I opted to conceal the Facebook messages, the flirtation. And certainly all information about seeing her dead body on the floor. Lifeless and unseeing. No way he could handle that kind of detail. It wasn’t my job to test him.

“And the cops informed you about her death because you worked together?” he asked.

“Yeah. Basically. They were working through anyone who had contact with her, I guess. I’m sure they’re talking to everybody.”

Relieved that I wasn’t another suitor, Kyle turned his attention back to the bottle. He lifted it up, almost in a religious fashion, and then poured more into one of the glasses. “You sure?” he asked, nodding at the bottle.

“I’m good. It’s kind of early.”

He cut his eyes toward me.

“I mean, I understand why you want to,” I said. “No judgment here.”

“Sure. I’m supposed to be at work. Making sales calls.” He pointed to the logo on his shirt. “You found out about her death in a better way than I did,” he said, and drank again. “I went by her house last night. Late. Around eleven. I just wanted to see her. You know? We’ve been seeing each other. We had plans, you know? Late-night plans.”

Then it came back to me—the messages on Jennifer’s phone. She’d exchanged a series of texts with a guy named Kyle, ones in which he desperately tried to fan the embers of whatever their relationship was. And Jennifer simply offered no response.

So did they really have “late-night plans”? Had Jennifer responded with a phone call instead of a text?

Or had Kyle shown up uninvited and unwelcome?

Then I shuddered and was happy Kyle was focused on his drink and hadn’t seen what must have passed across my face. He’d gone by Jennifer’s house at eleven o’clock. Not long after I’d been there. What if he’d come earlier and walked in on me? Standing over her dead body?

“Do you know what I found when I went there?” he asked. “I pull up, and there are a bunch of cop cars. And an ambulance.” The glass sat on the counter in front of him. “Then I saw it. I was broken when I saw it, I tell you.”

Frozen in place, I waited for him to go on. I thought about what I was doing in Blake’s house, speaking to a man I didn’t know about a dead woman.

A dead woman he said he loved.

“I saw the coroner’s van. It pulled up.” He shook his head and slumped against the counter again. “When you see that—when you see that word, ‘coroner,’ as big as anything—and you know they’re going right into the house where someone you love lives . . . and she lives alone . . . So it has to be her.”

“I’m sorry.”