Julian had wrapped it all, weighed it down, and sunk it in the deep end to get it out of sight.

He hadn’t been disposing of a body.

He’d been disposing of evidence.

I put my back against the corridor wall and let the relief go through me like cold water, and for about four seconds it was pure, and then it turned, because relief that Elena wasn’t in the pool is not the same as knowing where Elena is.

I keep coming back to those four seconds, because they taught me something about fear I hadn’t known.

I had spent hours standing at the bottom of the worst possibility — that my daughter’s mother was under that green water, that Maya had watched it happen, that I had walked my child past her own mother’s grave and told her not to look.