“You clearly know I wasn’t at the Y last night.”

“I do. And so do the police. They checked the records. You didn’t swipe your card. They can check that. And guess what. The guys you said you were playing with weren’t there either. In fact the whole league was shut down last night because there was a plumbing leak in the locker room. So where were you?”

I went over and sat on the small couch I kept under the window. It served nobly as a place to nap or read, and I often sat there with Henry in the morning, trying to give Amanda extra time to sleep. The walls, which had already started to feel unfamiliar and strange, seemed to continue shifting, moving toward me, making me feel dizzy.

Words wouldn’t come. My mouth was dry, my throat blocked. I couldn’t say it to Amanda. I couldn’t tell her. Everything we’d built would shift.

Everything.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” she said. “You weren’t at the Y. They know that. And a man who was out walking his dog last night saw you in Jennifer’s neighborhood, just wandering around. He knows who you are. First, he described you to the police. He said he’d met you at the Pig before. You bought him a beer once. And then the cops showed him your picture. Rountree did. And he said he saw you walking near Jennifer’s house. They’ve taken fingerprints from everything at the crime scene. They’re going to turn the place upside down, looking for every hair or fiber they can find. If somebody sneezed in there, they’ll know. So where were you? Tell me. I’ve got Rountree and two other cops in the house in one room and Henry and my parents in the other. Tell me something. Okay?”

“I don’t understand, though.” I forced the words out with great effort. Each one felt like a boulder I was pushing up a large hill. “They got Kyle Dornan. He’s the one who wanted to hurt Jennifer. He’s the one who resisted arrest. He’s the guy. What does it matter what I did?”

“Don’t you know?” she asked, her tone blunt.

“Know what?”

“You’re always on your phone. Weren’t you checking? Did you miss all the breaking news?”

“What news?”

“Kyle Dornan had a rock-solid alibi. The police just announced it. At the time of Jennifer’s death, he was in an emergency sales meeting at work. With three witnesses. He was in the meeting for hours. He couldn’t have killed her. There’s simply no way.”

“But he resisted. Like a guilty man. He was wanted for assault.”

I replayed it all. The break-in at Blake’s house. The broken bottle. The running away from the police.