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Raleigh looked doubtful, but he said, “That would certainly be helpful.”

The clock suddenly chimed two. Had we really been talking for hours?

Raleigh glanced at his watch, as though verifying the hour. He said tiredly, “It’s late. I should go.”

I nodded.

Neither of us moved.

It was painful to acknowledge how much I didn’t want him to go.

Into the silence stretching between us, Raleigh said to the floor, “Unless you want to take mercy on me and let me sleep here?”

I stared at him in disbelief.

He glanced sideways, and actually smiled, though it was a lopsided smile. “I’m not an idiot. I mean actually let me sleep here. It’s not like I’ve never spent the night on this couch before.”

No, he’d slept on the sofa when I had flu. I’d slept on the sofa when he’d wrenched his back chasing down and tackling a Peeping Tom.

I said, “I…guess it would be ungrateful to turn you out after you were kind enough to drive me home.”

Also, though I didn’t want to admit it, the discussion of whether Astrid might have been murdered had left me feeling uneasy. I knew Malcolm had no reason to harm Astrid. I also knew there were only so many possibilities.

“Maybe it was an accident,” I said abruptly. “She did like to relax in the bathtub. She did take sleeping pills sometimes. Especially during the full moon.” Even now, that memory could make me smile a little. “She always said she couldn’t sleep with Old Man Moon staring through her window.”

“It’d be pretty coincidental that she accidentally overdosed after writing that particular note.”

Yes. Fair enough. That was hard to believe.

I said, “Okay. You win. I’m officially freaked out. You can sleep on the couch.”

He stared at me, said gravely, “Uh…yay?” That was so totally like the Raleigh I’d fallen in love with, that I laughed.

For a moment we gazed at each other, smiling, and my heart ached because I missed him so much. Even when I’d hated him the most, I’d missed him, or at least missed who I thought he was. And I was going to have to spend the rest of my life missing him.

Maybe eventually we could find our way back to being friends. That wouldn’t be so bad. Better than nothing.

As if he read my mind, Raleigh stopped smiling, said, “You know, if our positions were reversed, I don’t know that I could forgive, either.”

I said, and I’m sure we both heard the acid in my tone, “Our positions would never be reversed. Because you always do the right thing. No matter what. You wouldn’t have called me. You wouldn’t have left a hysterical, frightened phone message that could be misinterpreted as an admission of guilt. You’d have called the cops and called your lawyer and kept your mouth shut instead of being a helpful idiot who couldn’t get it through his thick head we were on opposite sides.”

Maybe it was the muted light, but he seemed to lose color.

“Sweet dreams,” I said, and went into the bedroom and closed the door.

Then I dropped down on the side of the bed and put my face in my hands. It was like shooting ducks in a gallery, except the bullets kept ricocheting and going through my heart.

I’d wanted him to pay, to suffer, to understand how wrong he’d been, to know that he’d destroyed everything between us for nothing.For nothing. And he did. He was sad and sorry. He was suffering just like I was. And just like me, he did not know how to fix it.

Because he couldn’t.

The mistake had been his. He had inflicted the injury.

But it was up to me to fix it.

And the only way to do that was to forgive him.

Or not.