Stuck on Murder by Lucy Lawrence

thought for a moment that Nate gave a damn what anybody thought about him, but still, he should know.
    She sat on a kitchen stool and ran her fingertip along the grout groove in the tile, while she tried to figure out what to say.
    “Nate.” She said his name and then ran out of air.
    How exactly do you tell a person that people think he is a murderer? She was pretty sure Emily Post did not cover this one.
    “Yes?” He was pouring iced tea from a pitcher into two glasses on the counter. Then he took a lemon out of a nearby fruit bowl and sliced it into fat juicy wedges. He put one in each glass.
    “Um, are you aware . . . ?” she stalled again.
    “That everyone thinks I floated Ripley into the lake?” he asked. He put down the knife and ran a hand through his hair. Brenna noticed it stood up in spots, making him look younger than he was.
    “Well, yeah,” she said.
    “I figured,” he said with a shrug. He took a plastic bag out of a drawer and began to bag the rest of the lemon wedges. “When I was at the Park and Shop, I noticed it was a little frosty in there, and I wasn’t in the frozen food section.”
    Brenna smiled. She had to admire his unconcern, but then he had lived here longer. Maybe he didn’t feel the need to belong as much as she did.
    “It doesn’t bother you?” she asked.
    “Let me ask you this,” he said. He looked up from the bag of lemons and met her gaze. Again, she was aware of having his complete attention focused upon her. She felt as if the entire world could collapse around them and he wouldn’t even notice because he was so intent upon her. “Do you think I killed him?”
    “No, of course not!” she said.
    He looked away from her with a small smile. “Then no, it doesn’t matter to me what anyone else thinks.”
    She ducked her head, feeling flustered by his gaze and his words. She didn’t know what to make of his answer. Was he saying that he only cared what she thought? When she glanced back up at him, his face was inscrutable. How very annoying.
    “Now can I ask you something?” He put a glass of tea in front of her. “Something I’ve been wondering about for a while now.”
    “Sure,” she said. She was pleased that her voice sounded calmer than she felt.
    “Why did you move to Morse Point?” he asked.
    He came around the corner of the counter and sat on the stool beside her, his knee brushing hers. She watched him take a long sip of his tea and wondered if sleep deprivation was beginning to make her delirious, because this was not the Nate Williams she knew. The Nate Williams she had come to know over the past year shared a love of sweets and baseball with her, and they never deviated from those two topics. Ever.
    Then again, they had never shared the discovery of a dead body either, so perhaps this was normal. Not having shared the discovery of a dead body with anyone before, Brenna really couldn’t say.
    She did know that she was dangling on the ragged edge of exhaustion. Feeling like a frayed carpet, she didn’t have enough reserves to knit herself back to coherency. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to share about her past, so she decided the best defense was a good offense.
    “For the same reason as you, I imagine,” she said.
    “Really?” he asked. He turned to study her and his eyes were amused. “You found yourself the center of an art scene you no longer believed in with every sycophantic boot licker in town trying to chisel out a piece of your soul to sell to the highest bidder?”
    “Is that what happened to you?” she asked. Her voice was soft even to her own ears, as if she didn’t want to scare him off by saying the wrong thing.
    “Among other things,” he said. “Mostly, I woke up one day and saw a man in the mirror that I didn’t like very much, so I knew it was time to make a change.”
    Ah, so there was more. Brenna considered her words carefully. Obviously, they weren’t going for full disclosure here, but it was the first