“Because of your horrible ex-wife, right?”

He chuckles, and that gets me to open my eyes. “She mentioned something about a book club where you got upset. And then she saw the cops at your place. Add that to the fact that she’s friends with Lisa Simmons, who’s the wife of a Bury cop, and she probably figured out more than you want people to know.”

“I really hate her,” I say.

He lifts his beer bottle, and I clink my glass against it. “Here’s to things we have in common,” he says.

“Cheers.” I sip and know I’ll be wanting a third whiskey before too long. “So tell me what she thinks she knows.”

Alec shrugs. “Well, since you asked. In short, she thinks they might be treating the case as a murder.”

This is the first time I’ve talked about this with someone outside my family, and there’s relief with it. Relief and horror, like a Catholic teen’s first confession.

“And so, knowing this, you still decided to come here tonight?” I ask. “You weren’t concerned about having a drink with a murderer?”

He smiles. “It’s why I chose a public place.”

“Seriously,” I say. “Why would you want anything to do with me?”

Alec sips. “You didn’t kill anyone, Rose.”

The words rip open my chest and squeeze my heart, a horrible, beautiful pain.

“What…what makes you say that?”

Then he puts his hands on the table, palms up, on either side of the solitary burning candle.

“Give me your hands,” he says.

I don’t. I just stare at him, feeling the stinging glisten in my eyes.

“It’s okay,” he says. His voice is deep, calm. Confident.

I hesitate a moment, then place my hands on top of his. He gently grasps them, enveloping my fingers with his.

“These aren’t the hands of a killer. No…” He looks down at my hands for just a second and then locks into my gaze. “I don’t think you’d hurt anyone.”

And with that, I lose it. Right there, in this classy tapas bar named after decay, I sob. I can’t control it, and after the first few gasps, I don’t even care. It’s as if my ability to maintain control has been a balloon filling with water and Alec just added that one final drop, the one that made me burst. I pull my hands from his and cover my eyes, feeling the heat radiating from my face.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t,” I choke. “Just…give me…”

I cry under the weight of all I’ve carried for so long. The weight of this town, of Cora and my father. The weight of Riley. And, the heaviest of all, the weight of Caleb Benner’s ghost.

To his credit, Alec gives me my space and time, saying nothing else. I’m not loud, but I’m certain anyone at a nearby table notices this scene. Again, I don’t care, and I don’t think I could stop this if I wanted. It has to come out.