No one could be that efficient in such a situation. Not unless they had done it before.

Those thoughts are quickly followed by another one. Not a question this time. A certainty, screaming into my brain so fast and loud that I bolt upright in the tub, water sloshing over the sides.

The purse.

We left it behind in the park.

CHAPTER 20

“Don’t worry about it, babe.” That’s what Sam tells me after I inform her about the missing purse. “I already know that. If it was important, I would have taken it with us.”

We’re in her room, she smoking by the window, me nervously perched on the edge of the bed.

“And you’re positive there’s nothing incriminating in it?” I ask.

“Positive,” Sam says. “Now get some sleep.”

There’s so much more I should be asking. What did she do with my bloody clothes? Why did she let me snap like that in the park? Was I so violent and unhinged that it summoned that brief glimpse of Him at Pine Cottage? All remain unsaid. Even if I asked, I know Sam wouldn’t answer me.

So I leave, heading to the kitchen for a Xanax and grape soda chaser before lying down on the sofa, ready for another sleepless night. To my surprise, I do manage to drift off. I’m too exhausted to fight it.

Yet my slumber is brief, interrupted by a nightmare of Lisa, of all people. She’s standing in the middle of Pine Cottage, blood gushing from her slit wrists. In her hands is Sam’s purse, getting splashed with gore.

You forgot this, Quincy, she says.

I awake with a start, sitting up on the sofa, limbs flailing. Although the entire apartment is silent, I sense the reverberations of an echo in the living room. A scream, probably, bursting from my mouth. A minute passes in which I wait for someone to inevitably wake up. Surely Jeff and Sam heard it. Or maybe I didn’t scream after all. Maybe it was just in the dream.

Outside the window, the night sky is quickly thinning. Dawn’s on its way. I know I should try to get more sleep, that I’ll collapse soon without it. But my nerves are a sparking jumble. The only way to calm them is to go back to the park and see if the purse is still there.

I tiptoe into the bedroom, relieved to find Jeff fully asleep, snoring lightly. Quickly, I wrap myself in running clothes. I then slip fingerless gloves onto my hands to hide the abrasions that roll over my knuckles, already beginning to scab.

Once outside, I cross the blocks to the park at a dead sprint. I blast over Central Park West, crossing against the light, making an approaching cab slow down to avoid hitting me. The driver honks. I ignore him. In fact, I ignore everything as I fly to the spot where the purse had been knocked from my hands. The same spot where I had beaten a man so much his face resembled a rotting apple.

But now that man is gone. So is the purse. They’ve been replaced by police—a dozen officers milling around a wide square of yellow police tape. It looks like a murder scene. The kind you see on cop shows. Officers search the taped-off area, conferring with each other, sipping coffee from steaming paper cups.

I hang back, jogging in place. Despite the hour, several other onlookers are also there, standing in the blue-gray dawn.

“What happened?” I ask one of them, an older woman with an equally geriatric-looking dog.

“Guy got attacked. Beat real bad.”

“That’s awful,” I say, hoping I sound appropriately sincere. “Will he be okay?”

“One of those cops says he’s in a coma.” She practically whispers the word, putting a scandalous spin on it. “City’s full of sickos.”

Inside, I feel a thorn bush of emotions, tangled and jagged. There’s joy that the man is still alive, that I haven’t killed him after all. Relief that his coma means he can’t talk to the police just yet. Guilt for being so relieved.

And worry. That above all else. Worry about the purse, which could have been found by the police. Or stolen. Or dragged into the thicket by the coyotes that sometimes, inexplicably, find their way to the park. It doesn’t matter what happened to it. As long as it remains out of our possession, that purse has the potential to tie me to the beating. My prints are all over it.

Which is why I come home with my mouth set in a grim scowl. Jeff is awake when I slip through the front door, standing in the kitchen in a T-shirt and boxers.

“Quincy? What are you doing?”

“I went for a jog,” I say.

“At this hour? The sun’s not even up.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Jeff peers at me through puffy eyes, the lingering fog of sleep hovering around him. He scratches his head. He scratches his crotch. He says, “Is everything okay? This isn’t like you, Quinn.”

“I’m fine,” I say, clearly not. My body feels hollow, as if my insides have been scraped out by the ice cream scooper I use to drop batter into muffin tins. “Just fine.”

“Is this about last night?”

I freeze in front of him. Just for a moment. Wondering what, if anything, he heard last night. That I’m keeping a secret from him at all makes me quiver with guilt. That he could possibly know about it only makes it worse.

“Me having to go to Chicago,” he says.

I exhale. Slowly, so as not to arouse suspicion.

“Of course not.”

“You seemed pretty annoyed about it. Believe me, I am. I don’t love the idea of leaving you alone with Sam.”