“Sounds good,” I say, even though it doesn’t sound good at all. I don’t want Micah swinging by, not without Paul here as a buffer. Every second I spend alone with that man is another chance for me to lie or worse—to talk myself into a corner. A flash of anger blooms in my chest at Paul for leaving me here, for trekking off into the woods for who knows where or how long. When he gets home, I’m going to kill him.

“Hey, Charlotte?”

I look to where Micah is standing, one foot in the mudroom.

“Keep the doors locked and the alarm on at all times, okay? And maybe have Chet check the windows. Until we figure out who put that woman in the lake and why, nobody’s safe.”

Nobody’s safe.

The words punch a panic button in my chest. Even with a backyard full of cops, even with big, badass Micah in the house next door, the murderer could show up here. My breath comes in a shallow spurt, hollowing out the room and my lungs and my stomach. But somehow I manage a nod.

As soon as Micah leaves, Chet turns to me. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

“What was what all about?”

He reaches across the counter for the pot of jam. “Don’t you play coy with me, Charlie Delilah McCreedy. Where is Paul, really? And why did you just lie to the sheriff about it?”

I don’t correct Chet or ask what gave me away. It could be any one of a number of things—my shaky hands, my twitchy gaze, the unambiguous pauses while I thought through my string of lies. Chet knows all of my tells.

I pour the beans in the grinder and flip it on with a thumb. “No comment.”

12

June 12, 1999
7:07 p.m.

Jax didn’t want to be here. While Paul and Micah talked nonsense, sports and parties, and debated which was the superior food group, pizza or hamburgers, Jax leaned back on the lounger and stared out the window at the tops of the trees, wishing he was anywhere but here, at Paul’s house. The top of Leafy Knoll, maybe, or crawling through the caves on the western end of the lake. Paul was cool, but Mrs. K was right about there being something going on between Jax and Micah. For the past hour, Micah had worked Jax’s every last nerve.

He bragged about girls, the ones he’d slept with and the ones he planned to, and how the ones at Clemson, where Micah was starting as a freshman this coming fall, were supposed to be hot and rich and easy. He ticked off his accomplishments like they were nothing, the cliffs he’d climbed and the pounds he’d bench-pressed, boasting and blowing steam until Jax couldn’t take another second.