The year before, while Amanda had still been working her grant-writing job, one of the guys from the IT department started showing a great deal of interest in her. He manufactured excuses to come by her office and tinker with her computer or printer. He happened to bump into her during the lunch hour at nearby restaurants and coffee shops. He invited her out for happy hour.

“What was his name?” I asked. “Steve?”

“What’s your point, Ryan? Some guy hit on me at work. So what? Do you know what it’s like to be a woman in this society? When I was eight months pregnant and walking into the grocery store in sweatpants and a maternity top, two different guys whistled at me. That’s what it’s like for women to navigate a world of men. At least Steve never whistled at me. He was polite. And when I gave him the cold shoulder, he backed off. End of story.”

“Just like Jennifer,” I said. “I ignored her, and she went away.”

“But I told you about Steve.”

“And I wasn’t eight and a half months pregnant when he asked you to coffee.”

Amanda cocked her head. “That was the last time you heard from this Jennifer? When I was as big as a house?”

She had me there. And I couldn’t deny it. Even though I didn’t know how she knew.

“Somehow you know she wrote to me again?” I asked.

“Yeah. And you didn’t tell me about that either. And now all of this.” She waved her hand in the air, a gesture that seemed to be intended to encapsulate Jennifer’s death, my all-nighter, my skipping work, and anything else odd that had transpired in the last twelve hours.

“She wrote to me once more. Just a couple of days ago. And I don’t know what made her do that out of the blue. I hadn’t seen her or talked to her. But I didn’t respond to that message at all. In fact, when I got that message two days ago, I finally unfriended her on Facebook. I didn’t realize we were still friends then. She friended me originally when we were doing the bid for her.” My mind flashed back to the night before, standing over Jennifer’s body and receiving the friend request. Then the other friend request right before Blake had showed up. I was no closer to understanding those requests than I was to understanding anything else. “How did you know about that if you’re not snooping around on my computer or phone?”