I sigh and lean back in the chair, clutching the bottom of it to stop myself from folding my arms and hunching over defensively. “Look—I know what this is about. Jack got the wrong end of the stick. I used to…way before he disappeared, I used to do some gardening at Dean House.”

“I see. You didn’t mention this before.”

“Because, like I said, it was way before he left. I’d stopped going over there a long time before the wedding.” I look down, remembering how I…omitted telling him about visiting Dean House the night before the wedding with Bella. It wasn’t relevant, was what I told myself then. But now…what was Bella trying to tell me that night?

There’s a long pause I can’t resist filling. “You’re wasting time, you know, talking to me and Dad—it’s Jack you should be talking to. Did you know he was in town when Nicole Wallace went missing?”

He still doesn’t say anything.

“And Greg…I think Jack did it.”

“You think he murdered his own father?”

“You’re the one who keeps asking about Greg and the murdered girls, Nicole and the other one.” I lean forward. “What if Greg killed the girls and Jack found out, so he…”

“You seem certain it was Jack.”

“He took us to where one of the girls was killed once, took us right to the murder site. You don’t know him—he can turn on the charm, but it’s all pretend, it’s all lies.”

“Mr. Lewis has a different story to tell, Tess. He told us you were violent as a teenager.”

“What?” I laugh. “Is he kidding?”

“He told us you gave his brother the scar on his face.”

I lean back in the chair. I can feel my face getting hotter and hotter. “No. That was an accident. A misunderstanding. Something he started.”

Detective Levinson glances down at the file in front of him. “Mr. Lewis says you attacked Sean Lewis with a pair of garden clippers, causing him to require eight stitches. His statement says, ‘If my father hadn’t turned up, she would have stabbed him.’” Detective Levinson looks up. “Is this true?”

I shake my head. “Of course not. Not the way he tells it. He wasn’t even there. He’s twisting things—it’s what he does.”

“But it’s not the only occasion you’ve lost your temper and got violent, is it?”

I fold my arms, hunched into a defensive position. I know what’s coming.

“You’ve recently been fired from your job for attacking a student. And the father of the student has put in another complaint—that you verbally attacked and threatened him in the school parking lot and that you were insisting his daughter was being abused by a pedophile.”