This Story Might Save Your Life(94)

The baby-faced detective rises from the sofa to hand me my water jug. “You do know hitchhiking is dangerous.”

I adjust the bendy straw. “Not any more dangerous than staying with Xander.”

He returns to his seat.

“And your driver?” Keller asks again. “Any distinguishing details you can remember will help.”

I take a sip, pretending to think. “She was white. My age, give or take ten years. Brown hair. Silver car. If that helps.”

Keller’s expression tells me that it does not. “When did you realize people were looking for you?”

“Four days in.”

“Tell me what happened then.”

The detective failed to hide her skepticism on the last go around, so I add in a few extra details this time. “I met a woman named Mitali that night, right before I learned Xander was dead. After I saw the headlines, I ran back to my room to be sick, and then I fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until Mitali came to visit me the next morning. I was in bad shape, so she offered to reach out to Benny for me. To let him know where I was.”

“Only, she didn’t do that, did she?”

“No.”

“Because…?” She wants me to say it again.

“Because she never actually visited me in my room.” I stifle a sigh. “She’d left the shelter that morning.”

Keller looks like she’s trying to rein in her skepticism, but it’s clearly a struggle. “These hallucinations … you say they’re common in narcolepsy.”

I nod.

“So then wouldn’t it have occurred to you to wonder at some point if that was what was happening?”

“Under typical circumstances, yes,” I say, probably too defensively. Typically, I can trust my environment to help me parse the truth. I might witness the shattering of a window only to wake and discover it perfectly intact. Or I’ll see a stranger in the corner of my room—and not just see him, but smell him, hear him, feel the shift in the air—only to understand the moment I find Potsie sleeping peacefully at my feet that no one was ever there. That it was all in my head.

But I didn’t have Potsie with me at the shelter, and this— “This was like a fever dream. I never had time to second-guess before dreams and hallucinations overlapped. If Frankie and Gloria hadn’t seen her leave Sunday morning, I would swear on my life Mitali had been in my room. She tried to give me a bowl of soup. We had whole conversations.” I rub my burning eyes. “You have to understand, I was extremely unwell. My meds were off. Everything was going wrong in my body. And then I learned Xander was dead. I think I just really needed to believe that Mitali was helping. Until I realized maybe she wasn’t.”

“But that took you two days. In all that time, you never once…”

I open my eyes. I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep.

Keller exchanges a glance with Baby Face. “In all that time, you never once suspected these conversations were only in your head?”

I get it. I don’t like it any more than she does. But instead of admitting this, I meet her unblinking stare and say, “It makes sense now. After we met at the computers, I only ever saw her in my room. I was always in and out of sleep, always glued to the bed. But none of that felt odd at the time, given the circumstances.”

Keller consults her notes again. Turns the page. I’m relieved to see she’s moving on. “You said this was your first time at the shelter.”

I nod.

“But this was not the first time Xander hurt you.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t think…” My voice breaks. I try again. “I didn’t think I needed a shelter until I realized I needed a shelter. If that makes sense.”

Her eyes soften. She nods. “Do you have any idea why Xander might’ve been driving through Angeles National Forest that night?”

“That was something he did,” I explain. “When we fought. He cooled down with a long drive. He loved that stupid MG.”

“Did he always have a ten-pound fire extinguisher with him?”

She didn’t ask this last time. “Is that big or small?”

She studies me.

“You know how easily those old roadsters catch on fire. Xander may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot. He would never have let himself be the cause of a forest fire in the middle of a Santa Ana windstorm.”

She turns the page in her notebook. “And the money?”

I shrug. “I guess I didn’t plan that very well. I just thought it’d be safer in Benny’s account. I knew Xander would’ve locked me out as soon as I told him I was leaving.”

This prompts a soft hum. “A million dollars is an awfully big transfer.”

“I figured I would need it. Xander was going to put up an awfully big fight.”

“And you got in through Benny’s login how?”

“I copied his password when we set up our accounts together. Knowing he might lose it,” I add quickly.

“But you didn’t tell him you were transferring the money?”

I consider explaining the full truth—that it wasn’t just about financing an ugly divorce. That I intended the transfer in part as an eff you to Xander for making all those side deals. One million eff-you dollars. If he could hide money, then so could I. But I stick to my original answer, remembering what I was told: keep it simple. The simpler the better. “No. Benny didn’t know.”