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But somehow, the thought of making that declaration felt as if I was highlighting the decay in our marriage. I wouldn’t say it. He shouldn’t have asked.

As the sky grew darker, I turned my thoughts away from the widening gap between me and Keith. I imagined the others were preoccupied with thoughts about Jordan’s bizarre departure from our dinner. The part that troubled me the most was her comment that she felt unsafe here. Did she mean in this house, or with us?

I hadn’t understood the behavior of those two women from the moment I’d invited them to dinner. If Jordan didn’t feel safe in our house, which was the most reasonable way to take her words, why was that? They acted as if they were afraid of us, which made me worry they’d seen us pulling the body out of the pool. She said she’d seen people here. She heard shouting, but she couldn’t say what they were arguing about. It wasn’t clear to me how you would hear someone shouting but not be able to make out a single definitive word. This made me question her story. Either she knew exactly what they were fighting about, and had overheard some or all of it word for word, or she’d heard nothing and for some reason I couldn’t begin to figure out, she wanted to make us squirm.

I took a sip of wine, trying to slow my racing thoughts.

Finally, Samantha spoke, breaking the silence. “That was the weirdest thing ever.”

I couldn’t see her eyes in the gathering darkness, even with the lights Keith had strung across the deck, but I could see her ghostly-white face. Even her lips had been drained of most of their color. The frightened appearance of her face and her hushed tone suggested she was as upset and confused as I was over Jordan’s behavior.

“It was,” I said.

“Do you think she’s a little… maybe, off-balance?” Samantha asked.

“She’s obviously off-balance,” Keith said.

“Why?” Patrick asked. “Because she didn’t want to have dinner with us? People have a right⁠—”

“No. Because her behavior is bizarre,” I said. “Who refuses to answer an innocuous question about what you do for a living? And walking out in the middle of dinner? Because she felt unsafe? That’s absurd.”

“There could be a reason she feels unsafe in our house. She said she heard⁠—”

Keith interrupted Patrick. “We all know what she said.” He took a sip of wine, then swirled the wine in the glass, tipping it to one side, then the other, coming close to pouring it on the deck.

“This is why we need to find out where that body disappeared to,” Patrick said. “It’s possible she thinks we killed him. Or, she might have witnessed the murder. She might have seen him in the pool after he was dead. That would make her want to avoid this house, and it would absolutely cause her to feel unsafe here.”

“If she witnessed a murder, if she saw a man’s body in the swimming pool, why didn’t she report it immediately?” Keith asked.

“I can’t answer that,” Patrick said. “But we’re never going to know who did this, or who that man was without an investigation. I don’t understand why no one is curious about that.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Keith said.

“It didn’t sound like one. The only way to fix this is to figure out where to look for the body,” Patrick said.

He sounded as if he thought finding a body and calling the police was our purpose for being here. I’d waited a long time to own this home, to have a place where we could enjoy the natural beauty of the world. It was something I craved and even though there were beautiful parks and open space areas near our home, this was different. I loved it and I didn’t want it spoiled by a tragedy no one could explain. A tragedy that would not be fixed by finding the body.

I knew it was wrong not to report it, but I also knew the consequences. It wasn’t as straightforward as Patrick made it sound. He really had no experience being on the public side of things. He was insulated from police aggression because of his job. Once they decide someone is a suspect, they pour all their effort into proving that case. Even if they eventually learn they were wrong, the force of what they do to average people in their narrow-minded drive to identify and arrest a suspect as fast as they possibly can is a disgrace. Keith and I had watched enough crime documentaries to recognize this pattern. Cops take their gut feelings, their instinct, and their guessing games, stir them all up in a pot, and go barreling down the road they’ve chosen, not caring when innocent people’s lives are torn apart. They’re oblivious to the fact that someone’s tarnished reputation can never be fully repaired.

After a few sips of wine, I put my wineglass on the table beside me. “We don’t need to be hunting for a hidden grave. It’s possible whoever killed him took his body somewhere else. And eventually he’ll be discovered and they can do their investigation. An investigation that doesn’t include making the assumption we were involved just because we own the house. I’m tired of having this consume our vacation.”

“How can you be so cold? Do you even have a conscience?” Patrick asked.

“I’m realistic,” I said.

“You’re heartless.”

“Your obsession with some kind of heroic justice is clouding your thinking,” I said.

“There’s nothing cloudy about my thinking,” Patrick said. “I want to know how a body can just disappear. It’s not like moving a dead person is easy.”

“Stop talking about it! We can’t do anything about it.” I grabbed my wineglass and gulped the remainder of the contents.

“We could have,” Patrick said. “We absolutely should have reported it immediately. Now we have to look⁠—”

“We don’t have to look for anything.” Keith stood. He moved toward me, then stepped behind my chair. He put his hands on my shoulders and massaged them with firm, stress-reducing pressure. I wanted to moan, it felt so good. I didn’t realize how tense I’d been. His unforced affection made me feel as if maybe, just a little, he was letting go of his paranoid belief I was cheating on him.

“You should be glad the body is gone,” Keith said. “The problem was taken out of our hands.” His fingers dug into my muscle, and although it felt even better than it had a few seconds earlier, now, I wished I could see his face.