Her words were accusatory and upsetting enough. But she placed a special emphasis on a few of them. She had said “almost a client” as though those words carried some kind of additional meaning, something both she and I knew. And that set me off-balance.

“Wouldn’t you think it was disturbing if someone you knew got murdered?” I asked.

“Of course. But how well did you really know this woman?” she asked. “As I recall, she wanted your firm to bid on a project for her nonprofit. They wanted some kind of updated marketing approach, right? Print and social media? The usual? And you gave them the bid. And they went with somebody else because you guys were too expensive. So that’s it. That’s not a big deal. How well could you even know someone from that?”

“We had to meet a couple of times,” I said. “With her and several of her coworkers.”

But it seemed strange to me that Amanda remembered Jennifer at all. Sure, I talked about work at home. We talked about it a lot. But in the big scheme of things, my interactions with Jennifer Bates and her company would have been small. Insignificant. We bid on jobs from companies all over town, all over the county and even the state. Would Jennifer’s company have even rated a mention with all the other stuff going on in our lives?

I started to understand that something else was at play.

“I think we need to sit down,” Amanda said.

I didn’t argue. Thank God Henry was only six months old. Amanda and I could discuss just about anything we wanted to in front of him, and he wouldn’t have any idea what was going on. As long as we didn’t yell or curse—since he was acquiring language skills right then—and as long as the milk and apple juice kept flowing to his mouth, he’d be content.

So I sat down across the table from Amanda, with Henry in his spot to my right.

“I know, Ryan,” she said.

“Know about what?”

“I know about the messages that woman sent you on Facebook.”

The overhead light bore down on me. Even Henry, pausing for a moment from his destruction of the teething ring, turned his wide eyes and rosy cheeks my way, as if curious to hear my response.

I certainly couldn’t lie. I’d had my fill of that. I couldn’t do it anymore.

“How did you know about that?” I asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Amanda spoke in a calm voice as usual. She didn’t lose her cool or yell. She didn’t sound panicky or frantic. “We tell each other everything. Or at least, I thought we did. Why didn’t you tell me this woman was coming on to you?”