“So this is what closure feels like,” Digby says.

We’re standing on the grassy patch where his little sister, Sally, was buried nine years ago.

“Closure sucks,” Digby says. “Now what?”

He isn’t asking for suggestions. He is telling me something I already know. The search for the truth about what happened to his sister after her kidnapping had been the basis of so many of our arguments, so much of the hurt we’d dealt other people, all the times we’d broken the law, all the times we’d broken our bodies. I’d gone along because . . . Digby. He needed to find Sally. But now, for the first time in a long time, Digby doesn’t have an angle to play. He doesn’t have his next move planned.

“What did I expect, right? It’s like they say. The truth is almost always disappointing.” Digby turns to me. “But . . . now what? Other than me, talking in clichés.”

I watch him wrestle with his paralysis and I think about how different my priorities have become since I met Digby eight months ago. I’d first arrived in River Heights wanting nothing more than to make some friends and have some normal high school fun.

And I did that. I made friends. I even had a boyfriend. But I blew all that up because . . . Digby. And now, with a trail of bad blood and narrowly avoided felony charges behind me, I perversely find myself dreading the end of the crazy.

Because it really does look like it is game over. Sally Digby is dead.

I know it’s selfish to wonder, but what does this mean for Digby and me? As a wise woman once said, relationships that start under intense circumstances never last.

“This isn’t the time to think about what’s next,” I say, putting the shovel back in his hand. “Now we keep digging.”

We are about to get going again when a pair of flashlight beams comes out of the main house’s back door and bobs toward us.

“Do we run?” I say. The anguish on Digby’s face makes me wonder if he can survive a late-in-the-game plot twist.

But, as usual, I’m starting at the end.

So here it is. One last time, from the top. Meaning, we have to go back to the night of Kyle Mesmer’s lake house party.