Finally, he said, “I tracked her down right before winter break. I was angry because I didn’t know why she had reacted that way, and I laid into her. I told her that Adele’s parents had no idea what happened to her, they’d never found her body, that Mrs. Overton thought her daughter was still alive and she spent her days and nights on missing-person websites looking at pictures. She called hospitals monthly. Probably still does, even now, six years later. Amanda, my ex-girlfriend, couldn’t stand it and never wanted to go home. She told me she might as well be dead because her parents remained so focused on Adele that they forgot all about her. Their lives were in limbo, and her parents didn’t have money for a private investigator, so I asked Candace if Adele had said anything to her about her plans, why she was going to New Mexico, if there was a boyfriend, anything that would help find her or discover the truth. All she told me was that she barely knew Adele, they’d had a class together and sometimes had lunch together, and that was it, and to leave her alone.”

“But you didn’t leave her alone, did you?”

“At first, I did. I tried to talk to Taylor James, but I guess Candace had said something to her because Taylor wouldn’t talk to me, either. That’s when I started thinking something truly weird was going on. But between classes and working part-time, I couldn’t follow up. Then, right after spring break, I had a memory pop up in my social media. It had been from four years before, when Adele had been a senior in high school. Me, Amanda, and Adele at a concert. And I cried because of everything I’d lost. I lost Amanda, I lost Adele, who was like a big sister to me, I lost friends because all I did in high school was try to help the Overton family. And then I got mad. I confronted Candace.”

“At the party?”

“No. The Monday before the Spring Fling. I told her that if she knew anything about what had happened to Adele, she needed to come clean. That if she didn’t, she was tormenting a good family for her own selfish reasons. I was cruel—I mean, I have never said anything like that to anyone. On Friday before the party, I went to apologize, because I hadn’t meant to be so vicious. But my way of apologizing was to ask her to be my tutor again, and I just said I was sorry, I was out of line, and she told me no. Just, simply, no.

“And then she disappeared.”

While Regan didn’t think that Lucas was capable of cold-blooded murder, he had certainly landed himself on the suspect list with that confession—especially since he’d never told the police.