“I thought you were here for me.” She dabbed a tissue under her eyes.
“I am!”
“No, you’re leaving me.”
“Just for the weekend.” I glanced at her. “We’ll both be thinking more clearly after a day or two, right?”
A beat. “Where are you going?” When I didn’t answer, her voice grew more insistent: “Who are you going with? Aaron?”
“I’m going to Phoenix for a few days. With Aaron, yeah. I…I can’t be a good friend right now. And I want to be. Can you understand that? It’s not about running away from you. I just need a change of scenery.”
A wet sniff. “I thought you had my back.”
“I do. And you have mine. But you of all people know how healing travel can be, right? It’s a reset. And then once I’m back, we can start fresh.” Not true—I’d use the time away to distance myself from Kristen, to create boundaries where there were none. I felt the lies buzzing in my sinuses, swelling like Pinocchio’s nose.
Another moist inhalation. “I’m so lonely right now,” she said. “And scared. And you’re the only person on Earth who knows the full extent of why.”
The full extent—what proportion of the truth did I actually see? What had happened in our hotel suite when Paolo was alone with Kristen? Whose foot had connected with Sebastian’s body a year earlier? What really happened to young Jamie? And was the fire that killed Kristen’s parents really a random house fire…or had someone set it, watching a pinprick of light fork and race through the house like white-hot dominos?
“I’m right there with you,” I said, because I didn’t know the answers to any of my questions. Only Kristen did, and my freedom—my life—hinged on her wanting to protect me. “I know it’s tough, but we’ll get through this. As long as we don’t do anything stupid.” Like turning over an anonymous, incriminating photo: I thought it so hard I imagined she could hear it, accomplice ESP. “You’re brave as hell, Kristen. I’ve always been in awe of your courage. And how calm and smart you are in the midst of a crisis. I’m—I’m just trying to channel that. With a couple days of us not talking. I’m trying to be brave like you, okay?”
This did it. Of all the tricks I’d tried, the sticks and carrots and honey-gooey words I’d lobbed her way, this was what convinced her.
“I trust you,” she said. “I don’t get it, but I trust you.” She rolled off the bed. “I want to show you something.”
My heart thudded as she rummaged in a dresser drawer. Please just let me go, I silently begged.
She lifted a cloth sack and pulled out what appeared to be a crumple of newspapers. She peeled back a layer and stared at its center.
“We’re really in this together.” Then she tipped it my way.
At first, I thought it was a big, dark rock, the kind you crack open to find the geode inside.
But then a part of it caught the light. I spotted words on the lumpy surface, a flash of blistered plastic.
I’ll take it, she’d said as the air in our suite eddied with smoke and the acrid smell of burnt plastic. I’ll toss it when I get home.
But she hadn’t. She’d kept it, more collateral. Before me was a fossil: the molten remains of Paolo’s journal, phone, passport, and wallet.
CHAPTER 33
“Oh my God. You said you’d get rid of this.”
“I kept it in my suitcase. It made the flight here with me.”
My eyes bulged. “But why?!”
“It’s…it’s like the photo. I don’t plan to show it to anyone, obviously. But I wanted you to see.”
She’s out of her mind. But I nodded serenely. “I’m sorry I made you doubt me. But we can trust each other. We have to trust each other.”
She stuffed the lump into its bag. “Can we please do more talking as soon as you’re back?”
“Of course,” I lied. I inched toward the door. “I should get going. You’re okay?”
She pulled me into a tight hug and cried into my shoulder. There was muscle memory there, a deep-seated urge to tuck my chin toward her neck, to feel our forearms pulling in tandem. When I let her go, I had the flickering thought that this felt like a goodbye—an ending I’d been seeking for the better part of a month now.
But as I plodded toward the stairs, a pit of shame opened inside me. There was a reason I kept repeating my farewells, aiming for a clean cut but then watching the skin scab and purse together, uglier and uglier, every time. There was a reason I kept going back, a sad-eyed addict begging for another hit.
As I passed by the living room en route to the front door, my gaze fell on the Bible still centered on the coffee table. With a sudden pull in my chest, I got it: the reason people crave religion—the confidence, the superiority, the assurance of what’s right. The yearning for someone to tell us what to eat, think, and do. Simple answers to complex questions and the certitude that there’s nothing to be afraid of, that it’ll all work out in the end. The opposite of fear.
As I scooped up my purse, a creak above me made me freeze, ears pricked, heart staccato. Time to go. I glanced behind me, then heaved the front door open and hurried out into the night.
* * *
—
I made it to my car and sat slumped in the front seat for a long time. Everything was wrong. Kristen had told me to jump, and I’d responded, “How high?” I’d comforted her, patted her shin, wrapped her in a tight embrace. I must be getting something I craved, or else I wouldn’t be here now, gazing into the black tunnel of Nana and Bill’s street when I should be home and packing for Phoenix. Why was it so freaking dark? Why weren’t there any streetlights in the suburbs?
A sudden knock made my entire body jerk—I pressed a hand to my sternum and breathed hard, the horror movie watcher who didn’t see the jump scare coming. Nana’s face floated in the window, her eyes and cheeks gaunt in my dome light’s glow. I rolled down the window and she cracked a nervous smile.
“You forgot this.” She held out a clump of fabric, and it took me a moment to recognize my jacket.
“Oh shoot, thank you.” I dropped it onto the passenger seat.
She lingered. “I thought I’d missed you. But then I saw your car.”
She wanted to tell me something. Days earlier, I would’ve leapt at the chance to ask about her spooky email, about Westmoor, about young Kristen and her dead best friend, poor Jamie in the pineapple house I could just make out next door. But now the strongest impulse, deep in my hips, was to get the hell away from here.
“Is everything okay?” She said it in a rush, like she thought I’d whir the window closed and drive off, tires squealing.
I froze. “You mean with Kristen?”
Something flashed in her eyes. “She’s been acting, er, a little upset. I guess it’s got Bill, you know, on edge. And me as well.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Not that it’s about us! But I’m concerned for her. And you.” Nana glanced behind her and I caught the look again. Fear, bright and glinting, both tiny and vast. Toward Kristen? Or—a new thought sparked, the conclusion I would have jumped to first under any other circumstances—toward Bill?