The Better Liar(95)

    That car outside. Robin’s car. She hadn’t packed boxes with me. She’d waited for me, nailed the window shut, locked me in, called this woman.

She wasn’t coming back.

I went over the events in my head again. It began to take shape.

The dead girl on the bed in Henderson. The girl who’d been punished for taking something that belonged to Robin.

You and me, Robin had said yesterday in the kitchen.

And I’d said, I don’t know how to thank you.

“I need my purse,” I said to Nancy. “Is my purse in the front room?”

Nancy looked perplexed, but raised her voice to call, “Hey, Alan?” Officer Wright appeared in the hallway. “Can you check if there’s a purse in the front room?”

“She can’t have anything in it,” Wright mumbled.

“We can bring it to the hospital for her, though,” Nancy said mildly.

“I need my purse!” I hissed. “There’s an envelope in it. I need to know if it’s there. Now. Now. Now!” I shrieked the last word at him as he turned to leave.

“There’s no need to shout,” Nancy said, pulling the door nearly closed. “I promise you, we are here to help.”

I sat down on the bed. My face felt like a mask. “You’ve been fucking her, haven’t you?”

Nancy’s kind expression evaporated. “That’s none of your business. Please don’t lash out at me because you’re angry at your sister.”

“I bet you love her,” I said, talking over her. “She told you she’s coming back? She lied. She never loved you. She told me so.”

“I understand that’s your perspective,” Nancy told me.

Wright shouldered past the door, holding my purse. “This it?”

I stood up. Nancy put a hand on my shoulder. “Please sit down, Mrs. Flores,” she said.

“Give it to me,” I said. I had at least five inches of height on her, but she kept me in place on the bed without effort. One of my shoes slipped off as I scraped for purchase on the carpet.

    “Leslie, please,” Nancy said, lightening her hold on my shoulder. “It’s just an envelope. You can get it later.” She turned calmly to Wright, behind her. “Should we get going?”

I stopped moving, and Nancy took her hand away. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” I said, through suddenly difficult breaths.

Wright rummaged around in my purse. “I don’t see an envelope,” he reported.

Nancy bent and offered me my shoe. “What’s in the envelope? Maybe it fell out of your purse.”

I curled in on myself, shaking. It was gone. Part of me must have known as soon as I heard the phone ringing, out there where I couldn’t reach it, locked in. I felt Nancy crouch and put my shoe back on my foot for me. “Nancy,” I whispered, trying to pull myself together. She was still kneeling, her face at chest height. I bent my head to hers, my hair brushing her forehead. “Nancy, you have to help me,” I said under my breath. “Robin set it up to look like I was going to do something, but I swear to you, I wasn’t.”

My words slid off her gentle expression. She wasn’t really listening to me. “It’s okay, Leslie.”

“I can’t go to the hospital,” I went on, trying to make her understand. “I just need to talk to Robin.” If I went to the hospital, somebody would call Dave. He would think that I’d tried to—I could hardly imagine his face. I knew what would happen. I’d gone through it with my mother. She had barely even hidden it from us. I had promised myself I would never do that. No one would ever know. I would eat my shame alone.

If I went to the hospital, no one would help me die. That was their job, to keep people alive. They’d keep me alive to watch Dave divorce me. To watch him turn to Elaine, find somebody better to be Eli’s mother. I couldn’t be alive for that. I had worked so hard to make it easy for us both. I had left Eli money, packed up most of Daddy’s house…

I was supposed to be dead right now.

I stared at the noose.

“For what it’s worth, what you’re going through is very common, Leslie.” Nancy’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Many women experience it, especially in the year after giving birth. People can be very good at hiding it. I know it may not seem like it right now, but it’s lucky that you wrote that note to Robin. You asked for help, and she heard you.” She offered me a hand, but I didn’t take it.

    “If I go, I can’t come back,” I whispered to her.

Nancy’s face softened. “Of course you can come back,” she said. “Leslie, don’t worry. All that’s going to happen is you’ll be asked to talk to a doctor about what you’ve been experiencing this year. Everyone understands what you’re going through. You’ll get your life back.”

I felt something inside me crack. My body sagged, going limp on the bed. Nancy and the other cop propped me up, one hand on each elbow.

“On our way,” Nancy said into her walkie. The faces on Robin’s walls watched me as I was pulled out of the room. I felt her presence in the house, closer than ever; I understood her, finally, as I hadn’t when we were twelve and eight, as I hadn’t even yesterday in the kitchen. All you have to do is ask for my help, she’d said.