“The first thing to remember,” Rob says, “is that this is routine. An interview, not an interrogation. They’re looking for information.”

“I know. It’s not like I’m a suspect.”

“No. I don’t know about your friends, though.”

“They’re not suspects, either.”

“Did the detective tell you that?”

“No, but—”

“Just remember that they’re strangers, Landry. For all we know—”

“Please don’t say it, Rob.”

“I won’t. Just be careful up there, okay? They obviously haven’t made an arrest yet.”

“Right. I’ll be careful.”

“And twenty-four hours from now you’ll be on your way home.”

Home. Where nothing bad can happen to her?

Doesn’t she know better than anyone that staying safely at home doesn’t guarantee that the bad things won’t touch you?

“I should go.”

“Okay. I love you,” Rob tells her. “I know they’re your friends and you want to trust them, but I can’t get past wanting to protect you. You’re the most precious thing in my world.”

She swallows hard, and can’t seem to find her voice.

He’s right to be worried. She’s worried, too. Didn’t she just admit to Elena and Kay that she believes Meredith was killed by someone who read her blog and knew she’d be alone in the house that night?

A lurker, most likely, but . . .

It could have been one of us. That’s what the police are thinking. That’s what Rob is thinking. It could have been someone posing as a blogger, someone we trusted, someone with a screen name . . .

Just because Elena and Kay turned out to be the real deal—and Meredith, too, of course—doesn’t mean the others are. Landry thinks back to all those comments she exchanged with other bloggers; all the private chats and e-mails that let them into her life, into her family’s lives . . .

Not to the extent that Meredith did, and yet . . .

Maybe Elena is right. Maybe it’s time to take a step back from blogging.

“I really wish I could be there with you when you talk to the detective,” Rob tells her.

“Because I need a lawyer present?”

“Just . . . be careful what you say and how you say it.”

“I don’t have anything to hide. You know that. And I want to do whatever I can to help them find Meredith’s killer. We all do.”

“You and the other bloggers? Who are they? Elena and Kay?”

“Right. They’re the only ones who came to Cincinnati.”

“That you know of.”

“Well, I’d know if there were others.”

“How?”

“Because I’m sure they would have mentioned it.”

“Don’t be so sure of anything right now, Landry. Okay? Don’t trust anyone.”

“What about you?” she asks, mostly just teasing. Mostly.

“You can always trust me. I love you.”

“I love you, too, and . . .” She looks at her watch. “I have to go. It’s time to meet the detective.”

It hadn’t occurred to Beck that people—everyone, it seems, with the exception of her own husband—would drift back to the house after the funeral.

Keith is on his way back to Lexington. To be fair, he’d asked her, as they left McGraw’s, if she’d really meant it when she told him he was free to leave.

“Yes, I meant it,” she said, and was surprised to realize that she really did. The marriage might not be over officially—legally, or financially—but emotionally she’s finished. It’s only a matter of time; she knows now that she’ll extract herself as soon as this trauma is behind her.

Mom would have been so upset had she lived to see her daughter’s marriage end in divorce . . .

Or would she? Maybe she’d have been happy to see her find her way out of a bad situation. Maybe she’d have invited her to come live at home while she gets back on her feet . . .

Maybe I can still do that, Beck found herself thinking for a split second before she remembered that home isn’t home anymore. Not without her mother.

The house that was once filled with love and laughter now represents only sorrow. Beck can’t imagine ever laughing again—here, or anywhere else. Can’t imagine ever loving again, ever being married again or having children . . .

“I’m so sorry,” Keith whispered in her ear before he drove off in the wrong direction as Beck climbed into the black limo with her family.

Sorry. So sorry . . .

Sorry for what?

For leaving? For her loss? For his extramarital indiscretions?

She still doesn’t know what he was apologizing about. She supposes she will, soon enough . . . if she even cares to.

Back at the house, she’d had every intention of going straight to her room to have a good cry, alone at last. Instead she’s been on kitchen duty ever since she walked in the door, trailed by half the neighborhood. People are bringing platters of food, and the doorbell keeps ringing with deliveries: flowers and fruit baskets, trays of pastries, hot meals ordered from local restaurants by well-meaning faraway friends and colleagues . . .

“You just go ahead and let us take care of serving and cleaning up,” one of the neighbor ladies told her when they first arrived.

But every few minutes, it seems, someone wants to know how to find the coffee filters, or whether there are more plastic cups, or where the garbage goes.

Or, if she manages to escape the kitchen and start making her way toward the stairs, someone inevitably waylays her to ask about a framed family photo on the wall, or show her some memento of her mother, or to tell her how sorry they all are . . .

Sorry. So sorry . . .

Everyone is sorry—but no one is sorrier than she is. Exhausted, all she can do is move from one task to another, from one well-meaning visitor to another, longing to be left alone.

“You look worn out,” her former first-grade teacher—an old friend of her mother’s—comments, after informing Beck that the powder room under the stairs is running low on toilet paper.

“It’s been a long day.”

“One of the longest days of the year, unfortunately,” the woman mentions before drifting back to the crowded dining room as Beck heads up the steps to grab a spare roll of toilet paper from the hall bathroom.

Glancing out the window on the landing, she sees that the sun is, indeed, still riding high in the sky. It won’t be setting for at least a few more hours. By then, she can’t imagine having the stamina to climb these stairs again and get ready for bed.

Maybe she should just lie down now for a quick nap. No one will miss her if she’s gone for half an hour.

She slips past the bathroom and the closed door to the master bedroom, unable to imagine ever opening it again.

She just can’t stop picturing her mother here alone at night; an intruder in the house; a violent attack . . .

We need to get rid of this house—the sooner, the better.

In her own room, she takes a moment to swap her high-heeled black pumps for a pair of loafers, not caring what they look like with her dress. Her feet ache. Her heart aches.

Oh, Mom . . .

She sinks onto the bedspread she and Mom picked out so long ago in Macy’s—they both fell in love with the splashy pattern.

“The colors remind me of the bright blue sky and yellow sunshine,” Mom said. “It’ll always be a beautiful summer day in here!”

Today doesn’t feel like a beautiful summer day inside or out. Beck massages her forehead with her fingertips and finds herself staring at her laptop on the desk across the room.

Does it hold the key to her mother’s murder? If she could just figure out the password and get into the e-mail account . . .

But what are the odds that she’ll find a clue to the killer’s identity somewhere in the files? Does she actually believe Mom was exchanging e-mails with him in advance? That it was someone Mom knew?

If it was—if it was someone I know, too, like . . . like . . .

She can’t even bring herself to entertain the thought.