I feel a rush of sadness. She doesn’t believe it because she wasn’t stuck down in that wine cellar where a dead girl was wrapped in a tarp, rotting on the basement floor. She didn’t see the panic on Tim’s face when he realized the police were going down to the basement. It would have taken a lot to convince me that my former best friend was a serial killer, but that night made me a believer.

At that moment, Shane comes into the kitchen with his empty glass of water. He starts to fill it up, but when he notices I’m on the phone and catches the expression on my face, he raises an eyebrow at me. He mouths the words, Who is it?

“Please talk to Tim,” Mrs. Reese whimpers. “If you talk to him and you still believe that he did those horrible things—”

“I’m not going to visit Tim in jail.” That is absolutely out of the question. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reese.”

Shane’s other eyebrow shoots up at the name Mrs. Reese. He stands there, clutching his water glass in one hand, listening to my end of the conversation.

“You have to, Brooke!” Mrs. Reese cries. “This is all happening because of you—don’t you understand? Give Tim a chance to explain. You have to—”

Before Mrs. Reese can complete her sentence, Shane snatches the phone right out of my hand. He presses it to his ear, listens for a second, then clears his throat loudly.

“Mrs. Reese,” he says in a firm voice. “This is Shane Nelson. You need to leave Brooke alone. Don’t call this number ever again.”

With those words, Shane jabs at the red button on the phone, then tosses it on the kitchen counter. “Some nerve of her,” he mutters.

“To be fair…” I look up at him. “Your mother called me when you were on trial and said almost the exact same things.”

“Right, but I was innocent.”

“I’m sure Tim’s mother thinks he’s innocent.”

“Oh, please.” Now that I’m off the phone, he fills up his water glass, right to the brim. “She knows the truth. How could she not know? She raised him, after all.” He takes a drink from his water glass. “Don’t you think if Josh were a killer, you would know it?”

It’s funny because when I believed Josh’s father was a murderer, I was always watching my son for sociopathic tendencies. If he had shown any at all, I would’ve jumped all over it—but Josh was a good boy. Still, kids change after they grow up. Will I know him when he’s thirty as well as I know him at age ten?

“I don’t know,” I finally say.