“I didn’t lie. Not technically. I said I don’t know her, and I don’t.” He shakes his head, corrects himself. “Didn’t. I don’t know her name or where she’s from. I don’t know anything about her, other than that she stopped me yesterday to ask where I got my coffee.”

“Well, I lied. I said I’d never seen her before.”

He winces. “You said that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. And I’d really like it if you told me why.”

Paul gazes down the hill to where Micah is huddled with the others at the edge of the crime scene. He stands a good head above the rest, his wet hair gleaming in the light. The cops around him stand rapt, nodding at whatever Micah’s saying. The hometown hero.

“I panicked, okay? When they flipped her over and I saw her face, I panicked. Because you know exactly what would have happened if I’d told them the truth. You know what everyone down there would have thought.”

I do know, because I thought the same thing myself: that’s two dead bodies under the same dock. Four years apart, but still. Surely, surely, that must be a horrible coincidence.

“Just so we’re clear, I’m not mad about the lie per se. When you grow up like Chet and I did, stretching the truth is pretty much the same thing as surviving.”

Yes, sir, our mama will be home later tonight. No, sir, we don’t live here alone. We’re children.

But this wasn’t my lie; it was Paul’s.

If only it had been anyone other than Sam who was doing the asking. Anybody else, and maybe I would have come clean. I could have reminded Paul of their fleeting encounter and everyone would have brushed it off as a blunder.

But it wasn’t anyone else; it was Sam. Sam with his pursed lips and squinty eyes. With his silent judgment and retracted friendship. A year ago, he was capping off his workday with a glass of iced tea on my front step, and now suddenly I’m Mrs. Keller.

I reach out, touch Paul’s sleeve. “Paul, who was that woman? What did she say to you yesterday?”

He sighs, a rush of breath I can feel on my forehead. “Can we finish this upstairs? I really could use a shower.”

He really could. The cut on his forehead needs a good, deep scrubbing before it scabs over, and I can’t tell if the mud from his slide down Fontana Ridge is dried or just frozen. He smells like cold and earth and sweat.

I point him to the outdoor staircase that leads to the mudroom—the route we usually take to the house. “I’ll meet you up there. I need to open the downstairs first.”