“Your cousin.” Lila watched the color drain from Sylvie’s face. Matty had been the one to find the connection. Sylvie’s mother and Gavin’s birth father were stepsiblings, a tie that Matty found only because he now had an idea of what to look for. It had been the last piece Niki needed before sending Lila in.

“I don’t know what…you’re talking about.” The shake in her voice said more than words ever could.

“I was with him when he died, Sylvie.”

Sylvie looked behind her, to where her son Dylan stood in the hallway, a stuffed dachshund under his arm.

“We need to talk.”

Sylvie turned to her son, her voice so weak that Lila could barely hear it. “Mommy’s gonna talk to her friend. Go watch TV till I get back.”

Dylan hesitated, but then headed into the living room. Sylvie walked onto the porch, and she and Lila sat in the same chairs they’d sat in the last time. When they got settled, Lila said, “I know it was you, Sylvie, in my car…that night in the bean field.”

Sylvie shook her head and looked away, her breath faltering as it left her body. Lila watched as guilt wrapped its cold fingers around Sylvie’s throat.

“Gavin told me it was you.”

Sylvie’s breath caught in her chest.

It was true that Gavin had confessed that information on the bridge, but not so bluntly. You wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and spat in your face. In the heat of the moment, Lila had dismissed the odd phrasing as the ravings of a psychopath, but his words hadn’t been random. When she saw Sylvie’s phone number on the screen of her phone, Lila understood.

“Why, Sylvie?” Lila whispered. “Why would you help him rape me?”

Sylvie’s eyes shot up to Lila. “I didn’t. I swear. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. We were only gonna take a picture. That’s all. I didn’t know he’d go back. I swear to God—”

“Take a picture? Why would you do that?”

Tears began to stream down Sylvie’s cheeks. She pulled her thighs up to her chest and wiped her face on the knees of her jeans. “You could’ve had anyone. John was all I had, and you took him.”

“Gavin raped me!” Lila almost snarled as her emotions got the better of her. “Do you have any idea how that…? I tried to kill myself, Sylvie. I almost died because of that night.”

“I was a stupid kid—and I was hurt. I just wanted to embarrass you. I wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me. Gavin was just supposed to take a picture, that’s all. He wasn’t supposed to—”

“But he did. And you helped him.”