I look at Bernadette one more time. Her eyes. Her mouth. The way some hair falls whimsically around her temples. Is this how she’d want to be remembered? Or was this just the photo her parents decided to use?

I wonder what photo Graham would use if I went missing—the one of us together at the firepit? Or our engagement photo from Carl Schurz Park? But then I realize I wouldn’t get missing posters or a search party of friends and family calling my name in a line through the woods. With his family’s reach, I’d get the FBI. My face would be plastered on every TV station from here to Thailand. They’d find me if they wanted to. If I wanted to be found.

I slip the poster under the door frame so Bernadette’s face can greet him in the morning the same way it’s been haunting me.

EIGHTEEN

A few months after I moved in, Graham proposed. It was simple, really, and quite nice. Probably what my dream proposal would be in very different circumstances. We ate dinner outside, watching the sunset and listening to sirens, betting two dollars on whether it was an ambulance, police car, or fire truck before someone leaned over the banister to check. When it was dark, and the fairy lights flickered on, I looked over to Graham, sitting beside me on the couch, and he kissed me. It was a moment—one of very few—that felt almost unadulteratedly blissful. Sometimes, when I let my guard down, I would find myself getting used to this life—the spoils of being with someone like Graham, who thinks you deserve the world and has the money to prove it.

He leaned into me and for a second I thought he was going to put his head in my lap, but when he leaned back I realized he’d pulled a ring box out of his pocket. My first thought was how uncomfortable it must have been for him to be sitting on it all night, like the pea in the mattresses in that story my mother used to tell me.

Inside the navy blue box was a piece of Walker history: his mother’s engagement ring, which she inherited from Douglas’s great-grandmother. A kite-set diamond, on a delicate gold filigree band. If I were to be honest for a moment, this is exactly the engagement ring I would have wanted.

“Marry me...”

He said it in a way that was difficult to define. It was not a question. He did not ask me if I wanted to marry him, or give me an opening for a yes-or-no answer. It was more of a statement. Less harsh than a demand, but something deceivingly close.