“Where is he, Shana?”

“Who?”

“Abe.”

The question felt like a guillotine, the blade raised above my neck. “He ran away,” I said. “Right before our senior year.”

“Crissy said he was obsessed. That he didn’t want to leave Swanton because he couldn’t stand to be away from you.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t let him draw this conclusion. It was a burden too heavy for my family to bear. Felicia, Crissy, my mother, they didn’t have it in them to face a media circus. There would be questions: Did you suspect? See the signs? They’d have to acknowledge, as I had, that Abe was never right in the head. We’d have no choice but to admit to the world we turned our backs on him, and that whether we admitted it to ourselves or not, we’d sighed with relief when he was gone.

“I’ve been trying to understand,” Tim said. “Even before you saw the composite sketch, you were so sure Bram was behind Trey’s disappearance.”

“Because of the poster. He knew Brett’s face would get my attention.”

“That message on the back you said Bram wrote. It sounded like an inside joke. It made no sense to anyone but you.”

Across the field, at the entrance to the woods, an army of trees swayed in the winter wind. I hadn’t seen him muss it, but Tim’s hair stood on end. It was bushier than usual, and I realized he hadn’t cut it since before the Sinclair case. The last month had felt like one of the longest of my life.

As I looked at him, it occurred to me that maybe this was what I’d wanted—or needed—all along. Tim’s job was to flip through conversations and burrow into witness accounts. Did I really think I could keep him in the dark forever? Did I honestly believe he could talk to Bram’s sister and not arrive at this place? There was no hiding it now, not anymore. “His name is Abraham,” I said. “Abe, for short. Or, if you shorten it another way—”

“Bram.”

We were silent. I felt like I’d just exposed a close friend’s sordid secret, except the secret was my own. Tim hated silence, will say anything to fill the void. This time, he let it stretch on for miles.

“Who else knows? Your parents? Felicia?”

I shook my head. No one. Just me. Now us. “They can’t find out, Tim. They just can’t.”

His cheeks were a mottled blend of scarlet and white. I waited for him to admonish me all over again. This secret spoke to our lack of professional trust. All he’d asked was that I remain truthful.

“This is why you blamed yourself for your abduction,” he said, “and for letting him get away in New York.”

“It’s because of me that Bram killed those women. I’m the reason he took Trey. He wants to hurt me. I knew him better than anyone,” I said. “This side of him didn’t show itself right away or all the time, but it was there, and I think I . . . God . . . I think I encouraged it. We used to play detective, and he cooked up crimes for my benefit. They were terrible sometimes. Violent. I didn’t tell him to stop.”