“He’ll be home soon. He will. He’s probably working. And he’s not drinking. I have to trust him. Oh, Ryan. Just a few days ago, I woke up, and he’d left me the most beautiful note on my pillow. He does that stuff all the time. Flowers, notes. He sent my grandma chocolates on her eighty-fifth birthday last week. I almost forgot her birthday, but not Blake. When we get married, my dad is going to hire Blake on at his company.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t know if you heard, but Blake’s dad has been having money problems.”

“He is? I thought he was loaded when he retired.”

Sam looked like she didn’t want to go on. She turned her head one way and then the other as though someone in the room might have been listening. Then she said, “Maybe not. Some kind of big problem at the company went down. I don’t know all the details, but there are a lot of lawsuits flying around, and the stock is tanking and taking a big bite out of his net worth. It’s been building slowly for a few years.”

“I didn’t know. I thought his family was set for another generation or two.”

Sam nodded. “Blake thought so too. But in a way, it was good when his dad started having problems a few years ago. It forced Blake to be on his own more. He couldn’t count on his parents for everything the way he had been. And when he moved here, we met.”

“Sure.”

“So my family’s help is really going to matter. My dad has started warming up to Blake. They actually make jokes with each other now. They go fishing, Ryan.”

“Fishing? Blake?”

“He loves it. And Dad’s help will set us up for having a family. Like you guys have. A baby like Henry. A nice house.” She smiled again, her eyes brightening. “That’s what we both want. And it’s right within reach now. More than ever.”

I wasn’t sure there was anything else I could say to her. And I sat in the one place I knew Blake wasn’t. And I wondered if he had any plans to come home at all. If he’d hurt Jennifer, if he was on the run from something and not telling Sam . . .

He might never come back. He could have been driving away to a new life somewhere as Sam and I spoke.

I shook my head, although Sam wouldn’t know what it meant. It couldn’t be that. Blake was a lot of things . . . good and bad. But a killer? No way.

“Those are good things to have,” I said. “They really are.”

“I think so too.”

I stood up, and Sam walked with me to the door.