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I keep my voice even. “Don’t forget that part. It’s important.”

Becca goes quiet beside me.

Paul looks at me, then nods.

“I won’t.” He steps aside as if giving us room to leave. “Drive safely.”

Becca and I walk back along the side path to the driveway. The music fades behind us but doesn’t disappear.

At the car, Becca unlocks the doors and tosses her heels into the back seat.

I stand at the curb for a moment, looking back at the house.

“Your cousin’s a lawyer, right?”

Chapter seven

Research

Paul

By noon, the pool looks innocent again.

Don stands at the shallow end with a trash bag in one hand and a pool skimmer in the other.

“You know what?” He lifts a plastic wine flute from the water like a fresh catch. “Renny would have loved the inebriation.”

“He would have considered it a measure of success.”

“Exactly. If no one loses an earring, offends an ex, or outs a neighbor in front of his wife, was it even a memorial?”

“Alan only told the councilman that he looked like a guy on Grindr.” I bend over and pick up a shrimp tail off the deck. “He didn’t know it was actually him.”

“That’s fair outing, I guess.”

I pick up two abandoned cocktail napkins from beneath a chaise, wrap the tail in one of them, and walk over to Don’s outheld bag.

“Besides,” I say, “that guy practically keeps the bar open on Wednesday nights.”

Don nods. “Trish’s book club night.”

The maid is inside with the caterers’ cleanup crew restoring the house to quieter life. Out here, Don and I are handling the pieces no one else wants to touch. Wet towels. Empty bottles. A single black heel found under the hydrangeas.

The responsible party guests left at sundown, but the party went on past ten. Not because I allowed it. Because at some point, it simply became stronger than me.

Renny would have loved that too. He liked it when I lost control.

I bend to collect a plastic cup from behind a planter. My back protests. My head is not exactly aching, but it is aware of itself in an unfriendly way. I drank only water yesterday, then half a glass of champagne during the toast because Georgia had taken the microphone and said, “Paul, darling, even saints take a sip.”

No, this is a different kind of ache. The kind that says there’s a storm coming, despite whatever lie the blue sky is telling.

The deck chairs are back in their careful clusters. The bar has been dismantled. On an empty chair near the pool, I can still see Clint’s black shirt for half a second, though it’s no longer there.

Naturally, Don notices.

“What are you looking at? Did I miss something?”

“No.”