Behind Every Lie(41)
“You think I poisoned her?” I exclaimed. “I didn’t even know what digoxin was until Andrew told me!”
“What medications do you take, Eva?” Jackson asked.
“E-excuse me?” I stuttered, trying to keep up with his sudden change of direction.
“Your fiancé mentioned you went to bed with a migraine the night your mother was murdered, that you’d taken your ‘meds.’ Plural. What other medication do you take?”
I shook my head, confused. “None.”
“I saw on your chart at the hospital you’d been prescribed pills for anxiety in the past. Are they the same ones you took after you were assaulted?”
I frowned. I vaguely remembered Liam mentioning getting my medication, but I hadn’t taken any. Had I? I had no idea if they were the same pills I took two years ago.
“Did you take anxiety pills at the same time as the migraine pills?”
“I don’t …” I was so confused, doubt thumping in my chest. I didn’t know what was true, what to say, what to believe.
“Are you aware that taking migraine and anxiety pills together increases the risk of serotonin syndrome? That’s a potentially serious negative drug reaction. You could have hallucinations, agitation, and even—listen closely to this one—memory loss.”
The white walls of Jacob’s flat pressed around me, fear contracting around my chest.
“Are you suggesting I combined a bunch of pills and then murdered someone while I was blacked out?” A sudden, surprising anger coiled between my ribs. “Or maybe I just faked getting struck by lightning so I wouldn’t remember what happened? How did I do that exactly? Did I stand directly in the path of the lightning holding up a metal hanger to make sure it hit me?”
A memory flashed like a fish’s fin, an image of my mom falling to the ground, blood smeared across her throat.
I had that feeling you get when you’re a kid and you’re chasing a squirrel, the wind of its tail dancing across your palm, and you’re sure, so absolutely certain you’re going to catch it any second. I closed my eyes, straining to pull aside the veil and see the rest of the memory. But it was gone, leaving my head feeling hot, tingly.
Jackson’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Eva, you are now a person of interest in what is a very serious murder investigation. I suggest you get home before I issue an arrest warrant to Interpol.”
“No, wait!” I exclaimed. “There’s something—I remembered something. I think you’re right, I was there, but I wasn’t alone. Check the sketch I e-mailed you. The guy’s name is Sebastian Clarke, and I think he was there too. You must’ve found other fingerprints at Mom’s house, not just mine. They’re his. He was my mom’s husband before she moved to America. He must’ve done it.”
“Why would this Sebastian want to kill your mom?” Jackson sounded irritated.
“I have no idea, I swear!”
Jackson sighed.
“Listen, I’ll come in to the police station, and you can ask me anything you want. I just need two or three more days.”
“That isn’t how this works,” he warned.
“I know this looks bad, Detective, but I’m sure Sebastian Clarke has something to do with this. He killed my mom. You need to find him!”
“No, what I need to do is formally question you, Eva. You need to come back right now, today, or I’m going to issue that arrest warrant with Interpol.”
“Two days,” I replied. Then I hung up.
* * *
I awoke with a start as morning dawned over London in soft shades of misty gray. Rain ticked against the windows, sent down from a cotton-wool sky. Crumpled leaves twisted in the wind, falling past the windows like teardrops.
My eyes roamed Jacob’s bedroom, a masculine space with white-painted brick walls and a small IKEA desk. Travel photos he’d taken filled the walls. The bedside table was a cluttered mess of phone chargers, electrical converters, and loose change. A Dan Brown book had been left facedown on the dresser. This room felt more like the Jacob I’d grown up with than the rest of the flat.
I was too awake to go back to sleep, so I dinked around on my phone, checking my e-mail and Instagram. I knew social media was like standing in front of a crowd screaming into a microphone: “Look at me! See how great I am! Be jealous of my life!” We had twenty-four-hour access to the worst things happening in the world, and twenty-four-hour access to other people’s apparently perfect lives. It was simultaneously disturbing and confusing, and yet I continued using it. Maybe something inside me needed to feel worthy of others’ approval. But weren’t we all like that?
The story of my mom’s death was obviously making the rounds now—I had twelve messages on Instagram, including three from my college roommate, Holly: one congratulating me on my engagement, one asking if I was okay, and another asking me to call her.
Fortunately nobody seemed to know the police were questioning me. I replied to each message, then scrolled through my feed. Jacob had posted a picture of his travel backpack perched against his pillow like a lover. “Hanging this bad boy up for a while!” he’d commented.
I summoned Jacob’s number from a long-locked vault in my mind and reached for my phone.
“Jake, it’s me.”