After a long time, she ended up at the door of Reese’s apartment. She felt an eerie sense of déjà vu as she knocked, ending up here once more when she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

But this time was worse. So much worse. Kelly actually longed for the agonizing confusion, anger, and fear that had led her here last month.

No one answered the door.

It was evening now. Reese was probably out with friends or a date.

But Kelly didn’t have anywhere or anyone else. So she slumped down to the floor of the hallway outside of her friend’s apartment. She leaned against the wall in a blurry haze and just waited.

Reese found her there an hour later.

“Kelly,” Reese exclaimed, approaching her apartment door. Her face twisted in concern. “Kelly, what is it?”

Kelly opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Reese reached down to help her to her feet. Then gently pushed her through the door she unlocked. After closing the door behind her, Reese turned to face Kelly again. “Now, tell me what’s wrong.”

Kelly tried again. Wanted to say something. But still couldn’t seem to speak around the horrible constriction in her throat.

Something seemed to be stopping her from voicing the words. Something that didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want any of this to be real.

“Kelly,” Reese demanded, dropping her purse and a shopping bag on the floor. “Kelly, you’re scaring me. What is it? Is it Caleb? Did he…hurt you?”

Kelly managed to shake her head, although her negative response wasn’t entirely true. Caleb had hurt her. He’d been partially responsible for her father’s death.

But that wasn’t the main thing. Wasn’t what was threatening to tear her open right now.

Reese urged Kelly farther into the apartment, and then she went to get her a glass of water.

Kelly accepted the glass. Wanted to drink it since her mouth was so dry it was burning. She tried a sip but could barely swallow it.

“Kelly,” Reese insisted, growing urgent in her anxiety. She put her hands on Kelly’s shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Don’t you dare do this to me. Tell me!”

“Found out…” Kelly choked out. It hurt. It hurt even to speak.

Reese’s face twisted again. “You found out? What?” Then something changed in her expression. “Fuck, Kelly, you found out about your dad?”

Kelly ruthlessly directed her head to nod, and eventually it complied. It felt like there was some kind of excruciating tension pushing up through her chest. Into her throat. And she was scared it would literally suffocate her.

The room, Reese’s face, started to swim before her eyes.

“Was it Caleb?” Reese asked. “It was Caleb after all?”

Kelly’s hands were shaking helplessly, and she had to use both of them to hold the glass of water steady. “No. No. I was…wrong.”

Saying the words was crippling, but even this—even this most horrifying of realizations—wasn’t the force that was ripping her open, that was tearing her to shreds.

Reese’s face was almost contorted now with confusion and worry. “Oh my God!” she breathed. “So what happened?”

Reese had never known him, but Kelly had.

He had been Kelly’s father. Her dad. Her dad. And she could still feel the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

Except it wasn’t. It was Reese’s hand.

Kelly tried to clear her head, her eyes, her throat. Tried to fight against this force that was overtaking her.

Couldn’t.

Couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. And water slopped from the glass all over the hardwood floor.

“Sorry,” Kelly mumbled. She couldn’t physically hold the glass still, and she was barely able to set it on the table before she spilled the rest of it. “Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Reese said, her voice hard and urgent. “Damn it, Kelly. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

Kelly barely heard her. She stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel. Then came back into the living room and knelt on the hard floor, wiping up the spilled water.

She’d wiped up water not so long ago from the floor of the guest suite in Caleb’s house. She’d knocked over a vase of flowers. And then she’d made herself fuck him.

She kept wiping, even when the water was gone. She scrubbed at the wood, almost desperately.

It was something to do. A thing to be done. She just stared at the floor and kept wiping.

Reese knelt down beside her. “Kelly, stop. Tell me what happened. How did your dad die?”

Kelly wanted to keep wiping, but Reese had pulled the dish towel away from her. So she just stared down, her hands flat on the floor. “He was shot.”

Reese made an exasperated noise. “I know that. Who shot him?”

“Hit man.” There had never been any doubt about who had actually pulled the trigger. They’d always known it was a hit man. Nothing had really changed.

Except everything had.

Reese reached over and put her hands on Kelly’s face, forcing her to look up at her. “Kelly, why are you acting like this? So Caleb didn’t order the murder?”

“No,” Kelly forced out, mostly because Reese looked so panicked. It felt like someone else was speaking, someone else was shaping these words. “Someone else.”

“Someone else? Who?”

Kelly tried not to hear the word repeated back to her, but the sound of it was burning in her ears. “Earnest,” she mumbled, trying to shake herself free from whatever was possessing her. “Tom Earnest. The CEO at the time. He’s dead now. Nothing…nothing to do about it now.”

And it might have been the most painful thing Kelly could ever remember saying, ever remember experiencing.

It was worse than running back down the trail in the woods to find her father dead.

She saw Reese’s eyes widen as the truth sank in.

And that was it.

The excruciating force inside her surged up, out, ripped her apart. “Oh, God!” Kelly gasped, strangling on an agonized sob. The first sob seemed to slash open her throat, but another one followed. Then more. They wouldn’t stay down. And each one hurt more than the last.

Kelly raised her hands to cover her face, as if her fingers could somehow hold back her painful rasps.

“Oh, Kelly,” Reese said, her voice softer than it had been. “I’m so sorry.”

The sympathy was worse. Even worse. And Kelly couldn’t possibly handle it. She cried even harder, in harsh, grating sobs, and her eyes burned without tears.

Reese sat stiffly, as if she weren’t quite sure what to do. After a minute she asked, “Caleb wasn’t involved?” Clearly she couldn’t quite believe it.

Kelly couldn’t believe it either. Except she knew without doubt it was true.

“No,” she wheezed between the sobs that kept tearing through her throat. “He only found out…later.” She was barely coherent.

“But that’s…good, right? You didn’t want him to be guilty.”

Kelly forced herself to nod. Felt like her throat was closing up. She was choking. Sobbing frantically. But managed to spit out, “Except…now…there’s…nothing to do.”

It was all she could say. But she started choking, her sobs were so wrenching and overwhelming.

The tears had finally come now, blinding her eyes. Kelly couldn’t hold her head up. Leaned forward, over her lap. Wept into the hard floor with desperate jerks.

“Oh, Kelly,” Reese soothed, stroking her back. “Hon, don’t.”

Kelly didn’t want to, but there was no way she could stop. Her sobs were loud and painful, and they kept getting worse and worse.

“Kelly, I know it’s terrible for there to be no way to get justice now, but isn’t it better to know?” Reese was clearly grasping for any comfort she could. “Isn’t it better to know one way or the other? Isn’t that what you set out to do in the first place?”

“Yes. But now it feels…worse.” Her hair was falling all over the place, shielding Kelly’s face like an ineffectual curtain.

Reese kept stroking her. “Why is it worse now?”