The soundless vacuum of Ciar's sobs haunted me the whole way home, filling my mind and my lungs and my heart until I had no room left to dwell on Clarissa's lies.

He'd watched Tilda kill herself. He'd seen her jump. The woman he loved, tipping off the Tobin like I'd wanted to fall off the Golden Gate Bridge the night Mark had stopped me. Maybe Ciar had tried, maybe he'd made a grab for her as she fell.

But he had failed. She was gone.

Had she said anything? Given him a tiny smile before she went? Had she even known he was there?

Had she cared?

His haste to jump into the lake after me so many weeks ago made perfect sense now.

If I really stopped to think about it, I was an idiot. When the police had called me to say she'd washed up on the shores of the Mystic, I hadn't questioned how they knew she'd jumped from the Tobin Bridge. Its name alone had completely driven everything else from my mind, turning it into a beacon.

As I pulled up to my apartment, I threw a glance at the SUV surreptitiously parked in the neighboring driveway. The outline vaguely visible behind the tinted windows was male. Where was Clarissa? Researching the women I'd thrown through her window? Or following me around Boston?

It didn't matter, because when I climbed out of my car, someone else was already standing in the driveway.

Tall, blond-haired, and with the sun backlighting his silhouette, I couldn't make out the finer details of his face. My heart hammered as my thoughts bolted out of control, stampeding in an ever-increasing cycle of Mark? Donovan? Mark...no, Donovan.

Who do I want it to be?

Neither of them, and both of them, really.

I wanted Mark to still care, but I also never wanted to see his face again since he couldn't even be bothered to answer when I called.

I wanted to face Donovan and tell him I knew him, all of him, the ugly bits and the betrayal. But I also knew that if I wanted to find out the truth about the missing women, I couldn't say a word.

Tilda may have really fallen victim to suicide, but the others still deserved justice. And I couldn't deny the possibility that, while Donovan might not have pushed my sister off that bridge, he'd probably played a part in driving her there.

Either way, I hated him.

And yet, when I got close enough that the house blocked the sun and I recognized him, the first thing that jumped out of my mouth was, "Where have you been?"

Idiot. Stupid, stupid Maisye.

Then: Maybe it's not stupid. He needs to think I still need him.

He cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

I hated how easily the answer came to me. "I mean that I haven't heard a word from you since you showed me the...the locked room"—I couldn't bring myself to call it a nursery—"and do you even have any idea what's happened since then? I got arrested! They think I killed someone!"

"Shh. Hey." He reached for me, and I took a step back. "It's okay. I know. We'll figure it out."

"You knew?"

"Of course." He stood there, his arms outstretched as he waited for me to come back to him. "I know people on the force. They know we're—that we know each other."

They know we're what? Did you show them a tape of me, too?

I bit my tongue before the question could escape. "You knew and you didn't come back?"

"I'm sorry. I wanted to. I had business—"

"What is your business?" I interrupted, hugging myself instead of letting him do it.

His arms finally fell to his sides. "What?"

"What is your business?" I repeated, more aggressively this time. I couldn't be angry at him for the worst of his sins, so I'd picked a smaller one to blow out of proportion. Besides, Clarissa wanted to know what that business was. If I got him to admit it, would that count toward her evidence?

"It's nothing important," he tried to reassure me.

"Unimportant enough to think someone broke into the cabin in Provincetown because of it?"

His mouth opened, then closed. "That was Ciar," he finally said.

"I'm not sure if I believe that."

He didn't respond.

"How did you get into my apartment the other day?" I demanded.

His mouth settled into a line. "What are you really asking?"

Are you the monster the FBI thinks you are? Did you really know there were cameras in the garage?

"Did you frame him?"

He frowned.

"Was it you in the cabin?" I added.

"I think we should go inside," he said quietly.

"Will you tell me then?"

He nodded.

With one last wary look, I led the way up the steps. I considered stepping aside at the door and telling him to go ahead and let himself in like he had a few days ago, but thought better of jeopardizing my chance at the truth.

Or death. Whatever came when I decided to question his motives. He wanted me to be Tilda, and surely this wasn't how she would have acted.

Then again, I thought, maybe it is. She was hanging out with the FBI, too.

Did he know? The Fiat had been at the garage, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been driving the one that flew past the house. And if that was the case, he'd seen me leaning through Clarissa's window...

I set my jaw and unlocked the door. Donovan followed closely behind, and I swung around as he closed it and then stood with his hand on the knob, his back to me as he seemed to consider something.

Finally he turned his head, his profile not quite as rough-hewn as Ciar's. "You're the mole, aren't you?"

I'd been halfway through tossing my keys on the counter, but they fell to the floor with a clatter. Tilda's knickknacks splayed out on the cheap wood like a warning.

He turned to me, and if I'd ever thought Ciar was the frightening brother, I'd been horribly, horribly wrong. Donovan's eyes crackled with electricity, and not the exciting, breathless, chemical kind that had sparked between us at the start. The thunderous, wrath-of-the-gods kind that zigzagged from the clouds to the earth with terrifying power.

And yet his voice remained steady, almost calm as he spoke again. "Was there ever really anyone else in the cabin, Maisye?"

"Yes!" I burst out, but the hand he held up silenced me immediately.

"Because I think it was your piece of tech in the bedroom. I think you did eventually find your underwear, although 'losing' them was a convenient excuse when they ended up in Ciar's car. You're a very convincing actress."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out under his blazing stare.

"I just can't tell what's real to you," he murmured.

Everything. Nothing. I don't know.

"Someone was there," I said, stalling on the part about being a spy. "Just like someone was in your house, and my apartment, multiple times. I'm not imagining things."

"Are you sure?"

I stared at him. It was the same question the police officer had asked me in that interrogation room. Are you sure? Like they all knew something I didn't—knew the truth—and they were just waiting for me to acknowledge it.

"What are they offering you?" he asked, his tone shifting abruptly. I stood rooted to the spot, every muscle screaming at me to run as he moved closer. "It's the FBI, right? What are they giving you?"

I remembered asking Clarissa the same thing back in New York City. That conversation seemed a lifetime away, and in a way it was; it existed in Maisye's lifetime, and somewhere along the way I'd crossed into Tilda's instead. Those memories shimmered like a mirage, flickering on the horizon, ready to disappear at any second.

"Maisye, I don't want this to end," Donovan whispered. "What did they offer you? I'll double it. I need you."

My eyes snapped to his face. He didn't want to kill me? Or did "I need you" mean "I need you to trust me so I can drive you out into a cornfield and murder you"?

"Closure," I said.

He tilted his head back, wariness creeping back into his stance. He wanted me to say money. He wanted something easy, something he could whip out a checkbook and outdo.

Fancy things didn't matter. My sister did. He of all people should have known that.

"Closure?" he echoed. "What does 'closure' mean to you, Maisye?"

My name sounded foreign on his tongue, and at that moment I realized how few times he'd actually called me by it. Almost as many times as he'd called me by Tilda's, and that fact hit me like a swift punch to the gut.

I'd known I was Tilda to him. I just hadn't stopped to think how far he tried to bend reality every time we were together. Avoiding my name so it wouldn't shatter his illusion...

I didn't know if I should be afraid now that he was using it again. I wasn't special anymore.

"It's..." I trailed off. Back then, closure had meant finding out if Tilda had been murdered. I'd done that today, and the answer was no. So what did that leave?

"It's knowing her life here. Hearing stories about her, reminiscing with the people who loved her. I want to know the good and the bad. I just want to know the truth."

"Then I'm the only person who can give you what you want." He gave a tiny, helpless shrug. "How better to know her life than to live it?"

I heard his offer. A second chance to be her. A do-over. We could erase this moment, pretend like it never happened and move on.

I thought of him on that first night, whispering "Tillie?" into the wind as if he'd seen a ghost. Could I live with being a spirit? A hollow imprint of a once-living soul, stuck between two worlds and never quite able to stay in either?

Monica Jensen. Amanda Blecher. Crystal Harris. Valerie Kunath. Even if he hadn't killed Tilda, he still had some connection to those four women. They deserved the truth, too.

If I stayed, I could find it.

Or I could end up like them.

"I'll let you think about it," he said, bowing his head as he turned back toward the door.