We didn’t hug. That wasn’t our style. We kept walking, understanding our rhythms would always be different and somehow forever match.

Ms. DeVeau’s orange house stood in protest at the edge of the road. Ms. DeVeau herself was out in her front garden, squatted down, her arms gesticulating wildly, fussing over the hole Harrison had dug there the night before. I saw myself in her place, cloaked by night and guided by Marley, pulling out yellow flowers and putting a third of the journal beneath them, then tamping the bright red flowers back into place.

Grabbing the reins before I’d even formulated a plan, Aidy called out to her. “Ms. DeVeau!”

Marley’s mother tilted her head up and over her shoulder to see us, her taut face a grand reveal from beneath the brim of her straw hat. “Girls,” she said.

“Can we talk?” Aidy asked.

Ms. DeVeau gestured to the hole that had her so dismayed. “This was you?” she guessed.

“Can we talk?” Aidy repeated as a confirmation.

Finger by finger, Ms. DeVeau plucked the gloves off her hands. “Come on in.” She tossed them onto the dirt and sauntered up her two-step staircase. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked as she opened her front door. We followed her into the warm orange house with the cold interior, straight back until we were in her sterile kitchen. Ms. DeVeau opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of lavender lemonade, pouring out a cup for each of us.

“We found some things of Marley’s.” Aidy looked into her cup like she wasn’t sure what she was about to ingest. “We thought you should know about them. It’s kind of a long story, but Olivia got her hands on Marley’s journal, and in it she says a lot of stuff—”

“Are you coming to tell me you think Marley might’ve known her father’s gun had ammunition?” Ms. DeVeau interrupted.

Aidy coughed up the small sip of lemonade she’d started to swallow.

“We read those journals a long time ago,” she told Aidy. “Gave over all of Marley’s stuff to the police for a thorough investigation. If you think her father didn’t have every hair on her hairbrush examined for clues, then you really don’t know that man. He loved Marley some kind of fierce.”

She took a long dragging gulp from her lemonade.

“Trust me when I tell you, we looked into every avenue. The official verdict was that she was a teenager coping with her parents’ divorce and their quote ‘unrealistic expectations’ as most teenagers do. By acting out. Stealing important things like her father’s gun, oblivious to the true consequence of such an action.” She set down her glass. “Did you ever find the money she’d been storing in one of her broken trophies?”

It was my turn to stumble on a sip of lemonade.