Roy was getting dizzy. The shallow breathing, and the booming pulse, and the dozens of thoughts slashing through his brain at the same time. He planted his hands on the bench seat to steady himself.

“What do you think he wanted?” she finally said.

“I think he meant for me to get hurt. I think that’s what he wanted.”

Roy had never before said it out loud. Who would have ever been there to say it to? Getting it out was a subtraction from his overstuffed skull, a small space cleared in his chest, a vent, a release. It was as if he could breathe. Just a little bit.

The woman shifted in her seat. “For Christ’s sake. Don’t cry. You’re not the one who got shot.”

His head snapped up. She flinched. Roy heard a glassy crack that wasn’t real outside his own mind, he knew. With just a cold little pop, some small piece of handhold broke off, fell away. He wasn’t good at locking a gaze, but so much was there. He couldn’t not look. She was seeing him, hearing him. There was some overlap between them that he couldn’t deserve to crave. She understood.

“My name is Marcelline.”

He swallowed and tried to keep his mouth from twisting into something that could howl. “That’s a very pretty name. I’m Roy.”

“I know.” She swiped at her eyes, then wiped the side of her hands on her lap and blew out another breath. Roy’s heart twisted a spike of pain through his chest and up his neck. His jaw hurt. He looked at her jaw.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never would.”

“I believe you.”

“He told me you died.”

“He probably thinks I did.”

Roy snatched up his glass and lost himself in getting through a deep drink of it without dropping it, spilling it, or choking on it.

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Are you here to . . . Were you looking for him?”

“I don’t know. Yes. Sort of. For four years I didn’t know anything about what happened after Owen got me out of there that night. I don’t even know Jonathan’s full name. Then I saw the painting in the video. I had to come and—”

“John doesn’t have it. Those people do.”

“What people?”

“That big guy. The people that night. They stole it from him.”

“Roy, what are you talking about? It’s in his house. It’s right there in the foyer.”

“No, he doesn’t have it.”

“He does.”

Roy didn’t want to be contrary. His grandmother had called him so one time when he was a kid, on the afternoon his mother finally died. It seemed like the worst thing you could be in a bad situation, next to stupid.