“It tore me up to see you with assholes like John Aldrich. To hear people talk about you—the things they called you behind your back.”

And just like that, the memory of those taunts came rushing back. “Yeah, I know about that.”

“I used to ask myself, ‘Why not a guy like me?’ But I guess I always knew the answer.”

“I had a lot of issues back then.”

“I didn’t like the way Aldrich treated you. I think that’s why I took the picture. You were so…”

“Drunk?”

Sean nodded. “I thought that if I had a picture, I could show you later—show you what a dick he was, and with Sylvie right there.”

“Did you see who I left with?”

“I think I left before that.”

“Have you ever heard the name Gavin Spencer?”

“Um…I don’t think so.” Sean’s eyes showed no hint of a lie.

“Did you know anybody back then who had a bad lisp?”

“A lisp? Not that I can remember. Why?”

“Just a shadow I’m chasing. How about the name Silas Jackson? Does that name ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Was anyone at the party acting weird toward me, besides John, that is?”

“It was a long time ago. I honestly don’t remember, but…that picture I gave the cop wasn’t the only one I took.”

“You have more?”

“I think I still have ’em.” He went to a cupboard and started pulling boxes out.

“Didn’t the detective ask to see them?”

Sean paused and turned to Lila. “The guy I talked to asked me about you and Aldrich—asked me if you were dating. When I said no, he said…” Sean dropped his eyes as though embarrassed.

“He said what?”

“He said that dating was the wrong word—hooking up was what he meant. When I said I didn’t know, he said…” Sean looked at Lila and she could see pity in his eyes. “He said he was trying to get a handle on all the guys you’d been with. I got the impression he was just going through the motions. When I gave him that picture of you and Aldrich, he acted like I was bothering him.”

Sean lifted one of his boxes onto his desk and began digging through it. The box held external storage drives, each drive with a date written on it in Sharpie. Sean smiled. “I’m a pack rat when it comes to pictures.”

“You took pictures for the yearbook, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you a professional photographer now?”

Sean held up one of the drives and squinted to read the date on it. “Oh, God, no. I’m a computer coder. I wrote an algorithm that tracks buying habits.” He looked up from his box and smiled at Lila. “Bought this house with the money Amazon paid me for it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Lila said.

Lila slipped his senior picture out of her pocket and held it out.

“Holy crap!” His face lit up with a smile. “You still have that?” She turned it over so he could read the inscription, and his smile fell away. “Yeah, I was a bit of an asshole back then.”