I asked Rountree to give me a moment, and she agreed. Although she also said, “Time is urgent now. So just a moment. A very short moment.”

I went down the hall to the half bathroom we’d renovated shortly after moving in. I turned on the water in the pedestal sink and splashed the coldness against my face over and over. The bracing coolness felt good.

As I toweled my face off, I looked in the mirror. None of it seemed real. Like I was staring at a picture of a TV character or someone on the news and wondering how their life had ended up so far down the wrong path. But the face belonged to me. And so did the life.

When I finished wiping the loose drops off my face and neck, I went back out to the living room, where Rountree was sitting, her thumbs working over her phone as she sent a text.

She looked up and waited patiently while I returned to my seat. She listened without showing any surprise while I told her about Steve the IT guy and how he could have been the person to help Amanda hack into Jennifer’s Facebook account.

“Do you know his last name?” Rountree asked.

“Detective, maybe I should talk to Amanda first.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re saying all kinds of things that are bigger and more dangerous than anything I could have imagined. What you’re saying is crazy.”

“Maybe it is. But the sooner I talk to Amanda, the sooner she can be cleared. That’s how it works. So, do you know this IT guy’s last name?”

“I never knew it. I didn’t want to know it. I was so disgusted by him coming on to Amanda in that way.”

“Did he harass her? Was it something she needed to report?”

“No. Not like that, I guess. He just asked her out. She didn’t feel like it crossed any lines of legality or ethics.”

“So it was the same as Jennifer writing to you, right? Basically.”

“I guess. Look, talk to that guy. You can find him at her company. It’s out on Old Lexington Road. I’m sure he still works there. You can get his name and contact information from them.”

“We’ll look,” Rountree said. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Hell, maybe Amanda’s with—” But I cut off my own thought. I couldn’t bear it. And it couldn’t really be possible, could it? I’d been the distant and absent one lately. I’d been the one working too much. Had I driven her away?

But why that morning? Where would she have had to go without telling me or her parents what she was doing?