I, on the other hand, had wasted so much time wondering what it meant that the coworker had lied to the police or judging the husband for having had an affair. And what had I gotten out of it? I sure wasn’t any more informed about human nature. Look at how easily Aimee had deceived me. And almost two years later, I didn’t know her any better or have a deeper understanding of why she’d framed me.

As for Brady, either he was a complete monster, one who’d been in my home, eaten my food and fed me his, and seen me before, during, and after my pregnancy, all without raising any red flags, or my husband was lying. More than lying. Complicit, murderous.

Because one fact wasn’t in dispute. A dead body had been found in the house next door. And now my husband had secrets, such heavy ones I was afraid they’d break him.

My stomach was full of acid, my coffee cold, as I sat on the sofa watching Grace stretching her arms and legs, blissfully oblivious. I’d get the spackle from the garage and start patching the holes in our walls. I’d fix the damage I could fix. In a minute.

Then from somewhere outside I heard a harsh grinding, a machine roaring to life with an earsplitting squeal. My breath caught, and I ran to the window. Through the gap in our back fence where the tiered garden used to be, I caught a glimpse of a yellow hard hat and orange safety vests. Construction workers in Lena’s backyard.

I flung open the back door and stepped out. Even at this distance I caught a whiff of ground concrete and heat. They were busting up the pool.

“Hey,” I shouted, waving my arms. But my voice was swallowed by the din of destruction. And then one of the workers flung a gray tarp over the gap in the fence, cutting off my partial view.

The rosebush I’d planted was blanketed in a spray of dust, white like concrete or bone. Of course it wasn’t bone. I knew that. But the dead girl was everywhere I looked, behind Lena’s second-floor windows reflecting the morning light, behind the fence that shielded the side of the Vosses’ house from ours. There was only one reason I could think of. They were looking for more bodies.

The same pool where I’d swirled my foot through the water, the same pool where I’d felt the dawning of hope, connection, friendship, and a future.

I couldn’t look.

Wheeling around, I fled inside and collapsed on the sofa, wrapping my arms around myself.

Grief ran under and through my fear for Michael, like dark veins through marble, different from anything I’d felt before. With Aimee, I’d been unprepared, blindsided by her betrayal, grieving a friendship that had never existed. But this was something deeper.