“Funnily enough, neither do you.” He bursts out laughing. “Your face, Tess, so furious. You are so easy to wind up. You know, Max is unnerved by you. Told me you walked out of your flat and he thought you were a ghost. He said you were just like Bella.” He pauses. “I don’t see it, though. You’re the good girl, aren’t you, Tess? Always were. Nothing like your sister.”

I turn away from him.

“So virtuous,” he continues. “I remember you tattling to your dad and Julia about catching Bella drinking with me and Lena. Little saint.”

“Stop it.”

He laughs. “Don’t like the reminder, do you? Don’t like remembering how miserable you made Bella, how much trouble you got her into.” He steps closer. “Especially when it was all a lie—your Goody Two-shoes act. You were never who you pretended to be.”

I take a step toward the house and he sidesteps with me. “Oh, stop being so bloody juvenile.”

“You thought no one saw, didn’t you? Thought everyone bought the mouse act. But I don’t need to see the scar on my brother’s face to remind me who you really are.”

He’s talking crap. He hasn’t changed a bit, despite the wife and child. This is another wild chase through the woods. But he’s right about one thing—I’m not a scared little mouse, not now. I could do to Jack what I did to Rebecca Martin—grab him by the throat. My hand curls into a fist and I want to do it, grab him and punch him.

“I wish we’d never moved to that damned house,” he says.

“Me too.”

He laughs softly. “Poor Tess—does it keep you awake at night, thinking of the lives you could all have had if we’d never come to town?” He sighs and looks around. “I swore I’d never come back to this shithole.” He falls into silence and I hover, wanting to walk away but unable to move. I’m undone by the momentary vulnerability I see in Jack’s hunched shoulders and defeated expression.

“Who do you think it is? The body they found?”

His face goes blank. “I have no idea. I haven’t been here in a decade.”

“But it’s bones they’ve found, that’s what Dad said, not a body. So it could have been there that long.” I shiver. “What if it’s another girl? There was another one, wasn’t there? Who went missing and no one ever found.”

He pulls a face, back to the Jack I remember. “Jeez, I came out here to wind you up for some light relief. I think I’ll go back inside, watch Max freaking out some more. It’s more entertaining.”

“Max is freaking out?”

“Bodies in gardens don’t exactly fit in with his plans for the week.”