Page 136 of The Lies I Told
“Several,” he said. “We don’t want to miss a word. He’ll also be handcuffed.”
“All the better.”
“Have a seat,” he said. “We’ll be right back.”
I sat in a chair, shifting my weight until the hard back didn’t press against my darkening bruises. I was going to be six shades of blue for the next few weeks.
Two minutes later the door opened and David, now dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was escorted into the adjoining room. His hands and feet were shackled. Richards walked him to a seat on the other side of the partition. When David saw me, his expression softened, and his gaze ran over me as if taking inventory of all my injuries. I waited until Richards left the room and closed the door behind him. We weren’t in a private room, but maybe David would forget if I played it well.
“What happened?” David asked.
I shifted, didn’t suppress a wince. “Jack.”
His brow knotted. “I’m sorry.”
In his world he really was sorry. “I don’t blame you. He’s more than either one of us bargained for. Have you seen Brit?”
“We spoke on the phone. She’s gotten legal counsel for me. He’s on his way.”
Brit was helping David. The idea soured my stomach, and it took a moment before I could speak without anger sharpening my tone. “She’s a great advocate to have in your corner. She’ll get you the best.”
“She’s one of a kind.”
He looked so calm, so normal. Another surge of rage cut through me, and it took all my control to ease back in the chair and appear relaxed. I remembered Richards’s tone, always even and calm. Yelling wasn’t going to get David to talk.
“I’ve been thinking back to the last time I spoke to Clare,” I said. “She’d had a couple of drinks and I was high. No surprise there, right?”
“You’re sober now.”
I was the proud owner of another newly minted first-day chip to prove it. “Doing my best.”
“You should be proud,” he said.
“Thanks. I don’t always feel proud. Especially when I think back to Clare. She had something she wanted to show me, but we never met up.”
“What did she want to show you?”
“I think she wanted me to see Brit sick. That night Brit became ill like Clare and I did as kids.”
“She said she had a sensitive stomach.”
“It was more than that. See, Richards thinks our mother was poisoning us. When we were sick, the doctors were nice to her, and Daddy hung around more.”
His handcuffs clinked as he leaned forward. “Oh, Marisa, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s a mental illness. It’s demented, and I don’t want to believe it, but it all makes sense.” I flexed my fingers, trying to relax the stiffness and the urge to grip the chair’s arms. “After Mom died, Brit didn’t get sick anymore, but Clare and I did. We also went through phases where we were kind of out of it. I can’t prove it, but I think Brit was drugging us and Clare figured it out.” It felt so strange to be telling this terrible secret to the man who’d killed my sister. But I had to give a little to get a little. “That’s what Clare and Brit fought about before the party. Poor Clare wasn’t in her right mind when she went to that party. She was devastated by what she’d found out.”
He stared at me, saying nothing, and I didn’t rush to fill the silence. Let him chew on that information nugget for a while.
“She went to the party dressed like me,” I said finally. “She was looking for trouble, I think.”
He didn’t speak, but he was listening.
“She’d found out she was pregnant. She was freaking out on all levels.”
“Where were you?”
“Jack drugged me. Had sex with me.”
