MY HEAD IS VIBRATING AS JASPER AND I STAND IN THE ALLEYWAY THAT’S alongside Delaney’s, between Concord Alley in front of the bar and the back where Leo has told us to meet him. Kelsey dead? I feel sick. Sick that girl who claimed to be Kelsey was lying to me. Sick that this Leo person might be lying to me now. Both feel possible. Or maybe I want them to be.

Leo did agree to meet us in back at least. Not that he was happy about it. He also hadn’t been forthcoming with any additional information. Not even when I tried to press—and I did try to press.

“I mean, maybe Kelsey isn’t dead. Maybe she’s missing or something?” I had offered when we were still inside Delaney’s kitchen, still waiting for Leo to agree to meet us. “I was in the hospital with her. That’s the truth.”

“No,” Leo had said again, simply. “She is definitely dead.”

And it did feel like he was telling the truth as he believed it to be. Though I have already learned that does not necessarily mean he’s right.

Leo slid Kelsey’s book onto a high shelf above the dishwasher before dismissing us. I wanted the book back, but didn’t feel like I could argue under the circumstances, especially because he had agreed to meet us.

I pull Rachel’s burner phone out of my pocket while we wait and turn it on. I don’t want to talk to her, but I can’t help checking in occasionally to see if she has learned anything new about my dad. As much as I don’t trust her, I have to believe she would at least be straight with me about that.

I sit down on the curb as text after text comes through. Eight unread messages, all from Rachel, all some increasingly pissed-off version of: where the hell are you? No news at all about my dad.

“Oh, okay, we’re sitting?” Jasper asks as he comes and lowers himself down on the curb next to me, then leans over to read the text. “Maybe she can explain,” Jasper offers. When I shoot him a nasty look, he holds up his hands. “I’m only playing devil’s advocate.”

“Why?” I ask quietly. “She hates you.”

“Gee, thanks,” he says. “I don’t know, but maybe that’s why. Why risk being mean to me?”

“I don’t know.” I stare down at the disposable phone in my hands. “I have no idea what she would do, or why.”

And that is definitely the truth. Do I actually think Rachel had something to do with my mom’s death? No, not exactly. But Rachel has done terrible things for money, or so my mom once said. And I already know now that anything is possible, that people are capable of much worse than I ever could have imagined.