night in three years. I was a shitty—” He clears his throat. “I wasn’t very good at my job. I got too close to your brother. I liked him, and I betrayed him, and now he’s dead. And I want answers.”
“Answers and closure aren’t the same thing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
The scar on my leg itches. I scratch it with my chained hand, the metal rattling against the wooden chair. I see Chris notice, watch where my fingers touch the bare skin of my thigh.
“Are you done eating?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good. Time for bed.”
I sit up straight. “What?” I know he brought an overnight bag, but the realization that he actually intends to stay is jarring.
He finishes his last piece of bread and stands, fishing the tiny handcuff key from his pocket. “Let’s go.”
I shove the chair back. The legs screech across the wood as I pedal hard with my bare feet, having foregone the flats at the start of dinner. “Don’t do this.”
“You’ll be fine,” he assures me. “It’s a little early, but you can have a book if you want.” He grabs the back of the chair to keep me in place, then snares my cuffed wrist as he twists the key in the lock. I get up only because he’s got my arm pulled up behind my shoulder blades, and if I don’t move, it’ll break.
“Which one’s your room?” He nudges me down the hall, my legs barely moving, forcing him to dig a knee into my thighs to propel me forward. “This one?” he asks, stopping in front of the first closed door.
“No!” I say, too late.
He shoves open the door to the Carlisle family museum, and I feel him stop close behind me. “What the hell is this?”
He forces me into the room, though it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with his own morbid curiosity. I hear him suck in a breath as he surveys the walls, the art, the hundreds of clippings, carefully trimmed and framed and hung. He’s silent as he takes it all in, stopping in front of my wall, the pages about me, the ones that criticize, theorize, vilify. Murderer? they ask. Thief, they say more confidently. Liar, more certain still. Whore!
“Reese,” he says. There’s something in the way he says it, something sincere. Like he’s concerned, though he can’t be. He’s leaning over me, trying to see my face, and I hang my head so my hair flops past my cheeks, shielding my eyes. I’d done this that first night at his apartment, hidden the things I couldn’t hide otherwise. The things he’d been looking for.
I scan the framed pages that make up the row of photos along the baseboard. There’s me at Alex’s funeral, wheeling across the soft grass, heart breaking as they heckled me. There’s a close-up shot of my face, eyes wide and dry. They hired experts to read my expression, my body language. They—the court of popular opinion—came back with a unanimous verdict: Guilty.
Shame keeps my eyes glued to the ground. “Do whatever you want,” I tell him. “I don’t care.”
15
I’M CONFUSED WHEN I wake up, one hand stretched awkwardly over my head. Memories trickle in like the faint rays of morning light pushing through the blinds and slicing across the floor: My brilliant plan, the knock at the door, the questions, the answers. The failure.
It’s Thursday. I have nothing to do on Thursdays. No one to wonder about me. No one to call and ask if I’m alright. This is part of why I never got a pet. I didn’t want the indignity of being the lady whose body was found half-eaten by her Maltese.
I peer under the covers to confirm I’m still wearing the dress I put on yesterday, then spot the alarm clock, now perched on the dresser on the far side of the room. Chris took everything off the nightstands, and even removed the drawers in case I had any secret weapons. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the foresight to stock my bedroom with guns and knives and lock picking tools.
It’s almost seven o’clock and I have to pee. “Chris,” I call, my voice a croak. I clear my throat. “Chris!”
If this were a movie—a good one—I’d have found a way to break off the zipper of my dress, use part of it to pick the lock on the handcuffs, and the other to fashion a weapon to maim Chris when he entered. As it stands, I’m lying