I pretended to focus on the magazine again as I continued to listen to their exchange. First indications were Keenan had been trapped underneath his Subaru overnight, and someone had found him after looking in through the garage window. I shuddered as I wondered how long Keenan might have suffered. I hadn’t liked him, but that kind of death wasn’t something I wished on anyone, enemy or not. My next thoughts went to Fiona, and how she was coping with the news. She’d already lost Celine, now her brother was gone. Maybe Maya and I could stop in at the motel on our way to Brookmount and offer our condolences. It was the least we could do.

Ten minutes later and the car was ready. I paid the bill in cash—sorting out a bank account and credit card were still on my to-do list—and as I turned on the engine, I looked up at the car wash, something Maya’s grimy Pathfinder probably hadn’t seen in years. The inside of her car was full of empty sandwich and chocolate wrappers, coffee cups and other discarded remains, all of which emitted a slightly offensive smell. While it hadn’t bothered me so far, the thought of being trapped inside a rubbish tip on wheels all the way to Brookmount and back held little appeal.

I headed to the car wash, bought a pass and eased into Neutral. Afterward, I parked by the vacuum cleaners, where I emptied all the loose crap before removing the floor mats and grabbing the hose, sucking up mountains of crumbs and sand. The final task was to clean underneath the seats, and when I slid the one on the passenger’s side back as far as it would go, I uncovered another slew of waste. As I picked everything up and dumped it in the bin, I spotted a notepad wedged next to the seat. Maya’s writing filled the pages, shopping and to-do lists, mainly, which were interspersed with sketches of driftwood art, some of which I’d seen in the garage and at the shop.

When I turned another page, taking in more of her scribbles, a series of pictures flashed in front of my eyes. They came thick and fast, and I had no control, couldn’t do anything to stop them. Wincing, I pressed the balls of my hands into my face, which did nothing to block the onslaught of images. In the first, Maya was crying, looking down at me as I crouched by something on the floor. Then it was me, shaking my head as I shouted, “We can’t. We can’t!” Blind panic came next, the memory of it making me want to vomit. And finally, I was looking over Maya’s shoulder as she wrote a note slowly, carefully, while I clutched a silver-and-amethyst necklace in my hand. Something I’d hidden where nobody would ever find it.