It was in that sweet bath between sleeping and waking that the realization slammed into me like a truck through the side of a building, shoving aside or flattening everything in its path, and I sprung awake. I saw it, the reason I kept combing the riverbed for one nugget, another story or at least an additional story. Here was the meaning of all those sobbing phone calls and texts from Esme, her confession to what she had done that stopped just short of confessions, her oversized concern for Stefan’s welfare, her guilt over Belinda, the agony that went beyond loss. Here was the reason that the unidentified fingerprints on the golf club had to be hers.

Esme had killed Belinda.

And, somehow, she had set Stefan up to take the blame.

BOOK THREE:
Redemption

10

I couldn’t wait until morning so that I could call Pete Sunday.

I glanced at the clock.

It was 6:20 a.m.

What kind of person would awaken her peacefully sleeping best friend on a cold morning to say something that could easily be said two hours from then? I would wait until eight o’clock. That resolve lasted three minutes.

“Wake up, Jules!” I said. She grunted, snuggled deeper into the plushy mattress. Sleep was another of the gifts I envied her. “Julie! Wake up.”

“Huh? What the hell, Thea.”

“I have to go home right now. I’ll take a bus if you don’t want to go back.”

“Wait, what?” Julie said. “Go home why? What time is it? Is it morning?”

“It’s morning.”

“I haven’t even had coffee.”

“I have to make a phone call. It’s urgent.”

“Thea, there are phones right here.”

“I have to call from my house.”

Julie sat up with a reluctant sigh and a stretch.

She said, “No, Thea. No, you really don’t. This phone connects to anyone on earth you need to call. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? What happened in the past six hours that I’ve been asleep?” She swung her feet to the floor. “No, don’t tell me yet. Wait, I’m going to make an espresso for me and one for you. That will take less than ten minutes, and then you can tell me.”

I said, “I figured out last night that Stefan didn’t kill Belinda.”

Julie would sooner have held her hand to a flame than disrespect me, so she kept her face neutral as she made the espresso and put butter on my raisin toast, peanut butter on hers.

“So so so...” she said. “I clearly missed out on some key life moments.”

I said, “Julie, I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” she said and hugged me briefly but firmly. “Thea... I don’t know what to say.”

I laid it out for her then, all the clues in the phone calls, the unremitting inquiries about Stefan, the warnings about “remembering” too much.