just looks at me, saying nothing, staring. I say, “Sure,” about the water. I twirl a strand of hair around my finger, taking in the room around me. Cold, bland, a table, four walls. There’s not much to it, nothing to look at, nothing to tell me where I am. Nothing except for this guy before me, fully decked out in a uniform. Clearly a cop.
And then I see the pictures on the table beside me.
“Go on,” I tell him. “Fetch me some water.”
He goes and comes back again. He gives me the water, sets it on the table in front of me. “So tell me,” he says. “Tell me what happened when you took the dogs for a walk.”
“What dogs?” I ask. I’ve always liked dogs. People I hate, but I’m quite fond of dogs.
“Your dogs, Dr. Foust.”
I get a great big belly laugh out of that. It’s preposterous, ludicrous, him mistaking me for Sadie. It’s insulting more than anything. We look nothing alike. Different-color hair, eyes, a heck of an age gap. Sadie is old. I’m not. Is he so blind he can’t see that?
“Please,” I say, tucking a strand of hair behind an ear. “Don’t insult me.”
He does a double take, asks, “Pardon me?”
“I said don’t insult me.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Foust. I—” But I stop him there because I can’t stand the way he keeps referring to me as Sadie, as Dr. Foust. Sadie would be lucky to be me. But Sadie is not me.
“Stop calling me that,” I snap.
“You don’t want me to call you Dr. Foust?”
“No,” I tell him.
“Well, what should I call you, then?” he asks. “Would you prefer that I call you Sadie?”
“No!” I shake my head, insistent, indignant. I tell him, “You should call me by my name.”
His eyes narrow, homing in on me. “I thought Sadie was your name. Sadie Foust.”
“You thought wrong, then, didn’t you?”
He looks at me, words slack as he asks, “If not Sadie, then who are you?”
I stick a hand out to him, tell him my name is Camille. His hand is cold when he shakes it, limp. He looks around the room as he does, asks where Sadie went.
I tell him, “Sadie isn’t here right now. She had to go.”
“But she was just here,” he says.
“Yeah,” I tell him, “but now she’s not. Now it’s just me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not following,” he says, asking again if I’m feeling okay, if I’m all right, encouraging me to drink up the water.
“I’m feeling fine,” I say, drinking the water in one big swig. I’m thirsty and hot.
“Dr. Foust—”
“Camille,” I remind him, searching the room for a clock, to see what time it is, how much time I’ve missed.
He says, “Okay. Camille, then.” He shows me one of the pictures from the tabletop, the one where she’s covered in her own blood, eyes open, dead. “Do you know anything about this?”
I leave him hanging. Can’t let the cat out of the bag just yet.
SADIE
I’m alone in a room, sitting in a chair that backs up to a wall. There isn’t much to the room, just walls, two chairs, a door that’s locked. I know because I’ve already tried leaving. I tried turning the knob but it didn’t turn. I wound up knocking on the door, pounding on the door, calling out for help. But it was all in vain. Because no one came.
Now the door easily opens. A woman walks in, carrying a teacup in her hand. She comes to me. She sets a briefcase on the floor and helps herself to the other chair, sitting opposite me. She doesn’t introduce herself but begins speaking as if we already know one another, as if we’ve already met.
She asks me questions. They’re personal and invasive. I bristle in the chair, drawing away from them, wondering why she is asking about my mother, my father, my childhood, some woman named Camille whom I don’t know. In my whole life, I’ve never known anyone named Camille. But she looks at me, disbelieving. She seems to think I do.
She tells me things that aren’t true, about myself and my life. I get agitated, upset when she says them.
I ask how she can claim to know these things about me, when I don’t even know them for myself. Officer Berg is responsible for this, for sending her to speak to me, because one minute he was interrogating me in his tiny room, and the next minute I’m here, though I have no idea what