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There was one of those excruciating pauses, before he replied, “Technically, it was Sunday morning. I had to go. I had reports to file, your brother-in-law to arrest.”

“Yep. You’re a busy guy.”

By then we’d reached the cottage gate. Freyja waited for us, tail wagging.

“Are you coming in?” I asked.

He hesitated.

“No,” I said. “Okay, well, thanks for Freyja. That’s the best Christmas gift I could have wished for. I mean that.”

“Yeah, I’ll come in,” Raleigh said.

But he sounded so sad and serious that my heart began to pound in sick thumps. I knew I was about to hear something I really didn’t want to hear.

But no point postponing the inevitable. I opened the gate; we walked through and went inside the cottage.

Raleigh glanced around, but made no comment on the continuing lack of anything remotely related to the holidays. His family, my family, always made a huge fuss of Christmas. It was going to take me while to disassociate Christmas from disaster.

Freyja proceeded to noisily, frantically sniff every corner of the room. Raleigh watched her, like he was on stakeout and she was his prime suspect.

“Did you want a drink? I have a feeling I’m going to need one.”

Raleigh looked at me with quick surprise. “Caz, I’m not trying to hurt you. The last thing I ever want to do again is hurt you.”

“But you’re doing it anyway.”

He swallowed.

“It’s okay. I get it. It’s over.” I shrugged, went into the kitchen and began to fix a lemon drop. “Sure you don’t want something?”

I was startled when he came up behind me, put his arms around me. I closed my eyes, stood very still. For a moment, we stayed like that, just breathing quietly in unison.

He said finally, very quietly, “I wish there was a way forward for us. You don’t know how much I want that. I wish there was a magical way to undo it all. But there isn’t. There just isn’t.”

I nodded. I couldn’t have spoken if my life depended on it. It felt like it did.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. It wasn’t prison. You were going to have a trial. If youwereinnocent, it would come out. There would be justice.”

I said shakily, “Justice? Jesus Christ, Raleigh. There is no fuckingjustice. Do you think I’m gettingjusticenow?”

“No. I don’t. And If I’d known then—I couldn’t have—I don’t think I would have been able to do it.”

He’d told me that before. On Friday night.

I laughed. It was a watery kind of laugh. “Am I supposed to feel bad about that?”

“Yes. I don’t know! Maybe. Because, had you been guilty, itwouldhave been the right thing to do.Murder is not okay. It’s not acceptable. And it’s especially not acceptable because I’m acop. Idobelieve in justice.”

I turned to face him, and his arms dropped to his side. “But I was innocent!”

“Iknow. It’s a fucking disaster. A disaster that something like that happened to you. A disaster that I was any part of it.I’ll never forgive myself.”

There was so much pain, so much anger in that—anger at himself, not me—that I didn’t know what to say. Freja whined in the silence that followed.

Raleigh said finally, with alarming weariness, “It doesn’t matter if you can forgive me. I’m never going to forgive myself.”

“Yes.” I let out a long breath. “I know. You really did think I was guilty.” I even dredged up some kind of a smile. “It was an honest mistake.”