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“He did.” I smiled, too. Fondly. “Mostly about books and writing. I wanted to be a writer back then.”

Finn’s brows shot up. “I didn’t know that. What happened?”

I laughed. “It turned out I didn’t like writing that much.”

“What?”

“I mean, I loved writing bits and pieces, scenes, vignettes. I loved crafting beautiful sentences. I loved imagining stories and dreaming about the lives of the characters. But the actual writing , the prolonged effort of stringing all those sentences together—all the boring transition and filling in of blanks and having to ensure it all made sense—It’s hard work if you don’t enjoy it.

And I didn’t. I preferred reading. Ultimately, I preferred editing. ”

Finn started laughing. “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.”

“No, but seriously. It turned out that I was much better at looking at the big picture and explaining why something worked or didn’t work. Analysis and advice. Those are my strengths.”

“They’re a couple of your strengths, for sure.”

“ Oh , I’m also insightful. I get that a lot.”

He winced.

I chuckled, sipped my tea.

“Did Milo also want to be a writer?”

“No. His plan was to attend college on football scholarships and then go into acting. Like Mark Harmon. Mark Harmon was his idol.”

Finn nodded, swallowed his coffee. He continued to regard me in that meditative way.

I admitted, “I don’t know what the attraction was for him because I wasn’t—he was super popular and I was…not. It didn’t help that my father was the sheriff and so everyone automatically assumed I was a snitch. I was socially backward and—” I made a face “— had a face like a skull .”

“The hell ,” Finn said, and he actually sounded angry.

My smile was rueful. “It’s okay. I wasn’t a cute kid. I was never handsome. I was tall and thin and I had eyes like a tarsier. But I was smart and hard-working. I graduated with honors. I got into my college of choice. I excelled in my chosen career.” I shrugged. “I didn’t need handsome.”

Finn said, “I think you’re the most handsome, elegant man I ever met. You have the sexiest mouth and the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen on a human.”

It was probably all the meds still floating around in my system, but Finn said it with such fierce sincerity that it made my throat lock, made my face quiver.

I managed to joke, “You should hear what my fellow primates say!”

Finn shook his head, not even entertaining the idea.

That instant if unnecessary defense? It was ridiculously meaningful.

We didn’t talk to each other like that. We didn’t pay each other extravagant compliments or say romantic, flowery things.

In fact, I loved how light and breezy our relationship was.

We teased each other, joked and bantered, we laughed a lot.

I’d known right away that Finn found me attractive and that he preferred spending time with me.

And it was the same for me. That we didn’t have to say it made it, in my eyes, more special, like we shared a secret language.

Like Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies—only gay and with Oxford commas.

(And amiable debates about the number of gun battles one could reasonably have per book.)

Finn growled, “Okay. Tell me more about this asshole who dragged you into his quagmire and then left you to hold the bag.”

I blinked at that particular description. “I don’t think he did it deliberately.”

“Maybe not. What else can you tell me about him?”

“His family was Greek. They owned a little Greek restaurant. Very exotic for Steeple Hill at the time. Everybody in the family worked there. His parents and grandparents were very conservative. Church every Sunday. I think his grandparents went on Saturday as well. Milo’s older brother, Geo, went to jail for a couple of months for stealing a car and a decade later the family still whispered any time the subject came up. ”

“Milo was closeted,” Finn deduced from that jumble of information.

I nodded.

“And you were closeted?”

“I was invisible. It didn’t matter what I was. The only person who noticed me was Milo. He was the first guy who ever kissed me. The first guy I ever fooled around with.”

I had loved him with all my lonely heart. Just the fact that he was willing to talk books with me was enough to make me love him.

Finn said, “What do you think Dominic was doing in the cemetery that night?”

I’m not sure why, in twenty-plus years, that particular question had never occurred to me. But it hadn’t.

My lips parted. It took me a moment to admit, “I don’t know. I guess he went looking for Milo.”

“What time of year was it?”

“Spring. April.” Just about the same time of year as now.

“And what time—at what hour—did Milo phone you?”

The questions seemed so random.

I said, “It was after one. I don’t remember the exact time. I’d been sound asleep.”

“Was it a school night?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was your father home?”

I said dryly, “He was rarely home at night.”

“And it took you how long to get to the cemetery?”

“Maybe five minutes? I drove my pickup truck over.”

“How carefully did you examine Dominic’s body?”

I began to wish I hadn’t had those scrambled eggs.

I said shortly, “I didn’t conduct a forensic examination.”

He’d been warm.

That was the first thing.

I hadn’t expected it.

The second thing was the weight—not just the heft of Dominic’s limbs, but the way they folded and flopped with no resistance, boneless and loose, like something was broken inside. He was limp all over, and that, more than anything else, had made it horrifically real.

Crouched beside him, my knees digging into the soft grass, two trembling fingers pressed to his neck. Like I’d seen in movies. But I already knew. The skin beneath my fingertips was soft, sticky with blood. There was no beat, no pulse. Just a dreadful unreal silence.

His blue eyes were open. I dreamed about that for a long time. Not all the way open, not dramatically, just half-slits, unfocused, glassy, gazing somewhere past my shoulder. There was no light left in them, but they hadn’t gone dull yet. That came later.

I pulled myself together and said, “He hadn’t been dead for long. His skin was warm. But there was no pulse. No breath. I checked. I checked again at the preserve. Before I…”

I quickly talked myself away from the memory. “There was a faint purple blush forming along the side of his neck, and his head lolled, so at first I thought maybe his neck was broken, but later I realized it was the blood settling.”

“Lividity,” Finn agreed. “Did he have a weapon?”

“Who? Dom?”

Finn assented.

“No. Not that I saw. I didn’t go through his pockets or anything. I didn’t touch him any more than I had to.” Granted, at the preserve it had taken a lot of touching, a lot of dragging and hauling and heaving to get him into the water.

“Were there cuts on his hands? Bruises on his face?”

I swallowed. “I’m not sure.”

“Was the injury to his head on the front or the back?”

“It was on the right—no, I was facing him. It was on his left side. The left side of his head.”

I didn’t appreciate the sudden interrogation. I realized that these were the questions Finn should have—would have—asked earlier, but he’d been rattled. I hadn’t recognized it at the time. He, too, was good at hiding his emotions.

Finn circled back, repeated, “Cuts on his hands? Torn fingernails? Bruises on his face? Did he have a bloody nose? Swollen lip?”

“It was a long time ago, Finn,” I protested.

“You won’t have forgotten what his face looked like,” he said with absolute certainty.

He was right. I did remember.

I said, “There was crusted blood beneath his nostrils. His upper lip was cut.”

“What about his hands?”

“I don’t remember that his knuckles were swollen. I think there were a couple of nicks. Not actual cuts, no obvious bruising.”

“What about Milo? Besides the bruising around his throat. What other injuries did he sustain?”

“His knuckles were swollen. I do remember that because it hurt him to flex his hand. He was afraid he’d broken a finger.

He had trouble with the shovel. I don’t think his face was bruised.

But he didn’t claim Dom punched him. He said Dom tried to strangle him, and there were dark marks on his throat.

I could see the outline of fingers. He didn’t lie about that. ”

“It doesn’t sound like it. What do you think Milo was doing in the cemetery? April on the coast is cold and damp. You were home in bed, so he wasn’t there fooling around with you.”

“He went there to drink sometimes.”

Finn nodded, cocked his head, and asked curiously, “How do you think Dominic knew to find Milo in the cemetery that night?”