She gives a curt nod of approval. “I don’t give two shits about West, if I’m honest. The minute he stepped out on Willa with your mom, I lost all respect and fondness for the man. It’s Willa I care about, been friends with her all my life. She’s a good woman, should never have been put through what she was put through. First not being able to have kids and having to adopt Ezra, then her marriage falling apart, her husband accused of who knows what, murder maybe. Then he up and leaves. It’s enough to drive any woman mad.”

I’m deeply regretting coming for the beer. It feels as though I’ve been brought over to sit in penance for my mother’s sins. “Nobody should have to go through those things,” I say, hoping my obvious sympathy for Willa will end the discussion.

“You know, I saw him that night.” She takes a long inhale of her cigarette.

“Who?”

“West.” His name comes out on a plume of smoke. “It was a hot one, just like today. I couldn’t sleep.” She pauses to take another sip of beer. “It was before I had the air con installed,” she adds as an aside. “I went out back to sit by the lake and cool down a bit; was around one AM. Saw West come out through the back door and get in his boat and drive off in the direction of your cottage.” She points at me.

It’s a piece of information I didn’t have before. Was West at our cottage the night of my parents’ argument? And if he was, why? “You don’t know for a fact that he went to Avril Island, and even if he did, it doesn’t prove anything.”

She cocks her head to one side with a smug look on her face. “The police sure thought it did.” She drops her finished cigarette on the porch floor and crushes it under her sandaled foot, then with great effort bends down to pick it up and put it in an old coffee can. “Besides,” she continues. “If he wasn’t guilty, why the hell did he run?”

“I don’t know” is all that I come up with. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion about the whole thing. I’ve convinced myself that West had nothing to do with my father’s disappearance, but now I learn he may have actually been there that night and cracks appear in the case for his innocence.

“Two men just vanish into thin air?” She snaps her fingers. “Two men in love with the same woman? It’s no small coincidence.” She chuckles to herself. “My friends accuse me of reading too many crime novels. Say it’s gone to my head, but in my opinion the police gave up too easily.”