YOU’VE GOT TO be kidding.”

Caroline Graham pivoted on the soles of her feet, coffeepot in hand, and for the briefest of moments, Lucas saw his wife’s intentions reflected in the blue of her eyes. He imagined her arm pistoning away from her, freshly brewed coffee splashing out of the carafe in a caramel-colored wave. Delicate ripples of steam would dance ghostlike through the air before spraying across his face and neck, scalding him, because Caroline had no more words. This was it. He had pushed her too far.

“No,” she said, calm as she set the coffeepot on the kitchen counter, but it was nothing more than a momentary suppression of outrage. Caroline was the master of the slow burn, and no matter how hard she tried to hide it, he knew he’d just lit her fuse. He saw it in the way her fresh manicure gripped the edge of the sink. She stood with her back to him, and while he couldn’t see her face, he was sure of her expression—lips tight, teeth clamped, the space between her eyebrows puckered into an angry ridge. It was Caroline’s go-to face when it came to fury and outrage. Lately, it felt as though it was the only expression she wore.

“No, this is crazy, just crazy. Goddammit. Of all the times, Lou . . .”

It was a wonder she still called him by his nickname. Lucas was keeping a mental tally of his full name in ratio to the shortened one, and the scales had definitely tipped toward the formal Lucas rather than the more affectionate Lou. When they had first met, Caroline had a penchant for calling him Louie, but that was a name that had altogether disappeared, and from the look of it, it was only a matter of time before Lou suffered the same fate. How she referred to him was his measuring stick, some quantifiable way of determining the health of their unhealthy relationship. For years, disenchantment and marital grievances had plagued their once-happy union. Now, that thing they called a marriage was on life support and Caroline’s hand seemed to be constantly itching to pull the plug. Less of a nihilist than his wife, Lucas was awaiting a miraculous recovery. He was holding his breath, his fingers crossed that he’d get the chance to rediscover the dark-humored girl he’d fallen for nearly twenty years before.

“So, you just want to uproot us?” Caroline turned and fixed her eyes on his. “Uproot Jeanie? Force her to give up all of her friends, her school?”

The loser of his wife’s staring contest, Lucas looked away first, peered down at his hands, swallowed. The hard wood of the kitchen bar stool was making his butt numb. The overhead lights struck him as too bright, spontaneously blazing hot like dying stars. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was walk out of the kitchen and forget he ever made the suggestion, but it was too late to pretend he could make things better by wishful thinking alone. Couldn’t Caroline see that? He was trying to fix things, not just for himself, but for the three of them as a whole. As a family. As something they used to be. Something he hoped they could be again.

“And what about me, huh?” He could hear the glare in her tone. What about her? He could still remember her as the once-upon-a-time girl who had stolen his heart, the girl who no longer dyed her hair black. They had once had things in common—a lifestyle of clubs and candles and incense smoke curling through dimly lit rooms. Now, pressed to compare the Caroline of before to the Caroline of now, he’d hardly recognize her at all. Blond. Proper. The owner of more than a couple of business suits and over a dozen pairs of high heels. And then there was her most severe transgression, the one he never had the balls to mention. “What about my job?” she asked, snapping his attention back to her. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve busted my ass to get to where I am?”

Lucas considered cutting her off, contemplated finally laying it all out and bringing up the always-dashing-and-never-ordinary Kurt Murphy. Oh really? Busting your ass? he thought. Or climbing up the ladder while lying on your back? No, he didn’t dare.

“Of course it matters.” He kept his head bowed and his eyes averted. Making eye contact with Caroline while she was in the throes of aggravation never made things better. That, and he didn’t want her to see it in his face—the fact that he knew about Kurt, that he’d known for a long time.

The last few weeks had made him certain; the way she came home late, always blaming the trains when a quick online confirmation proved they were running just fine. The way she avoided being in the same room as him for longer than a few seconds, as though afraid that occupying the same space would force them to interact with one another, would possibly coerce them into conversation or, God forbid, some sort of truce. The smell of a cologne he didn’t own, most likely too expensive for him to afford.

“Well, it obviously doesn’t matter much,” she countered. He peeked up at her, caught her narrowing her eyes at the granite counter. She shook her head as if suddenly overcome by a fresh bout of frustration. “You have some nerve.” Her eyes flashed, imploring him to give her one good reason, one good excuse as to why he’d throw them into such turmoil. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? It’s always about you.”

“It’s about us. About getting back to where we once were.” It was as close as he could come to saying what he meant.

Caroline went silent. Her expression became an odd mix of vulnerability and indignation. She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. The overhead light cast shadows that veiled her eyes. For a flash of a second, she looked like that once-upon-a-time girl, the one he so desperately missed. The floodlights caught the strawberry hue of her blond hair, the faint smattering of freckles God had sprinkled across her cheeks like cosmic constellations. He couldn’t maintain eye contact, not when she was glowering at him like that. Lucas turned his attention away.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

It meant everything; where they used to be financially before things went belly-up, and also as a couple, loving and laughing and happy rather than the way they were now—stray cats hissing and swatting at each other if one got too close. And then there was Kurt. But the way Caroline was standing right then, her arms crossed over her chest, peering down her nose, it made Lucas wonder if what used to be could ever be again. Sometimes people change, she’d once told him. There’s no going back. They’re different forever, a doppelgänger of their former self.

“I talked to John about it,” he said. “He thinks it’s a good idea.” Except that was a lie. Lucas’s literary agent, John Cormick, had stared out at him from across a manuscript-cluttered desk with a blank expression on his face. When Lucas opened his messenger bag and dug out the letter he’d received from Washington State’s maximum-security prison, John’s blank stare bloomed into disbelief. He’d snatched the letter out of Lucas’s hand and read it once, twice, three times for good measure while Lucas looked on with crushing anticipation. He could already see his agent’s reaction in his head; John would look up with eyes blazing, his face awash with a stunning sense of revelation. My God! he’d say. It’s like you’ve won the lottery, Lou. It’s like someone found Willy Wonka’s golden ticket and dropped it into your lap. But all John responded with was trepidation. Because the notorious Jeffrey Halcomb didn’t talk to reporters. And he certainly didn’t talk to two-bit crime writers who hadn’t had a hit in over a decade.

“Yeah, sure. John thinks everything is a good idea,” Caroline said. Her words were clipped, impatient. “You could tell him you’re thinking about writing a book on suicide, tell him you’re going to jump off a cliff for research, and John Cormick will say, ‘Wow, Lucas, that’s a great idea! Why don’t you do that and we’ll set up a call for next week, see how it all pans out.’ ”