Shoving back from the desk, I got up. Once I’d locked my study, I took another Coke from the fridge. The icy cold of it against my palm felt great, and I needed the sugar hit too much to worry about the fact I hadn’t actually eaten anything since breakfast.

I finished off the drink while staring out at the balcony from which Paige had jumped. I’d never asked to look at the crime-scene photos, but still my mind insisted on seeing her, her limbs splayed like a broken doll’s, the scarlet of her blood splattering the crumpled metal roof of the car on which she’d landed.

I’d been at a crime novel festival in Perth, Australia—over a seven-hour flight away—the day she jumped. By the time the police contacted me, she was already gone; they’d told me to find a friend with whom I could grieve. But I hadn’t been able to bear the thought of facing anyone, because then I’d have to accept that Paige was dead. Instead, I’d opened my laptop and written for ten hours straight, not sleeping, not eating. Just drinking and typing.

The end result had been a short novel I’d never looked at again.

Today, I pulled it up on my phone:

 She was a Picasso in death, all elongated limbs and paleness.

Great first line to make myself a suspect, had I not had such an airtight alibi. But as I read on, past the typos I’d never bothered to correct, I knew this was good. Very good. Full of a deep-seated rage that boiled off the page. This was the kind of story that won awards and started conversations. It was also pathological in the way it explored the deepest fears in my brain through the first-person narration.

 Did I kill her?

 Did she feel my invisible hand against her spine the instant before she flew?

 My damaged muse. My lovely creation.

Christ, what the hell had I been thinking? Had I been trying to turn myself into a suspect from more than five thousand kilometers away? My hand hovered over the delete button, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t erase some of the best work I might ever do. Even if it exposed me down to the bone.

Closing the file, I slid my phone back into my pocket.

It was time to find Aurelie Reddy.

49

The school bus hadn’t yet arrived when I found a parking spot behind a couple of other cars. I knew, because parked across the road was a Mercedes painted a bilious shade of pastel mauve.

I almost laughed.

The woman who sat inside had a sleek and groomed blonde bob, and was focused on her phone. She jumped when I rapped my knuckles on her window. I was expecting that wary caution women display when startled by strange men, but her pupils flared with recognition. Throat moving, she swallowed before lowering her window.

She wore a V-neck merino sweater in frosted pink, a heart-shaped pendant of pink sapphire sitting on her breastbone. “What do you want?” Bitten-out words, her head swiveling this way and that to take in the other waiting parents. “That was my past life. I’m happy now. Please leave me alone.” Desperation edged out what had started off as righteous anger.

“I just want to talk.”

Her breath came short and sharp, the black of her pupils almost swallowing the blue of her irises. “I’ll meet you later. I promise.”

I could’ve let it go, but I knew I’d never have a better advantage than at this instant, when she was so panicked. “Or I could sit in your passenger seat for ten minutes and be gone before anyone gets nosy and comes asking. Just pretend I’m a relative of your husband’s.”

Skin paling at the reference to her husband, she shot another desperate look up and down the street. “Okay, fine.” The locks disengaged.

She didn’t comment on my leg when I entered, her focus no doubt on getting me the hell away from her as soon as possible. “Please.” Her voice trembled, her perfect makeup threatening to crack. “I finally have a good life. Don’t screw that up.”

“All I want to know is what you were doing in the Cul-de-Sac the night my mother disappeared.”

All remaining blood drained from her face. “Oh God, oh God.” The blue shimmered. “I should’ve never gone. I was so young and so stupid.” Scrabbling at the little box of tissues she kept in the cup holder, she dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t cry. The children.”

“Just answer the question and I’m gone.”

She was breathing so fast I worried she’d hyperventilate herself into a faint, but she took a couple of deep gulps of air and got to it. “I was planning to knock on your front door and confront your mother, tell her that Ishaan and I were in love and that she wasn’t being fair to him by holding him to the marriage.”

Her laughter was jerky and brittle. “He played me, and he played me good. I really believed we were star-crossed lovers being kept apart by a vindictive wife who was using his son against him.”

“But you never came to the door.”

“I knew about the corporate dinner-party they were attending, and about how the gates closed at a certain time—I timed it so I’d arrive before they shut. That part went according to plan.” Her chest rose and fell in quick bumps. “Afterward, I sat in my car, psyching myself up. Then they came home.”

She squeezed the steering wheel. “Your mother got out in the drive and slammed the door to stalk into the house through the rain. God, she was stunning—and blazingly confident. I knew she’d laugh in my face . . . and I also realized right then that Ishaan would never settle for an ordinary woman like me when he had a wife with so much fire.”

“Nice story.”

“It’s the truth!” Sweat shining on her brow, eyes darting to the rearview mirror as a bus turned into the street. “Please don’t drag me into this. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”