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“And the break-in?” I asked.

He smoothed his palms over the worn knees of his jeans. “A few days later, I started thinking about what Frank might’ve left behind. He was in that bar all the time. If Meg had given him one of those letters she kept drafting — or if he’d written anything down himself — it could’ve had her name in it. Mine, too. I had to know.”

“So you went back,” I said.

“I went back. But I couldn’t get in the way I had before. After what happened, the shop next door got spooked — changed their locks, put in an alarm. My old key was useless.” His jaw tightened. “So I did it the stupid way. Forced the alley door and went in through the kitchen. Made a mess of it, but that suited me fine — figured if it looked like a random break-in, nobody would think twice. I checked the sealed door, looked around the bar.” A pause. “There was nothing there. There never had been. I tore up my own life for nothing.”

Well, I could understand that. I looked over at the doorway where Diane was still standing. Tears were now running down her cheeks, streaking her carefully applied mascara, but she might as well have been made of stone, because she hadn’t moved a single inch.

“You knew,” I said quietly.

And still she didn’t move, or even attempt to reply.

Wes shifted on the couch, looking more hangdog than ever, if possible. “Mom didn’t know until days afterward. Somehow, she figured it out. And she hasn’t been able to look me in the eye since then.”

Finally, she said, “Wes — ”

Her voice broke on her son’s name, and she stopped.

“I know, Mom,” he said. “I know.”

A horrible silence fell. I thought of the phone in my pocket, relaying this nightmare to Jude, who was so close but also felt as if he might as well be on the other side of the world.

Then Meg rose slowly to her feet, the afghan that had covered her lap sliding unnoticed to the floor. Her gaze was fixed on her grandson.

“Wesley.” Her voice was stronger now, but it felt older, too, old as the lumps of upflung granite that surrounded Watson Lake on the other side of town. “Look at me.”

And he did. The movement was stiff, as if he were unwilling, as if unseen fingers had grasped him by the chin and swiveled his head toward his grandmother. But he looked.

Still in that ancient, calm voice, Meg said, “You killed a good man to protect me from my own choice. I don’t want that protection, and I know I never asked for it. For the last fifty-eight years, I’ve wanted to face what I did. I was finally going to, was finally going to be free of this thing. And now Frank is dead, and you’re a man who killed a priest, and I’m going to have to live whatever days I have left knowing that two more people were destroyed because I couldn’t face what I did.”

“Grandma — ”

His voice wanted to break again. In it, I could almost hear the little boy who idolized his grandmother, who thought she was the most wonderful person in the world.

The little boy who would have done anything for her.

Including murder.

She shook her head. “You’re going to call the police now, Wes,” she said. “Or I am.”

Then he rose from the couch and began to move toward me. In that terrible, frozen moment, I realized he was going to go after the only person in that room he didn’t care about, the person whom he would have no trouble stopping.

Me.

I stood as well, although I didn’t remember telling my legs to move.

Meg cried out, and that seemed to break the paralysis that had been keeping Diane frozen in the doorframe all that time. She stepped swiftly in front of her son, blocking him from getting any closer to me.

He paused, clearly uncertain. As much as he wanted to take me out of the equation, he didn’t seem able to knock his mother aside.

And then I was saying clearly, even loudly, so the phone in my pocket would pick up every word.

“I should be going. I should be going.”

All three Lindleys looked at me in puzzlement, and I only stood there, my heart going what felt like a thousand miles an hour.

Maybe it was thirty seconds. Maybe it was only fifteen, because Jude had known both Wes and Diane were there, so he didn’t need to stay down at the end of the street any longer.