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She had to rally, get back on her feet. Lucy had been telling herself that for four days—the exact length of time Ford had
been gone. But if the police wouldn’t respect anything she found regarding the murders, wouldn’t so much as look at it, what
was the point? She’d been crazy to think she’d be able to make a difference here. She was just one person, and she didn’t
have any power—certainly not enough to overcome all the forces against her. And letting herself fall in love with Ford again
had been so foolish.
She kept checking her phone, hoping he’d call or text her—if only to check in. But she knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t . He’d gone back to Christina, had to be true to her—and he would be, despite anything he might want.
Lucy hoped going back to his former life would be worth it to him; she also hoped that his child would one day realize he’d
made an incredible sacrifice—one that’d cost her a great deal, too. But, of course, that was just her broken heart talking.
Ford’s son or daughter would never know, and that was how it should be.
She finally managed to get out of bed, but it took great effort. She dressed—something else to be proud of. Then she walked to the beach. Taken together, those three things were far more than she’d been able to accomplish since Ford had walked out the door. She thought she was going to be able to bounce back. But as she stood there, staring out at the roiling waves, what she saw was Ford laughing as they wrestled in the water, swam or shared their body heat while he held her in his arms.
Turning, she glanced back at Coastal Comfort and thought she saw someone standing on the deck looking back at her. Her heart
leaped in her chest—but then she realized it wasn’t Ford. It was Houston. For some reason, he was still in town. Maybe he
was gloating.
He’d won, and he knew it.
The next day, a knock on the door woke Lucy. It shouldn’t have; it was nearly two in the afternoon and most people had been
up for hours. But she’d received a message from Friedman after she got back from the beach yesterday, indicating that he hadn’t
been able to get a hit via CODIS so he still didn’t have any idea whose DNA was discovered in the sink at the Matteos’. His
news, together with that sighting of Houston, had sent her back to bed.
She hadn’t eaten much in the past few days, but she didn’t seem to be hungry. All she wanted to do was sleep—although she
woke up every now and then and cried until she fell asleep again. She told herself she was being a big baby. She had no doubt
that was true. But it was hard to care. Suddenly, she didn’t care about anything .
Missy would be horrified, she thought distantly as she roused herself. If Missy knew, she’d probably take time off work to
come to North Hampton Beach and drag Lucy out of bed, make her start living again. Lucy’d had to do that for Missy when her
mother died, but—
The knock came again, loud enough to be heard over the fan churning in the corner of the room. Was Missy at the door? Had she traveled all the way from Vegas?
Lucy forced herself to get out of bed, then had to steady herself by putting one hand to the wall. She hadn’t checked her
phone since she’d gotten Friedman’s message yesterday afternoon—had given up hope of hearing from Ford—but there were a few,
possibly several , texts from Missy she hadn’t answered since Ford left. Her friend could easily be worried about her.
Whoever was at the door didn’t seem to be going away. He or she knocked again and again—determined, insistent enough to force
Lucy to action.
Lucy took one look in the mirror and groaned when she saw her wild hair, which hadn’t been washed recently, and the lines
on her face from being pressed into the pillow. Maybe she should ignore whoever it was, regardless.
Except... if it was Missy, she couldn’t. Missy would just keep knocking or find a way to get in, which wouldn’t be hard
with all the windows open.
But if it was someone else...
She didn’t want to talk to anyone else.
Lucy almost allowed herself to fall back onto the bed. But a niggle of curiosity made her change her mind.
Shoving the hair out of her face, she straightened her wrinkled tank top and pulled on the shorts she’d left on the rug before
trudging to the door. “Who is it?” she called out when she got there.
“Dahlia.”
Her landlord. She glanced behind her to assess the state of the house. But since Ford left, she hadn’t been in the kitchen
or living room to make much of a mess. It was probably fine to let her in.
Mustering what she could of her resolve—she felt so weak it took an effort just to move—she opened the door. “Hey.”
Dahlia wrinkled her nose at the sight of her. “It’s that bad, huh?”
Lucy wiped the sweat already beading on her upper lip. “I—I haven’t been feeling well. I must’ve picked up a bug or something.”
“Or something ,” she said emphatically. “When I heard Houston laughing with Kevin Claxton a few days ago while I was working at the bar,
saying something about Ford going back to DC and leaving you on your own—and how that meant you wouldn’t get anywhere—I had
a feeling you might not be in the best headspace.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, making an attempt to untangle her hair with her fingers. “I expected Ford to leave. Eventually,”
she added.
Dahlia gestured at the yard. “Lucy, a man doesn’t do all this—to a place he doesn’t even own—for just anyone.”
Tears suddenly moistened Lucy’s eyes. She cursed herself for being unable to hide her pain. The emotion embarrassed her, but
there was no hiding it. All she could do was try to blink them back.
A compassionate smile curved Dahlia’s lips. “He cares about you.”
“He cares about his wife and baby,” she said. “As he should.”
Dahlia lifted the brown paper sack she was carrying. “He called me a few days ago, asked me to get this for you.”
Lucy took it and peered inside. “Why would I want an empty beer can?”
“Because it’s not just an empty beer can. Reggie came into the bar last night.” She made a face. “He comes in far too often.”
Lucy felt her eyes widen as she looked up from the sack. “He drank this beer?”
“He did. Then he left the can, but instead of throwing it away, I saved it for you.”
The can should contain Reggie’s DNA, Lucy realized, which meant she could have Friedman test the blood found in the sink of the Matteos’ trailer against this sample. “Thank you,” she said, feeling more relief than had in days. “I—I really appreciate it.”
Dahlia leaned closer and spoke conspiratorially. “You’re going to be okay, Lucy. You’ve scaled much bigger mountains than
this one.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope it makes a difference,” she said and left.
Lucy watched as she climbed into her car and drove off. Then she closed the door and peered into the sack again. Dahlia was
right. She couldn’t give up. She had to keep fighting—and she was going to start by getting this can in the mail to Friedman.
Lucy had showered, carefully wrapped the beer can and taken it to the post office, eaten and then cleaned the kitchen. The
sun was going down as she sat at the dining table in front of her computer, but she was feeling better, more like herself.
She just couldn’t think about Ford, not without a terrible wave of sadness washing over her.
Doggedly pushing him out of her mind whenever he came into it, she tried to concentrate on what she’d been reading. When she’d
called Friedman to tell him she’d be mailing him a can that should contain Reggie Burton’s DNA, he’d assured her he’d get
it tested. When she’d said she wasn’t convinced it would help even if the samples matched, given the fact that her father’s
DNA had been found under Tony Matteo’s fingernails, he’d mentioned that he’d been looking into something called “transfer”
DNA. He referenced studies that’d been done in which two people shook hands before one of them handled a knife, then the knife
was tested for DNA. In 85 percent of the cases, they found DNA from the person who’d never touched it. And in 20 percent,
they found more DNA from the person who hadn’t touched it than from the person who had!
The challenge they faced with the Matteo case, Friedman had explained, was that her father’s DNA had been found under Tony’s fingernails, making it look as though the two men had been up close and personal—as they would’ve been if Tony had tried to ward off an attack. Also, Mick couldn’t prove he hadn’t been in the trailer that night. In a lot of cases where transfer DNA pointed to the wrong person, something else—a cell phone,
for example—could be used to refute the DNA findings by placing the suspect miles and miles away. Mick’s phone had placed
him in the area—not surprising since they’d lived only a stone’s throw away from the Matteos, but also not proof that he hadn’t
been the one to harm them.
It was the fact that the police had found such a tiny amount of DNA under Tony’s fingernails—just a trace—that’d gotten Friedman
thinking about transfer DNA. He told Lucy not to get too excited, said it was a long shot, but if they could find a credible
transfer mechanism and the source of the blood DNA, they might be able to get the Innocence Project, or another organization like it, to take up
her father’s case.
The fact that she wouldn’t have to rely on Chief Claxton to act on anything they found made a huge difference on the way Lucy
felt. Because he’d been so resistant, so unwilling to even listen to her—or Ford—she’d lost hope.
But if she didn’t need Claxton to listen...
The more she read about transfer DNA, the more convinced she became that it was, indeed, a possibility. There were several
cases where transfer DNA had pointed police in the wrong direction. So what could her father have touched that Tony Matteo
had also touched before he died?
After reading about a case in which a homeless man’s DNA was found at a crime scene involving a wealthy man who was murdered
ten miles away, Lucy got even more excited. The homeless man’s DNA was under the victim’s fingernails , and yet he’d spent the night in a hospital, couldn’t have murdered the victim. It turned out that the suspect had been picked up by the same paramedics who’d responded to the homicide victim an hour later—and used the same equipment, including the finger clamp that checked heartrate. The article claimed that transfer DNA was challenging DNA as the “gold standard” when it came to evidence.
“What could both men have touched?” she asked herself as she checked her inbox. In their recent phone call, she’d asked Friedman
to email her the crime scene photos so she could examine them for possibilities. At seventeen, she’d tried hard not to look
at the pictures presented in court. But now, she wanted to see exactly what’d been in the Matteos’ trailer that night.
Sure enough, Friedman’s email was waiting for her. After taking a long, bolstering breath, she clicked on the attachment and
nearly vomited when she saw the people she’d loved sprawled out and covered in blood on the floor. She hated whoever had done
this to them—including her father, if it was him. But she no longer believed it was. She had to find the real killer for their
sakes as well as his.
Studying the first picture, she shifted her gaze beyond Tony’s body and scanned what she could see of the rest of the room.
Whoever had broken in and killed the Matteos had meant to rob them—but when everything went badly, the perpetrator had panicked
and run out empty-handed. Or so the CA had posited in court. After learning about the baseball card collection that’d come
into Reggie’s possession, however, Lucy believed something had been taken. Reggie had stolen the collection that Tony had meant for her.
Other than the mess, there was nothing unusual she could see, nothing in the picture that might’ve transferred her father’s
DNA to Tony. The same went for the second, third and fourth pictures. She looked through all of them and couldn’t find anything.
In case she’d been focusing on the wrong things, she started over.
Again, there was nothing in picture number one. Nothing in picture two. Nothing in picture three.
As she grew more and more discouraged, she started to believe she’d forced herself to go through this painful exercise for
nothing. But then her eyes landed on something so small and insignificant she’d missed it before. There was a pair of fingernail
clippers on the small table near Tony’s recliner—and seeing them suddenly evoked a memory. Only a few days before Tony was
killed, he’d asked her to go to the store to get him a pair of clippers. But she hadn’t had time.
So she’d run home and grabbed her father’s.
The police had not come by. And Ford had left town. Chet could not believe how fortunate he was. It seemed no one at NHBPD
was taking Lucy and her claims seriously. Also, the investigator Ford had hired had never come to visit the area and didn’t
seem to be playing much of a role. He probably wouldn’t now that Ford was out of the picture. It seemed the summer would play
out just as it had the past week, with no new developments. Lucy would leave at the end of August, and that would be that.
Chet regretted telling Kira about the boat and the texts Stephanie Beaumont had received from Aurora now that he realized
he hadn’t needed to. She’d been unusually reserved ever since. Occasionally, he’d catch her watching him with a worried expression,
as if she was wondering whether she really knew him. In those moments, when he looked up and caught her eye, she’d smile,
but there was something about her that made him uneasy.
It was nothing to be concerned about, he told himself. Things would slowly go back to normal, day by day, as they fell into the same old summer routine and enjoyed each other and their child. They were happy; there was nothing to come between them now. But he was glad that he and Kira continued to visit North Hampton Beach. It was important he’d been here this summer in particular. Being part of the community had allowed him to stay informed so he could continue to safeguard the secret that, if it got out, would ruin his life and shock everyone who knew him.
He was in his studio painting while Kira was out in the garden. She had Kenzie in a backpack carrier, and Eddie was with her,
too, sniffing the trees and marking the yard. Chet was so relieved to have everything returning to normal that it was hard
to do anything more than sit and stare out the window at the gorgeous blue sky, lush green trees and what he could see of
the river through the leaves. He also liked admiring his beautiful wife as she carried Kenzie about the tomato plants she’d
put in when they first arrived, weeding and checking for pests.
She was such a kind and peaceful soul. She wouldn’t give him any trouble. Even if she suspected there was more to the story
than he was telling her, she’d stick with him for Kenzie’s sake, and that would give him the chance to prove, once again,
that he was the good guy she thought he was.
His phone was nearby. Setting his paintbrush aside, he picked it up and texted Ford:
I hear you’ve left NHB. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.
Something came up , Ford responded. But it was great to see you while I was there.
He considered saying, “I know you’re worried about Lucy. I’ll look out for her, and if your investigator finds something he
needs me to follow up on, I’d be happy to help.” That way, Ford might keep him abreast of the investigation—if it was ongoing.
But since Chet hadn’t been very supportive of Lucy so far, he was afraid such an approach would be too obvious a change.
He was still deliberating when he glanced out the window again and saw something that caused his heart to slam against his chest. Eddie had somehow managed to dig up the stuff he’d buried that terrible night everything had gone so wrong with Aurora. The dog had her wallet in his teeth and was bounding over to Kira with it.
Was he really seeing what he thought he saw? What, in God’s name, had caused Eddie to dig in that particular spot, especially
after so long? He wasn’t the kind of dog who did much digging; Chet had never dreamed something like this could happen. He’d
buried that stuff so long ago it’d never even crossed his mind.
Struck with horror, he was absolutely immobilized as he watched his wife open it and remove Aurora’s ID. He knew exactly what
she was thinking as if he could hear her thoughts. “What’s this?”
The second she realized, it’d be too late. But it all happened so fast. Too fast. He saw her fall to the ground and barely
catch herself before landing on Kenzie, who started to cry. Then she pressed a hand to her chest as if she was having trouble
breathing—so was he—and braced Kenzie and herself with one arm as she twisted her head to look up at the window of his studio.
Although she probably couldn’t see anything more than the sun glinting off the glass, it felt as if their eyes met—his filled
with guilt and terror and hers wide with accusation and betrayal.
Belatedly, his panic-stricken mind urged him to get to her as fast as possible. He wanted to run out there and reassure her,
to tell her he had no idea how that stuff had come to be buried in the yard of the home where he’d spent most of his summers.
But he’d also have to contend with what she already knew about the boat and those texts, which—taken all together—wouldn’t
be easy to overcome.
Still, he was determined to try. He had to try. But it felt like he could only run in slow motion. His legs were rubbery and so unwieldy he stumbled and fell down
the last few stairs, banging his knee into the hardwood floor as he landed and sending a sharp pain up his thigh.
It took a moment to overcome the shock of it, but he managed to come to his feet and limp through the dining room. But by the time he reached the door going out to the patio, he was hyperventilating. He grabbed hold of the handle and jerked, only to find it was locked. Kira used the mudroom off the kitchen to go in and out. That would be open. But he’d stupidly chosen the closest door, which meant he had to take the time to remove the stick securing
the slider even after he’d unlocked it.
By the time he managed to get the damn door open, he was so eager to get outside he nearly tumbled into the yard. This time,
he managed to catch himself, but his hip glanced off the sharp corner of the barbecue shelf, which caused a burning sensation.
Ignoring that, too, he ran for the open yard and the garden beyond. He had to get to her. To explain. To stop her from knowing .
But it was too late. Even with Kenzie on her back, his strong, athletic wife had managed to get out of the yard. She’d dropped
her phone on the way, evidence of her panic, but she’d taken Aurora’s wallet. Only Eddie came back to him when he called out.
The dog had Aurora’s bra in his mouth and was wagging his tail excitedly as if he’d done a good thing for his master.
“Oh, my God,” Chet muttered, clutching at his chest as that dirty scrap of fabric brought back memories he could no longer
hold at bay. “Oh, my God. My life’s over.”
Part of him insisted that it wasn’t too late, that it couldn’t be. Kira loved him. She’d understand, help him.
Trying to overcome his physiological reaction so he could both move and think, he started to go after her. But by the time
he made it through the side gate, which she’d left hanging open in her haste, he couldn’t tell where she’d gone. Either she
was hiding, or she’d disappeared inside a neighbor’s house.
“Kira? It’s not what you think!” he yelled. But there was no answer and no movement around him, except for a car that rolled leisurely by as if the world wasn’t falling apart and Eddie, who’d dropped Aurora’s bra on the grass and was jumping up on him, too focused on trying to get his attention to follow her.
Lucy hadn’t been able to reach Friedman, but she’d left him a message and was waiting for him to call back. She was so shocked
by what she’d seen in that crime scene photo and what it signified, and so anxious to talk to him, she was once again up on
her feet, pacing across the living room. But thanks to the unusually hot summer, it was quickly growing stifling inside the
house, especially as the afternoon wore on. Being agitated didn’t help.
Unable to bear the heat any longer, she took her phone and headed out the back door to run down the path to the beach.
The air coming off the ocean was almost always cooler, and that proved true today. Drawing a deep breath, she tilted her head
back as the breeze washed over her moist skin. She wished she could dive into the waves. But she wasn’t about to risk missing
Friedman’s call. She was certain she now knew how her father’s DNA had come to be under Tony Matteo’s fingernails. At seventeen,
when her father had been charged with the murders, she hadn’t made the connection, hadn’t even thought of those clippers.
She was fairly certain the concept of “transfer DNA” hadn’t existed back then. Certainly, it hadn’t come up in court. From
what she could remember, the fact that DNA evidence could lead to false convictions hadn’t been well-known.
Her poor father! He didn’t commit the Matteo murders. He didn’t strangle Aurora, either—wasn’t even by the river that night.
His greatest sin was being an alcoholic, and someone who wasn’t considered important in the community, which made him easy
to blame. No one in North Hampton Beach really knew him because he didn’t allow people to get close, and no one respected
him, so no one cared.
If the DNA in the sink matched Reggie’s, Lucy felt they’d have the real culprit. Aggressive and prone to violence, he had a history of breaking the law. And yet he was the one still walking around North Hampton Beach while her father rotted in prison. Everyone had abandoned Mick, including her. She’d had to let go to survive, had barely made it through that terrible time herself. That her father had cut her off because he thought it would be the best thing for her brought tears to her eyes. He’d pushed her away from him so he wouldn’t drag her down with him—so she’d have a better chance of establishing a fulfilling future. That proved he’d loved her, and he’d deserved to have others love him.
She started down the path that would lead her back to the house feeling terrible that she hadn’t stood by him. But she was
older and stronger now—had finally beaten the uncertainty that’d held her back—and was determined to get him released.
She was about to step onto the back porch when Chief Claxton came around the corner, startling her. “There you are,” he said.
“I knocked, but no one answered even though your car’s in the drive. I thought you might be back here.”
He was the chief of police, but Lucy didn’t know if she could fully trust him. Just in case, she stopped several feet away.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, tentatively.
“I just came by to apologize.”
She felt her eyebrows slide up. This certainly wasn’t like him. “For...”
“For not listening and being more open-minded about some of the things you’ve been trying to tell me. Kira Anthony has come
forward with compelling evidence that suggests her husband, Chet, is the one who killed Aurora Clark.”
Visions of what Aurora’s last night must’ve been like caused Lucy to sink onto the porch step. She would’ve trusted Chet enough to leave the party with him herself. Chet had been totally infatuated with Aurora. Lucy had said as much to Ford; she’d said that violent crimes were often perpetrated by someone who felt passionate about his or her victim. But how could Chet do such a thing? At that age? And how could he let someone else take the blame?
“That must’ve been very difficult for Kira.”
“The hardest thing she’s ever had to do, I’m sure.”
The fact that she’d had the strength and integrity made Lucy eternally grateful. “I hate what it’s going to cost her.”
“She said she had no choice. She couldn’t continue to live with a man who was hiding such a dark secret. She said it would’ve
destroyed her, made her feel complicit. She also said she owed it to Kenzie to get them both out right away.”
“So Chet’s already in custody?”
“Not yet. But we’re looking for him.”
“He’s on the run?”
He scowled. “We don’t know that. We just haven’t been able to pick him up yet. He wasn’t at home.”
“Where’s Kira?”
“She’s at the house with a couple of officers, packing up. She’s planning to take Kenzie and Eddie home to her parents in
Baltimore, where they’ll stay until she’s ready to face rebuilding her life without Chet.”
Lucy didn’t envy her the next few years. Yet another life had been destroyed because of that long-ago summer. “So what will
this mean for my father?”
“In what regard?”
The question was rather disingenuous; he had to know what she was referring to. “This will overturn his conviction, right?”
“For Aurora’s murder, yes. But he’ll still spend the rest of his life in prison, Lucy. He killed the Matteos. I know you don’t
want to believe that, but nothing has changed there. The evidence still points to him.”
Lifting her chin, she stood once more. “That’s what you said about Aurora.”
“I did. I realize that and I’m here to admit I was wrong. But the Matteos are different. There’s solid DNA evidence in their case.”
“DNA that got where it was because of a pair of fingernail clippers I lent Tony that belonged to my father.”
“You’ve never said that before.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever taken a close look at the crime scene photos. The investigator Ford hired sent them to me,
and once I saw them up close, was able to really study them, I realized.”
His face turned so stony it could’ve been chiseled out of granite. He certainly didn’t want her to prove that his department
had been wrong about both of the most important cases they’d ever investigated. That would be quite a dismal track record. “Enough, Lucy!”
“It’s not enough,” she said. “Reggie Burton killed the Matteos. It wasn’t my father.”
“You got lucky! A dog dug up key evidence. The same thing won’t happen twice.”
She’d established what she’d hoped to establish when she came here. The truth of Aurora’s murder had come out, clearing her
own name along with her father’s. No doubt Claxton had expected her to be satisfied. “You never know,” she said, thinking
of the beer can she’d sent Friedman.
Her phone rang; she looked down to see that the investigator was finally calling her back. “I have to take this,” she said
and thanked him for coming before opening the screen door.