“Fine,” I say, mopping up the spilled coffee with the edge of a napkin.

The woman’s on the opposite side of the street now, waiting to cross at the light.

Life can be snipped out in an instant, and we’re so flippant about it.

Teddy’s phone rings. He stands and moves away from our table.

I chew on the side of my cheek and glare at Oliver, hoping he’ll take the hint, remember he wasn’t invited, and leave.

Instead, he clears his throat. “Teddy told me you had a friend in a fraternity,” he says.

I stare at him.

His voice softens a fraction. “A friend named Craig.”

I take a deep breath. My heart begins to hammer. And I know. I know that he knows.

“The thing is…” He glances behind him, but Teddy’s still on the phone, pacing the length of the bar. “I kept wondering why you were so certain the fraternity was involved with Jay’s death.”

He glances at my face.

I look away. Don’t say it, I will him.

“And then Teddy told me about Craig, and I thought at least that explained why you hated fraternities so much. But it still didn’t explain why you were convinced they were guilty. And so I googled ‘Craig’ and ‘Georgia State.’ That’s where you went to college, right?”

I stare out the garage windows, feeling pinpricks at the corners of my eyes.

“And it took some digging—but I think I understand.”

I take a deep breath like they teach you in therapy. And then another one. But still, the memory comes flooding back.

A gray spring morning—the kind that turns the day upside down and leaves you squinting at the world like a fish from the bottom of an aquarium. I was hungover, foggy from the night before, when I got the call.

They said he was laughing right before it happened. They said this as if somehow it made it better—snipped out in the prime of his life while laughter filled his lungs. As if this is how he would have wanted to go—just shy of twenty, laughing, drinking with his friends. It was only later I learned that those same friends left him there, alone, dying in the backyard. We thought he got up and rejoined the party. People fall out that window all the time. As if this excused their negligence.