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friends. This was not a new side to her—she was always trying to get a reaction, like a child poking at a sleeping dog with a stick. It was something she and Carly had in common, but when Audrey pried it was like chipping away at a wall; when Carly had been like this, it was as if she were throwing a stick of dynamite and waiting for the explosion.
    “I don’t blame you for wanting to believe it,” Audrey continued. “It’s human nature to go with the solution that suits us, to lock away the threat and try not to think about it ever again. But that’s not life . Life is messy.”
    “No kidding.”
    “I need you to believe me.”
    “Why? Why do you care what I believe?”
    “Because I want you to help me.”
    I leaned my head back. “God.”
    “What?”
    “Look, you do whatever you want, but I think it’s totally stupid to convince yourself that the truth is inconsequential if you don’t like it. So thanks for the invite, but I’m going to take a pass on the amateur sleuthing.”
    “You’re honestly telling me that if I’m right, if my dad is innocent and the real killer is out there somewhere, you’d rather my dad rot in prison while someone else gets away with murder?”
    I hesitated, my mind a whirlpool of possibilities. “We can’t do this, Audrey. We’re not cops, we’re just kids.”
    “I don’t know about you, but I stopped being a kid the night I found out my best friend was dead and my dad was about to go to prison. I’m not playing, Neily. This is not a game to me.” She shook her head. “And if I can’t convince you of that, then I won’t be able to convince anybody.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
    “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you cared about Carly.”
    “I did! I mean, I do.”
    “Then why won’t you help me?”
    “Because!” I shouted. She jumped, and I strained to keep it together. “Because if you’re right, and your father is innocent, and that message Carly left me the night before she died has something to do with it, then that means it’s all my fault.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I could’ve answered the phone, I could’ve listened to the message, but I didn’t. Not until it was too late. I was still angry, and I didn’t want anything to do with her. Every day I think about what might have happened if I had answered the phone or called her back right away. Part of me thinks she’d still be alive.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “It doesn’t matter what you, or I, or anyone knows. If we do this, if we dig everything back up again, all we’d be doing is tearing out our own stitches.”
    “Don’t you want to know for sure?”
    “I don’t think I do.”
    “Is this why you’re having nightmares?”
    I glared at her. “How do you know about that?”
    Audrey averted her eyes. “Harriet stepped out of the office for a minute during our session and I might have caught a glimpse of your file.”
    “Audrey, you’re such a bitch! That’s my private file. You had no right to look at it.”
    “It was sitting right there on her desk—how could I not? If you were me, you would’ve done the exact same thing, and you know it, so don’t give me that judgmental look.”
    She had a point. But I had another question.
    “Why are you doing this now? If you’re so sure your father’s innocent, why wait a year to start looking into it?”
    She pressed her lips together, taking a long pause before answering. “I didn’t believe him at first. As soon as I got over the shock of it all, I bought the DA’s story just like everybody else. But the longer I sat in that courtroom, the less sure I became, and when I went to see him last month I realized that I wasn’t angry at him anymore because I knew he hadn’t done it. He tried so hard to convince me, and I tried so hard to resist believing him, but I couldn’t keep it up.”
    She finally looked over at me. “I had to fight with Grandma and Grandpa to come back to Brighton. They