Never Let You Go(77)

“Sophie, this is serious. I’m in jail.”

“Yeah, for hurting Greg.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“You keep saying that none of this is your fault and I still don’t believe—”

“Shut up for a minute. I’m trying to help you.”

I’m so stunned by his words that everything else I wanted to say dies in my throat.

“Who has your mom been hanging out with? Has she pissed someone off?” he says. “Someone is trying to get to her and screw me up. When are you going to listen?”

I stare at the calm blue walls, my ears ringing. The way he’s talking to me. It’s all familiar now. I’ve heard this voice. I’ve heard him talking to my mom like this.

“When are you going to stop lying?” I say. “Mom is right. The only person you care about is yourself, and now my whole life is f*cked up. Because of you. I wish you’d disappear.”

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Sophie.” The way he’s speaking scares me more than I’ve ever been in my life. It feels like I’m standing in the middle of a road and a big truck is coming straight at me. He’s angry, but there’s something else in his voice that I don’t understand. It’s like he’s making some strange sort of promise, and I’m terrified of what that means.

I open my mouth, my throat so tight I have to strain to speak. “I have to go.” I end the call, pressing my finger down hard on the keyboard, and then throw my cell onto the bed with so much force, it bounces off and clatters onto the floor.

“You okay?” my mom’s voice floats down the hall.

“Yeah, just dropped my phone.”

“Your dinner is getting cold.”

“Be there in a second.” I open my sketchpad and rip out every picture that had anything to do with Andrew. Then I sneak outside into Jenny’s backyard, the pictures clutched in my hand, and shove them under the metal grate over her fire pit. I light the corner of one sketch with a match. The flames leap and crawl over the drawings, eating everything in their path, turning the paper black. I watch until the fire has destroyed every last page and it’s all crumbled into ash.

Gone is the drawing of our fishing day at the river. Gone is the drawing of his new house with its ocean view. Gone is the drawing of his work boots with melting snow. Gone is the sketch of his hands next to mine. They’re all gone.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


LINDSEY



“Do you want to stop for coffee?” Jenny asks. We’re walking in the park near the beach, where we’ve been taking Angus every night after dinner.

“Better not. The caffeine will just put me more on edge.” It’s been four days since we left Dogwood and Parker just called a couple of hours ago to let me know Andrew is out on bail. Unless the police find more evidence that he hurt Greg, they’ll drop the charges. I need to make some decisions soon if Sophie and I are going to move, but I keep faltering when I pick up the phone to call my landlord. This is the most important year in Sophie’s life. She should be graduating with her friends, obsessing over prom dresses, not having her life ripped to pieces.

Jenny glances over. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know when this nightmare will end. Even after Sophie moves out, Andrew can still get to me through her. What do I do? We’re living like fugitives.”

“I wish I had the answers.” She gives me a sympathetic look. The wind is whipping off the ocean and she stops to tie her hair back, her eyes squinted in concentration. We’re the same height and our shoulders bump together as we start walking down the path again.

“I feel like a rat in a labyrinth and I keep scurrying around looking for the exit. We’re not even safe in Vancouver with you. He could easily hire a private investigator.”

“So what would you like to do?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Do we just move back to our house and stop running?”

“He won’t leave you alone.”

I watch Angus chase a seagull into the water and give a whistle, calling him back to my side. He returns with a lopsided grin, his fur wet, then bounces down the trail in front of us. It’s stormy today, the waves hitting hard on the shore with a smack. The rocks are slippery and covered with kelp, and the occasional eagle circles above our heads, riding the wind up and down.

“I think all the time about how much I wish Andrew had died in the accident that night,” I say. “I hate feeling like that about the father of my child.”

“You’re human. I try to forgive my ex-husband, but when he messes with our kids’ heads, I wish he was dead too.” Both of Jenny’s kids are in university, old enough to understand their father’s mental games, but he still has a way of sucking them into his web of lies, getting them mad at their mother for some imagined slight, then spitting them back out when he’s finished.

“I used to have fantasies about buying a gun,” Jenny says. “I came close once.”

“Really?” I’m startled, can’t imagine my petite friend walking into a gun store, smacking her hand down on the counter, and asking for a weapon. Though, come to think of it, maybe I could see her at a shooting range, her steely eyes focused onto a target as she bangs off shots.