Page 40 of The Girl from Widow Hills
I shook my head. Nothing had ever lasted long enough that it would need to come up. And that was probably why I didn’t go to Charlotte with Bennett for Thanksgiving last year, volunteering instead to remain as the hospital’s on-call contact throughout the holidays. Preferring a makeshift dinner with a group of people who had stayed behind. Joining the open-to-all potluck organized by Sydney Britton; having pie with Rick after, watching a football game on his couch.
“No one,” I reiterated.
He frowned. “Don’t you think that’s a little messed up?”
Oh, didn’t I. As if I needed him to say it, to see it. Of course, I couldn’t really escape the fallout. Change your name, change your address—none of it could ever change what had happened. It had screwed up my life back then. And it was screwing it up now, just in a different way: twisting myself to fit the confines of a safe and quiet life.
“You have no idea,” I said, my teeth gritted together. “You have no idea what it’s like. We had to move from Kentucky to Ohio in the middle of high school after the ten-year anniversary, it got so bad. You should see what it did to my mom, the things it pushed her to.” I shook my head. There was a faint tremor in my fingers, but my voice kept dropping, going steady somehow, even as I was falling apart. “I moved away from her, all alone, to start over here.” How to explain the feeling of panic, deep in my gut; waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, my heart racing, sheets thrown back—like I was still trying to escape. Wondering if I ever would.
“Okay,” he said, eyes closed. “I get it. I’m sorry.” He looked around the room, out the window, back at me. “We don’t have to do this right now.”
But I wanted to tell him something on my own, something he wouldn’t just read on his phone later. “I have a scar,” I told him. I lifted my left arm out to the side. “Can’t move my shoulder above this.”
His eyes settled on my upper arm. I knew he’d seen it before. “I thought it was from an accident.”
“Itwasan accident,” I said. “Dislocated shoulder. Fractured humerus. I needed surgery to get things back in place. Nails and wires to hold it together.”
“Broken and dislocated?” He winced. “That’s rare in a kid. Must’ve been incredibly painful.”
“I don’t remember it,” I said, shrugging it off. “I also don’t like enclosed spaces.”
He scratched the back of his head, looking off to the side. “And here I thought you were a germaphobe.”
“I mean, I am. But the space is the primary culprit.”
He smiled then, eyes lighting up in that familiar way, so I knew I was amusing him, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Maybe I could do this. I could be both Olivia and Arden, and Bennett could accept past and present as one.
But then his face darkened, jaw tipped toward the window, to the invisible place where someone had just died. “You didn’t recognize him? At the store?” A tone of incredulity. Bennett, sifting through the facts, like the police would be doing somewhere else.
I shook my head. “It’s been twenty years.” To me, he remained that ageless photo in the papers. That single clip from his lone interview. He’d faded into the background after, an ancillary piece to the story. I could see the similarities, now that I was looking for them, underneath the passage of time. The deep-set eyes. The shape of his mouth. But in my mind, he was still so young.
Sean Coleman. To think he wasn’t much older than we were now when the media first shone its light on him. That he was thrust into the camera with the same speed at which he’d grabbed my wrist. What I’d remembered from his interview was that he was soft-spoken and tentative. Nothing like I’d remembered of the man in the store:Hey, I know you. So sure. So different from the soft-edged, shell-shocked face after the rescue.
Bennett paced the room slowly, scanning the surfaces he’d seen dozens of times before, like he was looking for something new. Something that might clue him in to a different person—one he’d never met.
“What were you seeing Dr. Cal for?” He wasn’t looking at me when he asked it, and the entire room suddenly changed.
My jaw tensed. “I told you,” I said, words even and measured. “I couldn’t sleep.”
I knew why he was asking. The information at his fingertips, tucked away in his palm. The girl from Widow Hills had been sleepwalking. That’s what made it such a compelling story. She’d been swept away at night, and she hadn’t even seen it coming.
He turned to face me, no longer acting nonchalant. “I’m just saying, you know how the hospital can get.” And didn’t I? How long had it taken for Elyse to show up in the ER after I’d been brought in? How long before everyone knew the details of the case? About the body and the method of death?
“There are HIPAA laws, and like I said, I’d been having trouble sleeping.”
I could imagine the detective asking it instead, the implied meaning underneath. I was glad she had left. But Bennett was doing the same, seeing the present through the filter of something that had happened long ago.
Bennett had his eyes closed, one hand held out in front of him in defense. “I’m just saying. Someone must’ve seen you walk into his office. That’s it. The rest is conjecture, nothing more.”
Bennett was probably filing everything away in his mind. Deciding, right then, which side of the line I fell on. “Seriously, Bennett? It’syourconjecture.”
He cringed, then took a step closer. “No, I wasn’t saying . . . I’m sorry. I’m having kind of a hard time with this. It’s just a lot of information all at once.”
“I didn’t even know who hewas,” I said, hands balling up. My nails dug into my palms. “Or do you think I’m lying?”
“No, I believe you. Of course I do. Anyway, you have the world’s worst poker face. But that detective . . . have you talked to a lawyer about this?”
I shook my head. I had been worried when I realized my story was being tested at the hospital, but it had stood up to scrutiny. And now I was cooperating, sharing the past I’d fought to keep hidden for so long. I didn’t want to give Detective Rigby any reason to take a closer look. “I didn’t do anything,” I said.
