“Actually, I don’t know if this is important, but when I was listening to the podcast and Lucas said that tests proved she didn’t drown in the lake, I was stunned. I mean, that’s what we all thought. That’s where she was found, and the police didn’t tell us anything different. Anyway, Candace was very close to her sister, as I said. Chrissy is a swimmer, a huge deal, got a scholarship and everything. Candace was extremely proud of her. Whenever she was homesick, she’d go sit at the aquatics center and watch them practice. She told me it helped her decompress.”

That was valuable information. The aquatics center was a five-minute walk from the sorority. It wasn’t the only pool in town—in addition to private pools, there was a recreation center downtown that had both an indoor and outdoor pool, and there was a pool at the high school, not far from the college. But knowing that Candace regularly went to the aquatics center on campus seemed important. By the look on Lucas’s face, he thought it was significant, too.

Regan thanked Annie for her time and ended the call.

She said, “Well.”

“The police don’t have her journal,” Lucas said. “I don’t think her sister, Chrissy, has it, either, but I can ask her.”

“How do you know the police don’t have it? They might have kept it for evidence, not turned it over to the family.”

“I have a list of everything they collected from her car and room.”

She wasn’t certain he was legally allowed to have that information, but she didn’t comment.

“She drowned on campus,” Lucas said.

“You can’t know that.”

“It’s logical. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Why would she disappear for a week, then go to the aquatics center and not her dorm? Or if she was scared, why not go to the police?”

“Maybe she felt safe there, or was thinking things through, whatever was going on with her,” Lucas said. “Haven’t you ever gone someplace because it gave you peace? Or to work through a problem? A place where you could be alone?”

Regan was going to deny it, but Lucas was right. She often went on long walks or horseback riding when she was upset. It’d started when her mother was diagnosed with cancer: Regan needed the time to just be without worrying about her family. When she was married, it had irritated her ex-husband, Grant, that Regan could walk out of the house on foot and disappear for hours. But there was something about those walks that instilled calm, focus, so she could think through her problems. For her, it wasn’t so much where she went as the activity—walking alone, especially in the woods or along a country road.

“Maybe she was meeting someone there,” Lucas pondered.

It was possible.