After a few seconds of silence, she pulled her cardigan across her chest as if she’d caught a chill. “No. Brett and I split in late ’97. I didn’t care to know what he did after that.”

I didn’t believe her; that no was bullshit through and through. On paper, Felicia and Brett were still married. She’d wanted him to be more involved with the kids. Surely she’d kept tabs on what was happening in his life.

“Brett didn’t just leave you,” I said. “He left his kids, his job, his friends, and a girlfriend, and it all happened very suddenly. Why would he do that, Felicia?”

That smile. She had the same thin lips as my mom, and now they were stretched straight across her small teeth. It wasn’t really a smile at all, but a grimace.

“If I knew that,” she said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

EIGHTEEN

My plan was to question Crissy about Cheryl Copely. Between Loming’s insinuation that Cheryl was involved in Brett’s murder, and Felicia’s oblique reaction to the mention of a girlfriend, I needed another opinion. I had a feeling Loming was using Cheryl to deflect attention, but if she and Brett really had been an item, Cheryl merited an interview, and I wanted to get Crissy’s take on her father’s possible romance first.

The route to the office building where I knew Crissy worked required that I pass right by her house. What I saw there stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was nearly 11:00 a.m., but Crissy’s car was still in her driveway—and it had a friend. I trundled to a stop across the street and saw the front door swing open and a small woman emerge. Her dark head was lowered, her features bunched together in distress. I felt my jaw fall open as I turned off the engine and got out of my SUV. “Suze?” I called into the icy air. “What are you doing here?”

“Shana! Hi!” My friend’s eyes were huge with surprise, but she gave me a hug when I got close, her unzipped jacket flapping in the wind. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m still not used to you being back. You startled me.”

“Um, likewise. You’re visiting Crissy?”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. We do that sometimes. She’s my go-to source for school questions.”

“I didn’t know you guys still talked.” Still wasn’t the right word, because as far as I knew, Crissy and Suze had never talked. We gave my cousin a wide berth when we were kids, though Suze had always been intrigued by Crissy’s scandalous behavior. As the designated voice of reason, it was up to me to remind her how quickly sex and drugs could devolve from weekend fun to addiction, expulsion, prison time.

I couldn’t imagine Suze and Crissy growing up to become friends, especially since Crissy used to date Robbie, who was now Suze’s husband—but what did I know about their lives? In a town of sixty-five hundred people, there are only so many candidates for friendship to go around. As I pondered this, I suddenly understood how Suze found out I was in town. I’d visited Crissy on Monday morning. And Crissy had turned around and called Suze.