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M ay sat at the desk in the dimly lit remodeled closet that served as their shared home office space. Gomez was plopped on the floor, his chin resting on her foot. He always knew when she was upset and in need of comfort. She hoped that a few minutes alone would help clarify the emotional chaos that had her head throbbing.

At least Josh hadn’t argued when she said she needed a minute to calm down and think. He was definitely angry, but his ire wasn’t aimed at her—at least not exclusively. He was furious at Lauren and Kelsey, calling Lauren a narcissist who got off on the admiration of others and Kelsey a spoiled, emotionally stunted cool girl forever stuck in adolescence. He wasn’t a hundred percent not right.

She wondered what that made her in his eyes, but decided it was better not to press the issue. It wasn’t the first time he’d raised concerns about the intensity of her renewed friendship with Kelsey and Lauren—concerns she had always batted away dismissively. How had Lauren put it? You have never known what you don’t know—but you’re always so damn certain.

She had lied to him over and over again for days, and she had done it because she had placed her friends before him. He had a right to be mad.

Perhaps she had been blind to the warning signs, too wrapped up in the allure of a friendship that had felt so complete and unconditional. According to Josh, it was like the three of them had become obsessed with pleasing each other. He thought it was weird that neither Kelsey nor Lauren had a real relationship and always seemed to have time to text and do puzzles with her all day.

He said it was clear she needed to make a clean break. May couldn’t imagine how silent her days would feel without them, but that choice had likely already been made for her.

Josh’s other request was trickier. He wanted her to call back the detective on Long Island and tell him everything she knew about Kelsey and her connection to David Smith. It would mean admitting that she had initially misled both him and Danny, which could get her disbarred and fired. But Josh said it would be better for her to raise the issue first before the detective could eventually prove she was dishonest on his own. More importantly, there was a homicide investigation at stake.

She sought solace, as she so often had in the past few years, on the internet. She opened the Spelling Bee on her computer, searching for the final two words that had eluded the three of them that morning. By the time she found the word ganglia, she had already lost interest.

She typed Lucas Freedman murder Boston into her browser’s search window. The first two hits were an article from The Boston Globe and a Wikipedia entry, followed by YouTube videos uploaded by different true crime vloggers. She scrolled down until she found what she was looking for—a page dedicated to Luke’s murder on KillerInsights, one of the more respectable true crime message boards. The pinned post at the top outlined the basics of the case, including the wedding photo from the Globe when Kelsey and Lucas still seemed like giddy newlyweds.

Kelsey’s blue eyes gazed right through the camera, while Luke wore the knowing smile of a man with a secret. The top comment read, Why does she look so sinister in her own wedding picture? Like she’s about to unhinge her jaw and swallow the photographer whole.

But the couple’s facial expressions made perfect sense to May. She had noticed the critical detail the first time she saw the picture after searching for news of the wedding she declined to attend—the groom’s fingertips placed confidently on his bride’s side, right at the top of her rib cage. A light tickle. It was Kelsey’s “spot,” the move that had earned Matt Lenox a dry hump in the eighth grade. Kelsey was smiling because she was thrilled in all the best ways.

May couldn’t believe she was entertaining the idea that Kelsey may have been involved in the murders of two men. My former BFF the serial killer? But either Kelsey was the unluckiest woman in the world or it wasn’t a coincidence that first her husband and now a boyfriend had been shot to death in their cars.

What could bring Kelsey to the point of wanting to end the lives of two men she supposedly loved? Luke had wanted out of their marriage. David Smith had ended things against Kelsey’s wishes. Could it be as basic an explanation as rejection?

May remembered Kelsey boasting in college that she had never been dumped. I’m the dumper, not the dumpee. May could definitely not say the same. Rejection sucked. It wasn’t only the loss of the relationship. It was the sting of putting yourself out there, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and the inability to force a person to want you back. But was that really enough to bring Kelsey to wish a man dead?

May couldn’t claim to be an expert on what Kelsey was like five years ago when Luke was killed, but she knew both younger Kelsey and present-day Kelsey pretty darn well. She knew the things that really mattered to her—earning the right and the skills to run her father’s business at some point, being a good friend and sister, and eventually having children of her own. It all boiled down to family.

And for her to have biological children, she would need to use the fertilized eggs she and Luke had created before her surgery. That’s why she had supposedly been crying to Nate on the phone that Friday night: David Smith wanted to father his own kids, which meant Kelsey wouldn’t be their biological mother.

It was as if a switch suddenly flipped in her brain. The chaos in her mind was replaced by clarity.

All Luke had wanted was to make a clean break from Kelsey’s overbearing family. Having children with Kelsey didn’t fit into that plan.

She opened Westlaw, clicked on a database of Massachusetts law, and entered “disposition of frozen embryos after a divorce.” It was a legal issue she had offered to research for Kelsey, but Kelsey assured her she had lawyers all over it. Within ten minutes, May had the answer: Kelsey would not have had unilateral control over the embryos if the divorce had been finalized. Courts were reluctant to permit one party to force the other to become a biological parent against their will. Instead, both parties would have to consent to any future use of the embryos.

She searched next for the disposition of frozen embryos in the event of one parent’s death. Unlike the situation of a dissolution of marriage, if one member of the couple passes away, control usually goes to the surviving spouse.

She jumped at the sound of the office door sliding open. Josh popped his head in. “You okay in here?”

“Yeah, just figuring some things out.”

“Got to say, I’m getting a little worried. I’m used to you being on the same side as cops. This is so out of character for you.”

“I get it. Things are feeling a lot clearer already.”

He peeked at her screen, the Westlaw heading clearly visible. “Are you working on your article?”

“No, I’m actually reading about Kelsey’s husband’s murder.”

“Detective Hanover down the rabbit hole again?”

“Very.”

“In a good way, or in a we-might-need-to-step-away-from-the-internet way?”

“In a good way.”

“Let me know if you need anything? ”

She handed him her empty wineglass. “Refill? A big one?”

Gomez followed him out, apparently satisfied that she no longer needed his emotional support services.

Halfway through her bucket of wine, she had completed a read of every last message-board post about the shooting of Lucas Freedman.

She scrolled back up to a batch of redacted photographs from the crime scene that the Globe had obtained pursuant to a public records request. The driver’s-side door was wide open, but most of the window’s shattered glass was inside the car. The consensus was that the shooter had fired through the window while the door was still closed and then grabbed the money Luke had been taking to the bank.

The glove box was open. Most of the amateur sleuths on the board agreed that the killer had been in a rush to make off with the deposit envelope that must have been stashed inside. But May found herself agreeing with the commenters who thought the cash had been stored somewhere else. When she was the only person in the car, she always threw her stuff on the passenger seat. The glove box also looked like it was already crammed full of papers.

At least when May had worked service jobs in high school and college, the bank envelopes that managers left with after closing had been floppy vinyl bags. She wasn’t convinced one would fit in Luke’s glove box. Even if Luke had wanted to conceal the money for some reason, it would be easier to simply stick it under the car seat. Glove boxes were for longer-term storage, things like service receipts, owner’s manuals, and proof of registration and insurance.

She pictured Luke, alone in the car, pulled over to the side of the road. A bullet through the window into his left temple. Had he even seen the killer? Why had he stopped there? Was he still alive as his shooter rifled through the car for the cash?

She replayed the scene in her head again, this time rewinding even further to imagine Luke slowing his car and pulling over. Looking in the rearview mirror. Seeing someone approach. Someone who would have first stepped from their own vehicle. She imagined Luke reaching for the glove box. In the scene playing out in her mind, he was the one who opened it, not the killer. He needed something.

His insurance and registration. Then the gunshot.

She recalled the sound of Detective Decker’s voice imploring her to stop thinking only about herself and her friends. I just had to ask David Smith’s mother to identify him from a tattoo on his ankle because the gunshots to his face made him unrecognizable. We only knew it was him because the killer left his driver’s license on his lap .

It was so clear now. She knew exactly what had happened, first to Luke, then to David Smith.

When she stepped from the office, Josh was on the sofa with his laptop, Gomez at his side.

“Another refill?” he asked, starting to get up.

She shook her head and picked up her cell phone from the coffee table.

“I’m calling that cop.”

“I’m so relieved. It’s the right decision.”

“Kelsey did it, and I think I know why.”