Just let it go, will you...”

The words die in my throat, because it’s then I happen to look down. To get my first good look at the face half-hidden beneath plastic and a weedy fall of wet hair. Milky skin with a smattering of freckles across her nose. Pale lips parted on a silent gasp. Sunken, clouded eyes open in a lifeless stare with pupils the color of a late-summer sky.

It’s the woman from yesterday, the one I found Paul talking to in town. The one who was trying to get her hooks in my Keller.