“You did it to yourself,” she repeats.

“I caused it to happen.”

She shakes her head and sighs. “No, Shannon,” she says and stands up. “This is what I mean. You need a lawyer to hear this.”

She turns toward the door, about to summon Brewer back in there, and he is the last person I want to say this to.

“Bear did it,” I say.

Kateri turns around with the door still shut. Her face is pale. “Did he attack you?”

“No,” I say. “The opposite.”

“The opposite?” she says.

“You know.” I roll my eyes and flash back on the scene. The room, the bed. My skin blushes from my collarbone up to my eyes. “We were in bed,” I say.

“Shannon,” Kateri says. She comes back and sits across from me, but I can’t look at her. The blush is so hard it almost hurts. My eyelid twitches. “Just because something happens during sex doesn’t mean it happens out of love,” she says.

“I know that,” I say, and my throat locks up.

“He hurt you,” she says.

I bite my lip and try to listen to the diminishing Pepsi instead of her voice. “I need to talk to him,” I say.

“So do I,” she says.

“Don’t,” I say then, pleading. “Don’t. He didn’t do it either,” I say. “I swear.”

“Do you know that?” she says. “For absolute sure?”

I feel like I’m drowning. Like water is rising up from my lungs and flooding me from the inside out.

“Why would he?” I whisper.

Kateri taps her fingers on the table, thinking. “Let me get Detective Hurt, okay?”

“Why would he kill my mother?” I say again. I can’t stop seeing his face when he bares his teeth, the pure anger, like a white fire behind that.

Kateri comes back in with Hurt and Brewer, who sits down across from me. Brewer clicks his pen a few times, and Hurt puts a small digital video camera on a stand and turns it on. He announces who’s present into the lens.

Hurt has a look. A kind of dad look, but not an out-of-touch dad. More like a dad who cares what his daughters think. A dad who can cook, maybe. I don’t know anything at all about him. I’ve barely talked to him. But it’s a feeling I get. The way he wears a suit, if he does. There’s something soft, something still about him. Calm. He stands close enough to Kateri that their sleeves touch. I wonder about that.

“Has Bear Miller ever talked to you about your mother’s house?” Hurt asks me.

“Yes,” I say, before Brewer can stop me, and he huffs about it.

“Please, please,” he says. “Look at me before you answer, okay?”

“What was the status of your mother’s house when you met Mr. Miller?” Hurt says.

I look at Brewer but answer at the same time. His eyes flash with anger. “It was about to be seized for taxes,” I say. Then I add, “These are just facts,” to Brewer.