“You didn’t tell me about it,” she said. She swallowed, controlling herself. “Why didn’t you tell me? You must have been hiding it. And if you were hiding it, then there must have been a reason.” She shrugged, a slight movement of her shoulders. “So I got in touch with Steve. From work. I knew he liked me as more than a friend, so it felt good to talk to him online. And in the course of our conversations, I told him about my problems . . . our problems . . . and he came up with the solution of phishing so I could spy on Jennifer’s account. Then I would know if you and she were doing something.”

“Why didn’t you just track my account?”

“I thought of that. Of course. That was the first thing that came to mind. But you have a lot of devices and accounts. You have things at work I don’t even know about. And if you were doing something behind my back, wouldn’t you be on the lookout for stuff like that? I figure you’re too smart to fall for a phishing scam. But she wouldn’t be so careful. She had nothing to lose by disrupting our lives. So it would make more sense to watch her. And Steve knew how to do it. He knew how to create a message that would get her password, and once you have that done, you can see everything she does. He made it all look very easy. Frighteningly easy, to be honest.”

“That’s quite an invasion of privacy.”

“Like going into her house to steal her love letters? How is that any different, except one is in the virtual world and one is in the real? Or can we even tell the difference anymore?”

I offered no argument, because she was right. We’d both done the same thing, for stupid and vain reasons. We’d both failed. And where did we go from there?

“The police know, Amanda. That’s why I was calling you and looking for you. They suspect about the phishing. Did you send those friend requests from her account after she was dead? Why the hell would you do that?”

“I didn’t know she was dead when I sent the first one. I sent it because you’d lied to me that night. You lied about where you were going. And I suspected. She’d written to you again, and then you lied and said you were going to a basketball game. Supposedly. I guess I just sent the request to prove my point, to shake you up if you were there. With her. And I was right. You were with her. I wanted to scare you back to your senses.”

“But I wasn’t with her for that reason. You know that now. I was there because of Blake. And why did you send the other one? Once you knew she was dead?”