Page 196 of Saint Céline
“I will.”
“You promise?”
I closed my eyes. For once, the promise did not feel like a lie.
“I promise.”
When I hung up, Vincent was watching me. I set the phone down slowly.
“You are going to tell me everything,” I said.
“I have.”
“No. Everything else. What else did you do that I did not know about?”
“You were very messy with your attempted murder, Selena.”
“I was traumatized. I killed… or thought I killed my best friend of eleven years.”
“Yes,” he said. “And so careless,” he said, with a nostalgic tone.
“Do not sound fond.”
“I am fond.”
Something in my chest turned over. I ignored it.
“Talk.”
Vincent leaned back against the counter.
“Katherine’s laptop was very accessible. It didn’t take much effort to guess the password. It was your cat’s name, by the way.”
My stomach tightened.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I sent an email from her account to her mother.”
I stared at him.
“What did it say?”
“That she was tired. Lonely. Under academic pressure. That she was sorry.”
The room chilled. Mrs. Montgomery’s voice from the funeral echoed suddenly in my memory.
She left a note.
Not in those exact words, perhaps. But close enough. I had never asked. I had been too afraid.
“You wrote her suicide note.”
“I wrote an explanation people were ready to accept.”
