“I’ve been in this town six months. I’m new, I’m not from here, and my job exists up until the exact moment that Jim Green tells the city council to get rid of me,” she said, voice thick with discontent. “He made it very clear that it was time to move on. But I don’t buy it. That girl killing herself that way, when she was terrified of guns and blood and everybody in her life, you included, was watching her like a hawk for the slightest hint of suicidal ideation? Yes, I think she was murdered. But if I don’t sign that paperwork, I don’t have a job and can’t do anything about it. So here we are.”
I tried to take a full breath to steady myself; pain lanced through my ribs. “I think you’re right,” I said.
She tapped her fingers against her belt. “We checked that pond three times. We’d just about given up. But Dougherty absolutely insists it’s there, so I drag my ass out in waders one last time, and miraculously, we find it. Maybe we missed it. But I don’t think so.”
“You think someone dumped it in the pond after you’d already searched it. Someone like me?” I tried to look composed and confident, but it was hard with a bruised face and an ice bucket dangling from one hand.
“You’re hiding something,” Bishop said. “That makes me uneasy.”
“Everyone’s hiding something,” I said softly. “I need to go ice my face. Unless you actually need me—”
“Actually, I’d like you to come down to the station. That’s why I stopped. We’ve been trying to call you.”
“My phone was stolen. Mugged, remember?” I said.
She grunted, unimpressed with my excuse. “We’ve got a couple of loose ends that need tying up. For the paperwork, you understand.”
“Fine,” I said, waving a hand. “When?”
“Tomorrow. Ten o’clock,” Bishop replied.
“Fine,” I repeated. I just wanted out of this conversation. Bishop gave me one last level look before she headed back to her car.
I turned to find Ethan standing at the open door. “What was that about?” he asked as I slid past him.
“She’s just doing her job,” I said. Better than anyone else in this town. “I’m supposed to go to the station tomorrow.”
“Not looking like that,” Ethan said. I dumped a handful of ice into a plastic bag and pressed it against the bridge of my nose. “You don’t want to walk through town that bruised up. You’re going to get the kind of questions you don’t want to have to answer, and not just from Bishop.”
“I’ve only got the one face, Ethan.”
He made an amused sound. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out,” he said.
I shifted the ice so I could look at him better.
“What?” he asked, seeing my look.
“Nothing. Just thinking about what a nice guy you are,” I said. He gave me a puzzled smile and turned to the computer. I watched him work, a strange mix of pleasure and anxiety needling at me.
Everyone was hiding something, and I didn’t know yet what Ethan was hiding. The thing was, I liked Ethan. A lot. I might even have said I was falling for him, if there was room in my body for those feelings right now. But I wouldn’t feel safe feeling anything for him until I knew what was wrong with him.
What would make him stick around with someone as broken as me.
* * *
In the morning I woke to find Ethan gone. In an hour I was supposed to be at the police department. I showered and dressed and looked at myself skeptically in the mirror. The swelling had gone down, but my nose was a godawful shade of greenish-purple that streaked into the bags under my eyes. I dumped out my makeup bag. I had a small tube of concealer, mascara, eyeliner, and a basic nude lipstick.
The door opened. Ethan entered, carrying yet another bag of takeout from the diner and a shopping bag. “I picked up some supplies,” he said.
“What kind of supplies?” I asked suspiciously. He emptied the shopping bag on the bed, and a dizzying array of makeup spilled out.
“I had to get a few shades because I wasn’t sure about the best match,” he said. He peered at me, then grabbed a handful of products and came over. “This one looks closest,” he said, holding the tube up to my cheek.
“Thanks,” I said. I looked down. He’d gotten me liquid concealer and concealer in stick form and a yellow-tinted “color-correcting” concealer and a powder and I stared at them without comprehension.
“Here,” Ethan said, seeing how lost I was. “Let me.”
He opened up one product after another, layering them on, dabbing with gentle touches of a makeup sponge so he wouldn’t hurt me. Slowly, the bruises vanished and the makeup blended in with the rest of my skin.
“I have to do your whole face or it’ll be obvious you just used concealer on one spot,” he said.
“Don’t cover up the scar,” I said quickly.
“You never hide it, do you?” he asked.
“I don’t let myself.” I held still, watching his face as he worked. “You’re good at this.”
“I used to help my mom,” he said.
“Your dad?”
He grunted. “My dad treated my mom like a queen. After we lost him, it was like she was punishing herself by dating assholes. It took her a long time to crawl back out of that hole. As soon as I turned eighteen I left. I couldn’t stick around and watch her repeat the same mistakes over and over again. We didn’t talk for a good five years. But then she met George.”
“You don’t talk about yourself a lot, do you?” I asked.
“What makes you say that?”
“You just seem uncomfortable. Like you haven’t practiced enough for it not to hurt when you explained it,” I said.
“I’m more used to talking about other people’s pain, I guess,” he said. “You’re all set.”
I looked in the mirror. You could tell I was wearing makeup—no one’s skin was that consistent—but the bruise was invisible. “You’re a magician.”
“Ta-da,” he declared, waving his hands.
“And kind of a hokey one at that,” I added. He chuckled. “I guess it’s time to face the music.”
He drove me, since lifting my arms to hold the steering wheel made my ribs ache. We walked into the police station together and the woman behind the front desk gave us an appraising look. I’d known her name once, but it escaped me now.
“You can come right on back, dear,” she told me. “You can wait there.” She jabbed her pen at the chairs along the wall, pinning Ethan with her gaze.
She showed me back down a hallway and into a conference room. “It’ll be just a minute,” she said, and disappeared. I eased myself into a chair. Sitting down and standing up were the hardest on my ribs, and I didn’t want to have to do either in front of people.
It was less than a minute before the door opened. It wasn’t Bishop who entered but Officer Dougherty, along with a man in a gray suit I didn’t recognize. “Naomi. It’s good of you to come down and help us out.”
“With the paperwork,” I said, half a question.