We Were Never Here(77)

I was frozen, every nerve on high alert. Was she referring to the attempted assault? Or…or what came after, when she wrapped her fingers around a bottle of wine?

“What was worse than you thought?” I asked, my voice gossamer-thin.

“The…the trauma, I guess. That moment when he shoved me and my head hit the wall.”

Kristen exhaled with a constricted sigh, ujjayi pranayama in yoga. “I was scared in a way I’ve never been before,” she went on. “It’s like it changed me, irreversibly. You know how someone can drop acid and have a bad trip and then they’re just different from that day onward?”

“And that’s what it was like? An acid trip?” I needed her to clarify: Was she talking about the frightened instant or the one that followed, the one where she swung the bottle like a club?

The thought jabbed at me: If killing Paolo left her this rattled, she couldn’t have been the one to kill Sebastian…could she?

    “That moment of fear,” she said, “it’s like it marked me—defined me. And, you know what, it has made me paranoid. All I see are dangers now. Fear of everyone I meet. Fear that…that the people I trust are gonna turn on me.” She smoothed her palms down her thighs. “I thought I was keeping my shit together, keeping my whole world under control. I even went to a therapist. But then”—here her voice wobbled—“then I realized you’d been, like, investigating me behind my back. Like I’m some kind of freak.”

But you threatened me, I wanted to say. You hoarded an old photo and left me breadcrumbs so I’d find it when my own fear bordered on paranoia, after a year of telling me we couldn’t risk keeping any evidence around. But I knew that saying this would buy me another hour on this bed, supplicating at Kristen’s feet. I needed to slap a Band-Aid on her ego and get the hell out of Milwaukee.

“I’m sorry you saw that,” I said gently. “I was spiraling and grasping at straws, you know? The photo you showed me—er, wanted me to find—it threw me.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry you’ve been feeling not like yourself. I went through that last year too. It does get better with time, but…I get that, feeling raw. I want you to be okay.” I patted her knee.

“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.