It made sense. It was not just possible—it was likely. It certainly fit the description of what the witnesses had seen.

There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance, and though there were still hours of daylight left, the sky grew dark.

“It’s going to storm tonight,” he said, resting on his back and looking up at the sky.

She rested next to him, tucking her head into his shoulder. He rolled toward her, and his lips were on hers.

If it was bad form to make out in the spot that Allison Abbott had fallen from, Stevie tried not to dwell on it. There was a rush to the moment, as if something pent-up was being expressed, and David rolled on top of her, and then she on him. They were more or less on the public path, but they were also alone with the woods and the sky. Soon they both had pine needles in their hair and were breathless. Then, as suddenly as the kissing began, it stopped. He smiled again, a questioning smile, and balanced himself up on his elbows.

“So,” David said. “Fall. School.”

He was back to whatever conversation he had started that morning when they left Susan’s house.

“Fall,” she repeated. “School.”

“You’re going back to Ellingham. I am a man without a plan at the moment.”

“I thought you were going to keep working with the group you work with now,” she said.

“That was my plan, yeah . . . but something’s come up. I’ve been offered something.”

She sat up as well.

“There’s someone who’s known me since I was little,” he said, looking at the ground between them. “He doesn’t like my dad—not a lot of people who know him do. He got in touch because he suspected that I had something to do with my dad’s fall from grace, and he knows that I’ve been cut off. He offered to help me out.”

“With money?”

“Kind of. More like with a future. He guessed, correctly, that it can be hard to be related to my dad and be in America sometimes. He has connections in England. He’s offered to make some calls and get me into a program at a university in England and would help cover the costs.”

Stevie blinked. Maybe it was the heat, or the rush of events, but her brain was not making a picture of the words coming out of David’s mouth.

“England?” she said.

“England,” he repeated. A nervous flicker flashed across his features.

“For school?”

“For school.”

“So what did you say?” she asked.

“I said I would think it over. I have to get back to them soon, though. Definitely by this week.”

Something Stevie had learned about herself in the months that she had been in some kind of relationship with David was this: she didn’t take emotionally taxing conversations well. It didn’t take much for her to spiral. She went from feeling completely connected to him and swimming in the warm waters of happy hormones, to a cold, frightened feeling. She had just gotten David back, and now he was going again, farther than before.