Then he hands me a napkin from Fred’s, his name written down, GRADY BRADFORD, with two phone numbers beneath it, his numbers I presume—one of them marked cell.

“I can help you too,” he says.

I pocket the napkin as he crosses the street and gets into his car. I start to walk away, but as he turns on the engine, something occurs to me and I walk toward him.

“Wait. With which part?” I say.

He lowers his window. “With which part, what?”

“Can you help?”

“The easy part,” he says. “Getting through this.”

“What’s the hard part?”

“Owen’s not who you think he is,” he says.

Then Grady Bradford is gone.

These Are Not Your Friends

I go back into the house just long enough to grab Owen’s laptop.

I’m not going to sit there thinking about what Grady said, and all the things he seemed to leave out, which are bothering me more. How did he know so much about Owen? Maybe Avett wasn’t the only one who they’ve been following closely for the last year and change. Maybe Grady’s nice guy act—helping me with Bailey’s custody, offering advice—was so I’d slip up and tell him something Owen wouldn’t want him to know.

Did I slip up? I don’t think so, even as I go back through our conversation. But I’m not going to risk doing it in the future, not with Grady, or with anyone else. I’m going to figure out what’s going on with Owen first.

I take a left off the docks and head toward my workshop.

I need to make a stop first though at Owen’s friend’s house. It’s a stop that I’m not particularly eager to make, but if anyone will have insight into what Owen is thinking, into what I might be missing, it’s Carl.

Carl Conrad: Owen’s closest friend in Sausalito. And one of the only people on whom Owen and I disagree. Owen thinks I don’t give him a fair shake, and maybe that’s true. He’s funny and smart and totally embraced me from the minute I arrived in Sausalito. But he also habitually cheats on his wife, Patricia, and I don’t like knowing that. Owen doesn’t like knowing that either, but he says he’s able to separate it out in his mind because Carl has been such a good friend to him.

This is how Owen is. He values the first friend he made in Sausalito more than he judges him. I know that’s how my husband works. But maybe he hasn’t been judging Carl for other reasons. Maybe Owen doesn’t judge him because Carl returns the favor, by not judging a secret Owen felt safe confiding in Carl.

Even if that theory is wrong, I still need to talk to him.