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I sit on the mansion’s front steps, swallowing bile and trying to answer questions.

The last fifteen minutes are already a blur. I remember screaming, and a jogger finding me hovering over Tim’s body.

I’m not sure which one of us called 911. The jogger had been the one to check Tim’s pulse. The poor man got sick after his fingers had come away covered with the gore.

The police came quickly, two cops in uniform who herded us away from Tim’s body, ordering us to stay put in front of the mansion while they called for backup.

Now there’s yellow police tape around the car, the scene illuminated by the garish headlights of multiple emergency vehicles.

An officer stands in front of me, holding a small notebook and a pen. She’s not in uniform, and although she introduced herself, I recall nothing.

“Can you tell me your name?” she asks, and I get the feeling this isn’t the first time she’s asked it.

My eyes are still locked on Tim’s prone form. Several people are leaning over him. Someone is taking pictures.

He’s on the ground , blood everywhere. Shouldn’t they pick him up?

“Your name?” the officer prompts again.

“Rowan Gallagher,” I manage to gasp. But it feels like trying to communicate from underwater.

“Thank you,” she says. “And your address?”

I stumble through her questions. My address on Spruce Street. My phone number. When she asks why I came out here tonight, I point to the dog at my feet.

Then she asks me what I saw. What I heard. And she asks me why I approached the car.

“I knew him,” I babble. “I knew his car. I was going to say hello.”

Her forehead furrows. “You knew him,” she repeats. “How?”

“We used to date.” My heart hammers against my chest. “He... He broke it off.” My gaze snaps back to Tim. One of them is touching him. “Did he kill himself?” I wonder aloud. “That wound was from a gunshot, right?”

That doesn’t really make sense. But nothing else does, either.

“Seems like it,” she says softly. “Look, is there someone I should call for you?”

I close my eyes and consider the question. I decide that the answer is no. “I live just a few blocks away.” Although it feels farther now.

“How about I walk you home?” she asks.

“Um, okay. Thank you.”

***

On the walk home, the cop—Detective Riley, according to her business card—asks me a couple more questions.

How long have I lived in Portland?

Forever, except during college .

How did I meet Tim?

He stopped me in a coffee shop. He’d seen my photo in the news .

How long had we dated?

Since April .

Had Tim ever seemed suicidal?

No way .

Did he own a gun?

I have no idea. If he did, he never mentioned it .

Could she stop by in the morning and ask me some more questions?

Of course .

“Take care of yourself,” she says as I unlock my front door with shaking hands. “Lock your doors.”

I turn to her, spooked. “Why?”

“Because that’s what cops want everyone to do. Makes our jobs easier.”

Inside the house, I collapse onto the couch. When I close my eyes, all I can see is the remains of Tim’s throat. His neck. His jaw. Part of it was missing.

I’m freezing, but I don’t want to get up.

Outside, it begins to rain, big drops smacking against my drafty windows.

He’s going to get wet. He’s just lying there on the ground, in the rain.

I must doze off, because suddenly there’s a jingle and the slam of a door and a woof.

“Mom?”

I open my eyes and find Natalie standing over me. “Why is Lickie dragging her leash around the house?”

“Oh.” I sit up suddenly and reach for the dog, who’s sniffing my hands. “Sorry.”

“Mama?” Her voice is high and strained. She hasn’t called me Mama in a hundred years. “Are you okay? What’s that on your shoes?”

I swallow. “You know Tim?”

“ That guy?”

“He’s dead.”

Natalie gasps. “Omigod. How did that happen?”

“I wish I knew.”

***

My own child puts me to bed. That’s never happened before. As she pulls up the quilt, I make her promise to double-check the locks before she goes to bed.

“I will, Mama,” she says quietly. “Sleep tight.”

I lie awake for hours. I’m exhausted, but my brain won’t let me sleep. I keep thinking about the day I met Tim in the coffee shop on Congress Street.

“Excuse me. Are you Rowan Gallagher?” he asked. He gave me an easygoing smile that I’d soon consider to be one of his best features.

At the time I’d been startled. Handsome men don’t usually stop me in coffee shops. “Yes? That’s me.”

After telling me his name, he held out a hand to shake. “I recognize you from that article in the Press . Interesting stuff. You have a cool job.”

“Well, sometimes.” My laugh was probably awkward. “The article covered one of the more exciting days.”

He was referring to a find I’d made at the mansion—a cache of historic Wincott family documents. There was a valuable Bible along with a few other items in a box under some rotting floorboards.

It wasn’t that big a deal, but it did make me feel like Nancy Drew.

Afterward, Hank Wincott had called a reporter to suggest that it would make a good story. Up to that point, all the news about the mansion had been negative. Neighbors didn’t like the construction noise or our plan for a new parking lot.

The reporter liked the story idea, and I ended up smiling from the Local News section, holding the Wincott Bible. I thought it was silly.

But Tim asked interested questions, making me feel fascinating. “Sit with me?” he’d said, pulling out a chair as if my agreement was a foregone conclusion.

And I guess it was. I was flattered by his attention. Starved for it, really.

He was smooth, but in a comfortable way. Confident, but not cocky. I liked his smile. But more than that, I liked how carefully he listened when I spoke. He wanted to hear all about my work on the mansion. “It’s like a Victorian ghost story,” he’d said. “Finding ancient documents under the floorboards.”

“They’d only been there since the eighties. But, sure, let’s go with your version.”

He’d laughed, and I’d admired the way his eyes crinkled warmly at the corners.

We talked for two hours. I lost track of time and was late for a Zoom call with our roofer. Beatrice was about ready to start phoning area hospitals asking if they had any unidentified accident victims.

“You never disappear like that. Is he hot? Is he your type?”

“He’s cute,” I’d said, skirting the truth. “Snappy dresser. Kind of preppy.”

My type, though? Not really. But that was a selling point. He was quieter and nerdier than the kind of guy I used to go for.

I can admit it now—there was no electricity. No desperate cravings, as if I might die if I didn’t see him again soon. But that was fine with me. I’d done heart-pounding desire before, and it hadn’t ended well.

A slightly nerdy journalist in a crisply laundered shirt was more my speed now. Or so I’d imagined.

But then he broke up with me, and I hadn’t seen it coming. That’s what shakes me up the most—having seen something in our relationship that wasn’t real. Trusting Tim required that I trust myself, too.

Look what a huge mistake that turned out to be.

My mind does confusing loops, trying to understand how the Tim-sized hole he’d blown through my life had somehow just gotten exponentially larger. Now he was dead, a giant hole blown into his jaw. I’m afraid to close my eyes.

Every time I do, I see blood.