I swirled the soda in my glass. “You never told Richards I was with you.”

“Didn’t seem like a good idea.”

“I would’ve been your alibi.”

“I had a few guys come by the house for some business. They all vouched for me.”

He’d been dealing out of his house while I slept, which I found oddly comforting. “You didn’t try to wake me up?”

“It was better you sleep it off. That way you could drive yourself home. Your car at my place would have sounded alarm bells with Brit.”

“Brit’s why I never told the cops I was with you. I didn’t need to lose another sister.”

“She’s not an easy woman when crossed.”

“Does Jo-Jo ever talk about Clare and the party?”

“From what Jo-Jo said, Clare was dancing and then had a fight with Kurt before she left. Jo-Jo and a few others thought she was you.”

“Jo-Jo had to have known it wasn’t me. She could always tell us apart.”

“Not at first,” he said. “According to her, Clare was full-on you that night.”

There’d been one picture of Clare that Richards had shown me from that night. Clare was grinning, leaning into Kurt. The dark eye shadow and wild hair always fooled everyone. Once I’d asked for the picture back, but Richards never gave it to me.

Jack twisted the rag between his hands, both covered in tattoos. “Why the questions?”

“Clare’s case is running out of time.”

“And when the case goes cold, what’ll you do?”

“I’m going to walk away and accept that some problems can’t be fixed.”

“Sounds like an AA spiel,” he said.

“Maybe I need to listen more.” That was a lie. I’d never accept that Clare’s killer hadn’t been found.

He tossed the rag in a bucket. “I worry about you.”

“Don’t. I’m fine.”

“I feel responsible for Clare,” he said.

“Why?”

“If I’d realized the Oxy was so powerful, you wouldn’t have passed out. You could’ve left and made it to the party on time.”

“Why’d you make a move on me?”

He shrugged. “I was eighteen. Thinking with the little head, not the big one. Maybe I wanted to hurt Brit.”

The cold glass chilled my fingers. Jack had seemed clear eyed and determined when he’d pulled my shirt off. But no one had forced the drugs on me. “A thousand little fuckups that night. If one had been different, Clare might be alive.”

“Never blame yourself,” he said. “Never.”

20 MARISA

20

MARISA

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

4:00 a.m.

When I climbed the stairs to my apartment floor, I noticed immediately that my front door was ajar. I paused, looked toward Alan’s. It was closed, and no light leaked from under the door as it did when he was home.