“Sam.” I push the stack of plates his way, pass him the sugar and jam, which I know he’ll choose over butter and syrup. I know where this conversation is going, and I can’t even think about food.

He dumps on the jam, smearing it around as he asks the next question. “But since she was found on your property—”

I stop him right there: “It’s Paul’s property.”

The irony is not lost on me. This past year, I’ve tried so hard to think of this place as home. To not cringe when I come up on a framed photo with another woman in it, to not fret that all my belongings, every stitch of what I own, could fit in the hallway linen closet. I tell myself I don’t care that the pantry shelves are too high and the pillows too soft and I’m not supposed to eat on the white linen couches, or that I’d made myself small and unobtrusive so I’d fit in Paul’s preexisting life. Now, as soon as this place turns into a crime scene, it’s not my home but his. I only live here.

Sam puts down his fork. “Since she was found on the property where you currently reside, I need to ask where you were the morning of November 20, say from 4:00 a.m. on.”

My heart stops for a full second, like a slow-motion crash. “Okay.”

Sam waits. Shakes his head. “Okay what?”

“Okay, ask away.” I sit completely still, reminding myself to breathe. In my head I’m doing the math. Fontana Ridge is a little over three miles from the front door. The timing is doable but just barely, and only if Paul sprinted.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Where were you from 4:00 to 7:00 a.m. on the morning of November 20?”

“Upstairs asleep.” I say it without blinking, with so much conviction that I almost believe it myself, but I can feel myself dipping into panic because I know the question that comes next.

“And Mr. Keller?”

And Mr. Keller. A liar and a secret-keeper, maybe, but not a killer. No way.

My heart gives three telltale thuds, boom boom boom, but I manage to keep my face calm. “In the bed next to me.”

But Sam was here when Paul ran up yesterday morning, saw the blood and mud from his supposed tumble down Fontana Ridge. Good thing Paul’s a fast runner.

“His alarm went off at six,” I say before Sam can ask.

A lie and an alibi, wrapped into one.

16

June 12, 1999
8:17 p.m.

Jax’s car reeked of weed.