CROUCHED BENEATH MR. MATTHEWS’S WINDOW, I was starting to wish I hadn’t come. It was becoming harder and harder to remember what I thought I’d find, watching him like this. To believe that peering into his window, listening to him talk to his cat, would actually accomplish anything.

It had been two days since I’d gone to the police station and talked to the chief. I’d heard nothing from him since, and while I’d held out hope at first that maybe he’d just gotten busy, I was steadily reaching the realization that the call wasn’t going to come. I felt foolish now for going. Felt foolish for being here, underneath Mr. Matthews’s window.

To make matters worse, my left leg had begun cramping up. The best way to get the cramp to pass would be to get up and move around. Still, unobservant as Mr. Matthews was, I thought my prancing around his backyard might draw his attention. So I stayed put, quietly massaging my calf muscles.

Mr. Matthews had been a little off this evening. For one thing, he’d let his tea brew for too long. He hadn’t set the alarm, so it had been steeping for at least ten minutes. He hadn’t gotten anything to eat either, just sat there with his tea steeping, cradling his phone, as if willing it to ring or gathering his strength to make a call. I’d seen him make calls twice before. They’d been polite, restrained conversations, one about a delayed package and the other about rescheduling a doctor’s appointment, and neither of them involved this kind of indecision.

Finally, he began to dial.

He hesitated for a few seconds before pressing the final number.

Nothing happened for a long time. Then he twitched and tightened his grip on the phone.

“Don’t hang up,” he said. “Please don’t hang up.”

I straightened and leaned closer to the window, momentarily forgetting the throbbing pain in my calf.

He opened his mouth and his shoulders fell. “I know. I know. I wanted—” The words came out crowded together, apologetic.

I strained to hear the other side of the line, but it was too quiet to make out.

“No, I don’t think anyone knows anything.”

He turned his mouth closer to the phone and turned, making it difficult to hear everything he said.

“—promised not to tell—”

He began to shake his head vigorously.

“How can you say that? You know it wasn’t like that.”

“Of course I lied about that night.”

“Of course the school wouldn’t have liked it—I know that. They don’t like anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow-minded understanding of how life should be.”

His free hand froze beside his head, palm up, as if beseeching an invisible audience.

“Why don’t you understand why I feel like this? I can’t talk to anyone, can’t explain….”

He slumped down on the couch, his voice low, his eyes closed. “Don’t. I cared about that girl. You know that. But—”

I stayed stock-still, not breathing.

Then, right before he hung up the phone and put his head in his hands, before he sat motionless, devastated, it came—what I had both wanted and not wanted for so very long:

“Anna’s death changed everything.”