“Eleven years ago. You’d gone back to the city on New Year’s Eve, then you got the call to come back home. You had to get on another bus and come back up to Ithaca in the middle of the night. A cop met you at the bus station. She took you to the hospital to identify your mother’s body, then brought you into the station. That was where I saw you. You were so… dignified. It was hard to believe you were just eighteen. You were worried about your sister, kept asking for her.”

I was afraid to say anything. It was like talking to someone who’d read your diary, only far, far worse. “What were you doing in Ithaca?”

“I was on the force there,” said Bruxton. “I worked narcotics then.”

I wondered how much else he’d seen. The police had found Claudia on Sunday morning, drunk and high on pills a friend had scooped out of her parents’ medicine cabinet. Mom’s dead? She’d said to me when they’d brought her into the police station. In the next breath, she’d added, Now you have to take me to live with you in New York. The excitement in her voice had crackled like electricity. It was the first time that my sister had truly frightened me. What did you do? I’d whispered back. Nothing, she’d answered, giving me a dirty look. Everything the police found was consistent with a suicide. My sister hadn’t beaten our mother or forced pills down her throat. But my mother had never attempted suicide without an audience. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to be rescued. Were you there? I’d demanded of my sister. Of course not, she’d said, and I’d known she was lying.

“You bastard,” I said, feeling my chest constrict. I wanted to curse him out, but I couldn’t get any more words past my lips.

Bruxton reached over the table and touched my wrist. “I’m sorry, Lily. I screwed up. I thought you were in denial, lying to yourself and to us. I was wrong.”

I recoiled from his touch and focused on breathing, worried I’d lose control and start weeping or screaming at any second. I’d felt naked in front of Martin, but this was worse. Martin knew only what I’d told him; Bruxton had actually been there, watching me at the lowest point in my life. I was ashamed beyond words.

“I want you to trust me,” said Bruxton.

“Why?”

“Because I want to help you. I want to get to the bottom of this. Believe it or not, I want to find your sister as badly as you do.”

“That’s only because you want to pin that woman’s death on Claudia!”