Behind Every Lie(20)

Liam knew he was coming? Why didn’t he warn me?

“I know you’ve been through a lot the last few days.” He whistled low and shook his head. “Struck by lightning. You have to be incredibly unlucky to get struck. Or maybe just lucky not to die, right? I mean, what are the odds?”

“One in three thousand in your lifetime.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

I shrugged. “I looked it up.”

He nodded toward the studio behind me. “That where you work?” His face was relaxed, but his pale eyes were sharp, calculating, the way a wolf looks when it’s stalking its prey.

“Yes. It’s my studio. I rent it for painting my pottery.”

He skirted past me and went inside. I followed him, watching as his eyes landed on the broken urn I’d left on the desk. He picked up one of the pieces.

“What happened to it?”

“A client’s cat knocked it over. She sent it to me asking if I could fix it.”

“Can you do that?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Jackson picked up another broken piece. He held both up to the light and tried to slot them together. “It won’t ever be the same again, no matter what you do.”

He set the pieces back on the desk and turned to me. “We found your car.” He pronounced it cah. “Do you remember parking it by your mom’s house?”

I shook my head, mind churning. So my car was at my mom’s! “No. I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Could someone else have driven it? Taken your keys?”

I grabbed my purse from where I’d set it on the corner of my desk. I shoved aside gum wrappers, loose change, sunglasses, a packet of menthol Halls before finding my keys and shaking them at the detective.

“No, they’re here.”

“Does anybody have a copy?”

“I keep a spare key in a magnetic box under the car.”

“Have you remembered anything else?”

“No. Look, do I need a lawyer?”

“Do you?”

Everything was suddenly too bright, too loud, too overwhelming. I wanted him to go away. Jackson snapped his notebook shut and took a step closer to me. My back pressed against the studio wall, the space seeming smaller than ever. I had nowhere to go. I knew he was doing it to intimidate me, and it was working. Sweat had broken out under my arms and along my hairline.

His mouth twisted in a cruel approximation of a smile. “I pulled your file, Eva. I was really sorry to hear about what happened to you.”

His words were light, but his eyes were menacing. “I would’ve done a more thorough investigation than Detective Anderson did. You know he retired last year? Moved to Alaska to fish. But me …” He shook his head, his blue eyes narrow. “I never would’ve stopped until I found the guy who did that to you.”

I dug my fingertips into my armpits, hard, desperate to stay grounded.

“Did you ever remember who attacked you?”

“No.” I looked away.

“Did you ever wonder why you can’t remember?”

“I …” I swallowed, my throat desert-dry. “I think I was drugged.”

“But they didn’t find any drugs in your system?”

I didn’t reply. If he’d pulled my file, he already knew the answer to that.

Jackson snapped his notebook open again. “Tell me again about what you remember the night your mom was murdered.”

“I already told you! I can’t remember anything!”

“I’m just wondering if not remembering is a defense mechanism you fall back on often.”

“I was struck by lightning! I didn’t choose to not remember!”

“What was your relationship with your mother like?”

I searched his face, wondering what the right answer was. He had a fleck of spit gleaming on his lower lip. A tiny scab on his chin from a shaving cut.

“It was fine.”

“Interesting, because I found a domestic violence incident filed against you two years ago.” He rifled through his notebook and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here it is. Third-degree assault. Eva, you attacked your mom.”

“That’s not what happened!” Adrenaline zipped through me like a live wire, pulsing in my head. My voice clenched around the jagged knife in my throat. “The police dropped the charges.”

“Yes, I know. Katherine didn’t want them to press charges.”

“This is crazy.” I put a hand on my desk to steady myself, my knees rubbery. It was happening again. “I did not hurt my mom! That other time, that was an accident!”

Jackson’s expression remained indecipherable, but I knew. He didn’t believe me. He folded his mouth into a thin line. When he spoke his voice was almost sympathetic.

“Do you think you did it again? Maybe you were visiting her. You had a panic attack, then suddenly the knife was in your hand. You didn’t know what you were doing but you were scared, afraid the man who attacked you was back. You plunged it into her neck, then you ran, but the lightning got you before you could get away.”

“No,” I whispered. My rib cage felt like it was being crushed.

The images felt vivid. I could imagine what he described. But was it real? Memories could become distorted, twisted to suit the teller, or ignored and forgotten, pushed away. I should know. I’d been doing it for years.