The Dairy Duchess was an old-fashioned diner, the kind you saw on TV, that never seemed to exist in real life. There was a long counter with red stools, and Formica tables. It was also air-conditioned, which was a sweet, freezing relief. The place was basically empty when Nate and Stevie came in, so they took the prime booth by the window, looking out on the street and the town green across the way. The top of John Barlow’s hat peered above the menu that was tucked behind the ketchup bottles.

They both decided on some milk shakes and burgers, because Nate and Stevie had similar views on nutrition. To Stevie’s surprise, Nate got out his laptop and immediately starting typing.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you writing?”

“I’m just . . . I’m doing something.”

“You’re writing, aren’t you?”

“Solve,” he said. “Solve.”

“I can’t solve.”

“Okay, then sit there. At least you’re not on the floor anymore. I’ve done my job.”

This was a bit of a betrayal.

She opened her backpack and put her things on the table. Her tablet. Her phone. A notebook. Everything she knew about this case—aside from whatever was floating around in her head—was here. All the tools she needed. Now there was time and space to think.

She looked at the items.

She looked at the ketchup.

She looked at the menu and John Barlow’s hat.

She looked at the library.

She felt herself beginning to see.

Allison Abbot was dead. Allison Abbott had been murdered, and almost certainly because of something to do with this case. She hadn’t just fallen off that cliff. It didn’t matter how she, Stevie, felt. Allison Abbott was not alive anymore, and someone had to do something. She had promised Allison she would get the diary—and then Allison died.

Which meant, logically, that someone thought that Allison was close to getting that diary.

It followed that there was something in that diary that was worth killing for. Which meant it was Sabrina Abbott—perfect, wonderful, hardworking Sabrina—who was somehow at the center of this.

The burgers and milk shakes came, and Stevie started in on them while letting her focus rest on the reading room across the street. She softened her gaze, letting the contours of the building blur. Sabrina. Reading. Writing. Checking out books right up until the time she died.

Her brain began to settle. Stevie reached for the tablet, trying to maintain the mental state, and flicked back to the pictures of the room of mementos in Allison’s house—all those tidily arranged things. Books, clothes, knickknacks, photographs, record albums. A teenage life, frozen in time in 1978. She looked at the picture of the interlibrary loan slips for the books Sabrina had requested right before she died: A Woman in Berlin and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Serious reading for a serious person, someone preparing for her future at Columbia University. She thought about Sabrina’s 1977 diary, with the list of subjects and amount of time studied. Sabrina was a detailed reporter of events.