I’d never have put Jack and David together. They ran in very different circles then and now. “How do you know David?”

“I met him in juvie. During his gap year . . .” He grinned. “Only a rich boy can afford a gap year. Anyway, during that year, he interned with the chaplain at the boys’ home. He and I became good friends. Helped me out of a few tight spots, and I offered to repay the favor if I could.”

“He followed Clare to the New Year’s Eve party.” I imagined David arguing with Clare and him wrapping his hands around her neck. When he killed her, he must have panicked. “He called you for help.”

He appeared pleased, but he didn’t answer.

All these years of wondering and praying for answers and Jack had known all along. While he’d hidden the truth, he’d also pretended to be my friend. Did he get a rush watching me struggle? Emotion tightened my throat. “What happened after she told him about the baby?”

“He offered to marry her, but she laughed at him. She told him she never wanted to see him again. David’s number-one problem is that he gets too attached, and if he hates anything, it’s rejection. He lost his shit, as he’s done before. At least the time before, the girl survived.”

“What girl?”

“That doesn’t really matter.” He leaned a little closer, as if sharing a secret. “Turns out his daddy is rich and sent him to the juvenile facility as a volunteer for a reason. Tried to scare the boy straight.”

Bitterness soured my stomach as tears welled behind my eyes. “It didn’t work.”

“That place rarely spit out a better version of any boy.” His expression grew pensive. “For what it’s worth, he said that Clare’s death was an accident.”

“Accident? How does a man accidentally wrap his fingers around a woman’s throat and squeeze the breath out of her for over five minutes! That’s hardly an accident.”

“When David’s pissed, he forgets himself.”

How many times had David’s parents excused away his violence? Often enough that David clearly had become accustomed to having his messes cleaned up. “You took her body and did what?” Richards had said the body’s removal had a calculated feel to it.

“While you slept like a baby, I told him where to drive to, and I met him there. I stripped her, tossed her in the river, and dumped her clothes downstream. He called her Marisa, and that’s when I told him he’d killed Clare.”

All along he’d thought he was dealing with me. Clare’s game of pretend had been too good. “Did he care?”

“Not so much upset as confused. He even argued the point, said she’d told him she was Marisa.”