I tilt my wrist to check my watch and the coffee laps over the edge. I figure we have less than an hour before Ben gets my voicemail. Less than two before Colin’s parents are here with a lawyer in tow.

“Sure you don’t want anything?” I ask, setting one mug in front of Oliver and bringing the other to my lips. “It’s been a long night.”

This warrants a small ironic smile from Colin, bottom lip clasped between his teeth, and I think that for him, every day since Jay’s death must seem like one long night.

“All right then. Let’s start at the beginning.”

We’ve started at the beginning three times now. Why did he introduce himself as Jay? How did the BMW end up at the lake house? What happened to the windshield? We circle close and swoop away, but Colin hasn’t given us anything to hold on to yet.

Instead of sitting, I lean against the two-way mirror. I want Teddy to be behind me, watching Colin over my shoulder. But he’s still at his desk, logging our movements. And I know that when he’s done, he’s going to walk out of the station without a word.

Colin gives me a blank stare, and Oliver shifts impatiently. I let the silence grow thick. Colin looks away.

I push myself off the wall and sit down heavily across from him. Then I pull out the phone records.

“These are calls from Jay’s secret phone. He only used it to contact two numbers. Katie Coleman. And you.”

A small shrug.

I lean in closer. “Do you see this?”

I draw a line with my pen down the list.

“Jay called you almost thirty times in the hours before he was hit and then”—I make two slashes at the bottom of the page—“nothing. Why was he so desperate to get in touch with you?”

My phone rings.

Ben, it has to be.

A tense shift ripples between us.

I silence it.

“Here’s what I think,” I say. “I think you enjoyed pretending to be Jay a little too much. Jay was popular, rich, had about a million friends. And I think for a moment, you forgot it was all pretend. You started to believe you were Jay.”

He folds his arms over his chest, as if offended. As if he didn’t spend the first twenty minutes here pretending the very same thing.

“You started to feel entitled to his life. His possessions.” He opens his mouth, but I keep going. “It was just little things at first. Things Jay would never have noticed—a pen, a pack of gum—but you’d been pretending to be him for almost a year. You wanted something more personal: his grandfather’s watch.” I gesture to the timepiece under his sweater—the other things I’m only guessing, but this I know for certain.