He didn’t smile today, not even once. Or yesterday either. He treated us as if we were idiot “girl detectives.” He wasn’t the Mr. Boyce who talks about poetry and thinks all his students are amazing, especially Skylar and me. He’s a stranger who smells like beer and coffee.

Skylar says, “It’s not here.”

“What’s not here?”

“The SUV.”

“What are you talking about? Mr. Boyce has a Mini Cooper. It’s right there at the end of the driveway.”

“He also has a black SUV with a humongous car seat in the back for Andy. I’ve seen him at Food Lion with his wife and Andy, loading groceries into it.”

“You never told me that.”

“I didn’t think it was important then, but now—with the way he’s acting—”

“No.” I shake my head hard. “All SUVs look the same. There must be hundreds of them in Evansburg. I see them everywhere.”

“Listen to me, Abbi.” Skylar grips her handlebars. She’s straddling her bike, ready to ride, but not until she’s told me what she’s thinking. Even if I don’t want to hear it.

“They both taught at the same school,” she says. “He has the art book we saw in her car. And you saw him at the pool with his wife . . . you saw how angry she was. Mr. Boyce is the mystery man, Abbi. He was having an affair with Ms. Sullivan—which makes him a suspect big-time.”

I keep shaking my head, but not as hard as before. “If he has an SUV, why isn’t it in the driveway?”

“Because his wife drove it to her mother’s house. It’s got Andy’s car seat.”

Skylar is clicking puzzle pieces together way too fast. “Ms. Sullivan would never have an affair with a married man,” I say, “and neither would he, not with Andy and all—”

“He’s a cheater, like my dad. He had kids, my mom really loved him, but that didn’t stop him from leaving us and ruining our lives.” She pauses and glares at me. “And Ms. Sullivan was a cheater, too. She knew he was married, she knew he had a kid, but all she cared about was breaking up his marriage so he could be with her. In some ways, she’s worse than he is.”

I don’t want to believe any of this. It’s all a tangle in my head, and I can’t make sense of it. I love Mr. Boyce, I love Ms. Sullivan. It was wrong of them to have an affair, but they’re not bad people. They fell in love with each other, they couldn’t help it. Blame Venus, the goddess with no arms.

But there’s no way to argue with Skylar, not when she’s all worked up about her dad.