But the emails kept coming. Each one a scalpel, peeling back the years. “You told the police she was calm. But she wasn’t, was she?” “You remember the door slamming. But it didn’t.” “You’ve always been good at shaping memories, Jane. Even your own.”

The investigation took four months. They never found Lila’s body. But they found a witness—a neighbor who’d seen a woman matching Jane’s description loading a large trunk into her car the morning after the party. Jane had no memory of that. But memory, she’d taught for decades, was never a recording. It was a story. And some stories were built on silence.

And somewhere, in the hollow of that missing memory, Jane White wonders if that’s exactly where she belongs.

Just doubt. Quiet, endless, justifiable doubt.

Jane did something she’d never done before: she doubted herself.

Jane sat on the cold concrete floor and wept. Not because she remembered. But because she didn't. And that was the most terrifying doubt of all.