“It wouldn’t be the first time we got in over our heads together.”

It wasn’t something I liked to dwell on, what had happened after my pie diner breakfast with Lou. I didn’t regret it—I couldn’t allow myself to regret anything that had turned me from that woman into Jo, that had brought Lou and even Jackal into my life. But it wasn’t a pretty chapter, what had come between apple cheddar and my first successful case, weeks later.

Lou turned on the stool toward me. She blew out her cheeks in a big puff, eyebrows skyrocketing. “Do you blame me for that?”

“I blame us both.” I signaled the bartender for a drink, whatever was closest, any damn drink he wanted to pour. Behind Lou, a couple moved to the bar next to us. He put his hand on the small of her back and she stepped away. Not a good sign for the date, but still: I’d rather have been him than me at that moment.

Lou didn’t say anything. She took, finally, a small sip of her drink and said, under her breath, “Shit whiskey.” Wondering, I was pretty sure, if my cold feet about Carrigan weren’t payback for the way things had gone bad all those years ago.

“Forget it,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t really anybody’s fault.”

“If you say so.”

It wasn’t that Carrigan was so similar to the Asshole. They didn’t look much alike, except in that way older white men who paid taxes above a certain bracket all looked a little alike—the style of clothes, the haircut, the cash even men needed to keep up the goods. He hadn’t been a lawyer, but he’d—we’d—worked in an office a few blocks from Carrigan’s. That was pretty much the extent of the similarities, on the face of it.

But that first one had gone so badly, so quickly. With even fewer red flags than Carrigan.

After our pie breakfast, Lou had taken me back to her apartment, to shower and change. I had three weeks left on my lease and was getting desperate enough to consider calling my mother, asking her to send me money for a ticket home or a loan—I hadn’t worked out the details yet. I was trying not to think about it. When I thought about it, I imagined her soft exhalation into the phone, a mix of relief and condescending care. Oh, honey, I knew it. Come home. Let me take care of you.

At that moment, Lou had seemed like a godsend, a temporary balm against everything that had flipped upside down in my world in the last month.