“We should have never gone out with you.” She showed her face again, pinch-lipped this time. “You. Your brother. She’d be alive if we hadn’t.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“Do you know how she died?”

“How could I possibly know that?”

“Her parents know. The cops told them and they told me.”

“Sara, listen—”

“She was cut to pieces, chained up and tortured and cut to pieces. They say it took hours.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I truly did not.

“Your brother’s an animal. Don’t come here again.”

She slammed the door, and I tried to not see Tyra as she’d described her.

What if it’s me? I wondered.

What if I’m the one who’s wrong?

When I turned away from Sara’s door, I noticed the man in a car across the street. I didn’t think about him one way or another until I stepped into the road, and saw that he was not so much old as old-looking. That seemed familiar, somehow: the loose skin, and how he watched me walk. Even in my car, I thought he was watching. I told myself it didn’t matter. He was just a creepy old dude in a creepy black car.

It took four blocks to remember.

I’d seen him in the courtroom crowd, three rows back and staring at the DA. I took my foot off the gas, and replayed the scene: the judge on his bench, the DA, sweating bullets as he stammered at the judge, and looked fearfully into the crowd. The old man from the car had been right there.

Lanesworth …

The DA had been talking about Lanesworth.

The same man on Sara’s street could not be a coincidence.

I turned across traffic, and everything was fast: my heart, the drive. On Sara’s street, I drove faster.

Be there! I prayed.

But he was gone.

I pounded on Sara’s door, thinking she should know about the man on her street, or that maybe she already did. “Sara! Open up!” I beat on the door for two full minutes. I wanted answers. I wanted to talk.

Sara, apparently, did not.

I thought about it as I drove from the city: Sara’s anger, the man on her street.

At home, I found my mother in the kitchen, beautifully dressed and made up to perfection, humming as she swept about the room, stirring pots on the stove, bending to remove a tray of cookies from the oven.

“Mom?”

She saw me, and beamed. “Gibson, hello! Such a lovely day!”

There was no mention of Jason or court or the fact I should be in school. She kissed my cheek, and I smelled her perfume. “What is all this?”