“I know you’re capable, but my point is you shouldn’t have to.” He paused, hesitated for a while before saying, “What’s the next step?”

The anger I’d somehow suppressed thus far became stronger, and I tried hard to tamp it down. Subtle as they were, the comments the police and Sam had made all implied Jack wouldn’t be coming home. How could they think that way when there was still hope? It was an insult, a punch in the face, and I wouldn’t stand for it. If Sam wanted to convince me to give up on Jack, he’d have to be direct about it. I raised my chin.

“What do you mean, ‘next step’?” I said.

“Uh, well, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to wait,” I whispered, jaw clenched. “He’ll come back. I know he will.”

Sam smiled faintly but said nothing. Jack would’ve called him a coward. Jack would’ve... Jack. How could that not be his name? If Heron and Stevens were right, then who the hell was he? Why had he lied? How could he have told me I was the most important person in the world and listened to me saying I felt the same about him? Our relationship had been the one thing in my life I’d been sure of. As corny as it sounded, when I’d met Jack it had been like coming home. I’d spent the years before drifting from job to job, city to town to village, with no clear plan on what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be, let alone with whom I wanted to share my life. I hadn’t always been like that, so lost and unprepared. My family was respectable, as my parents had often reminded my brother, Quentin, and me. My mother was a family doctor, my father an executive banker. Well-to-do people, career people, stable. They’d tolerated what they’d identified as my “flaky phase,” during which I’d been drawn to music and art before adding boys and makeup to the list. For quite some time, both Mom and Dad had been convinced I’d grow into the academic daughter they wanted, a carbon copy of Quentin, who was fourteen months my senior, yet light-years ahead in terms of meeting the life goals they’d assigned him. He was a sure bet, the thoroughbred my parents paraded in front of their friends. In contrast, I was the stable girl best kept in the back, lest she cause embarrassment.