Whatever the answer, she’s sick of this routine. She’s sick of pacing the kitchen, sick of waiting for Luke to put on his big boy pants and come back inside and talk through his feelings like the modern man he thinks he is, but sometimes isn’t.

She’d love to lose herself in obsession over the mysterious disappearance of Lacey Shannon, but with the flash drive gone, that’s not really possible. There’s always Google and social media, but the wrong search terms will probably set off an alert in some secret Graydon office somewhere, and within minutes Cole will knock on her door so he can explain, once again, what a good person he is for taking away her privacy and serving as a constant reminder the world is run by a largely corrupt cadre of billionaires.

The house around her used to belong to an old classmate of theirs, Emily Hickman. Emily’s folks once owned and operated the only drugstore in town, a gleaming white tile–filled place with an old-school ice cream counter and vintage drug ads on the walls. When Charley visited Luke here as a grown-up, she’d been instantly struck by the absence of the cast-iron fence that used to encircle the property, the same one the Hickmans would tie balloons to every time they had a party for their only daughter, which was often.

A few months later, shortly after Charley moved in, Marty and his crew replaced the fence free of charge. It mars the expansive views from the backyard more than the old one ever did, but the spokes are widely spaced enough that it doesn’t wreck them entirely. The gnarled oak tree’s still there, as thick and solid as it was when they were young. But the old play set’s gone, along with the tire swing.

Again, Charley thinks about getting in touch with Emily; maybe dropping her a note about how they live in her old place now and by the way she’s shacked up with Luke Prescott and isn’t that crazy, all things considered? But then she remembers she’s leading a double life. And with the stress of it pitching her boyfriend into a long, brooding silence, new friendships, even basic correspondences, seem like an unacceptable risk.

Still, Emily was one of the few classmates who was actually nice to Charley back when she was Trina; unlike Luke, who’d bullied her almost ceaselessly about her dark past.

They were different people then, she reminds herself. Maybe Emily grew up to be someone not as nice. Kind of the way Luke’s grown up to be more mature and reflective, but with vestiges of that old sharp tongue and hot temper. The point, she tells herself, is that those were different times. Memories of them come and go, but mostly they go.

But the longer Luke sits out in the backyard in sullen silence, the stronger those memories become. And the more high school feels like yesterday, the more she fears the return of the Luke she used to loathe.

It’s not fair, or rational. He’s not acting like the guy he was back then. Not really. More like an injured animal. But deep down, is there really that much difference between the two? And if all this becomes too much for him, will the old Luke return, if only for the purpose of driving her away, cutting himself off?

She’s not interested in waiting to find out.

He’s got to hear her footsteps crunching the grass, but he doesn’t turn or even sit up.

Not good, she thinks.

He’s slouched in one of the cheap Adirondack chairs that used to form a ring around his old chiminea. Then Mona dropped by for a visit one day, took one look inside the chiminea’s ash-and branch-filled cavity, and asked Luke how long he’d dreamed of starting a wildfire. Luke threw the thing out the next day, and Charley made a mental note: If I ever need to really get through to Luke, go through Mona.

Provided, of course, the topic doesn’t have anything to do with Graydon Pharmaceuticals.

“This is longer than a minute,” Charley says.

“Have a seat.” He gestures to the empty chair next to him.

Oooo, can I? she wants to ask, in a voice as sarcastic as the one he used to use with her back in high school. But she knows that’s a childish, defensive reaction; she’ll save those for later if she needs them.

“I’m not mad at you,” he says.

“OK,” she says.

Good, she thinks.

“I’m mad at myself.”

“OK,” she says.

“I fucked up.”

“How?”

She’s ninety percent sure he’s about to say he screwed up by getting involved with her, so when he says, “Cole’s right,” she sits forward in her chair with surprise.

“How?” she asks.

“The whole time you were gone, I was wound so tight I was ready to pop. Lacey walking into that station . . . it popped me, I guess.”

“How does that make Cole right?”

“I handled it badly, and now we’ve got a mess. Mona thinks the same thing; she just won’t say it directly.”

“And you think you handled it badly because you were worried about me?”

“Partly, yeah.”

“Well, personally, I’m glad you were worried about me. It’s nice to have someone worrying about me.”

She smiles. He doesn’t.

“I don’t regret that part,” he says. “It’s the other part that’s got me going.”

“What other part?”

“This isn’t the easiest thing to say, Charley.”

“Well, maybe if you’d just say it, it will be easier.”