Adam wasn’t suspicious when I announced that I needed to lock myself away upstairs to draft a letter to Miss Stefanowicz. He genuinely seems to have forgiven me—incredible in itself—but also to trust me, which is even more surprising. I wouldn’t trust me. I don’t trust me. I never have; it’s just that I trust most other people even less.

All weekend, I’ve waited for Adam to lose his temper with me, or turn silent and moody. It hasn’t happened.

Can it really be that easy?

“It wasn’t real, Nicki,” he said to me last night, when I asked him for the two hundredth time how he was able to be so calm about my betrayal. “It was a fantasy—involving another person, but still a fantasy.”

Not real.

Adam doesn’t think Gavin—King Edward—matters, but he mattered to me. And my heartfelt confession was so small a portion of the truth that it was no better than any lie I’ve ever told.

What if Adam finds out the full story? Would he forgive me again? Would that be enough to kill his trust in me? Perhaps he doesn’t care if I’m faithful to him or not. He loves me, I know that, but perhaps not passionately enough anymore to be thrown into a state of anguish by the idea of me sending photographs of my body to another man.

How can he bear knowing that I did that? How can I bear him being able to bear it?

Maybe King Edward loves you more.

A killer.

No. He says he didn’t kill Damon Blundy. He knows who did. It wasn’t him.

And you believe him?

I sit down, switch on the computer, put Ethan’s test paper down next to the mouse pad. When the home screen appears, I go straight to Yahoo Mail—my good-wife-and-mother email account.

I’m about to open a box for a new message when the phone beside the computer starts to ring. I pick it up quickly, before Adam can get to the downstairs extension. When you lie a lot, you learn to get to the phone and the mailbox first, always, just in case.

“Hello?”

“Nicki, it’s me.”

Melissa. My hand, holding the phone, starts to shake. I want to hang up.

“Nicki? Are you still there?”

“What do you want?” Yes, I’m still. I’m deathly still, listening to the voice of treachery. Alarmingly, it sounds exactly the same as the voice of my once best friend.

“I’m sorry I had to talk to the police. I hope you understand that I did have to.”

First Kate Zilber, now Melissa . . . Who will be the next betrayer to beg me to understand how hard it was for them?

King Edward, if you let him.

“Are you calling for a reason?” I ask Melissa.