“And on the news they’re saying that was about the time she died. Late afternoon.”

“Karen, if she calls or comes by, please tell her to call me. Immediately.”

“Ryan, all of this makes me wonder what was going on. With you. And her.”

I chose not to clarify who she meant by “her.” Was it Amanda? Or Jennifer?

I didn’t have time. And it didn’t matter.

“Just take good care of Henry,” I said, and ended the call.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

I’d spent the morning ignoring texts, voice mails, and social media messages from concerned friends who had seen my name splattered all over the news. Hours had passed with me swimming in a self-imposed news-blackout bubble.

So when I started calling Amanda’s friends, a number of whom had already reached out to me, they assumed I wanted to talk about Jennifer or Aaron or Kyle or something related to that mess. When I cut their questions off, trying as much as possible to be courteous, and asked them if they’d heard anything from Amanda, their confusion and then their suspicions only grew.

“Amanda?” they asked. “Don’t you know where Amanda is? Isn’t she with you?”

I stammered over my responses, even though I knew the questions would be coming.

“I’m not sure where she went,” I’d tell them. “And I just really need to talk to her.”

I left out any mention of the police. Or the hacking of Jennifer’s Facebook account. Or the mystery of Amanda’s whereabouts on the day Jennifer died. I sacrificed a chunk of the truth in exchange for protecting Amanda from the suspicion of her friends. If they wanted to cast blame, they could cast it on me, the doltish husband who kept secrets and embarrassed his wife. I hoped no one would ever find out what Rountree had told me. I hoped Amanda would be found, and there would be a simple explanation for everything.

After a series of fruitless calls, I headed upstairs. Amanda kept an office in the room next to Henry’s. When company came, we put them on the couch in my office because it folded out into a bed. And then our guests were far away from us at night.

I almost never went into her office when she wasn’t in there. It was her private space, a room where she could retreat and get her work done. Or she could hand Henry off to me in the evenings or on the weekends while she shut the door and polished her résumé or stayed up to date in her field. I understood the need for that designated work space.