The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,23

meaning. Always asking it of others but not himself. The dynamic of his classroom carrying over, seeming like a natural extension—though it wasn’t.

What I was really thinking: That I knew it was a mistake as soon as he responded. That I was smart enough this time to see him clearly, not as Professor Lowell, the thrill of his extra interest, but as a forty-one-year-old man trapped in a perpetual state of late adolescence, in danger of trapping me there, too.

When I didn’t respond, falling into my bed instead, into a sleep I couldn’t find the beginning of—a haze of wine and adrenaline and exhaustion—had he driven out this way?

Or had I texted him to come? Had I responded in my sleep?

The blackout I’d had from drinking during that episode at the end of sophomore year in college was the closest I’d ever felt to sleepwalking. Knowing, after, that something had happened, seeing the evidence, hearing others talk about it, but never able to get there myself. Another thing forever lost to me.

The night and the rain; the drainage pipe. The cold earth and stagnant water.

It had been only one glass of wine last night, but Dr. Cal’s words echoed in my head, faintly accusing.

The voices of several people out front carried through the thin window, and the sound of footsteps made me sit upright, unsure what to do with my hands. I folded them awkwardly in my lap until my fingers felt numb, hooked together unnaturally.

A woman followed Rick inside. “Liv, this is Nina,” he said. He introduced her so casually, I couldn’t tell at first what her role was. Whether this was someone he had called to the house personally; whether this was someone on our side.

Nina stepped inside carefully, her gaze roaming the room—she was smaller than I was, wearing gray slacks and a black windbreaker. Boots that seemed in contrast to her dress pants. She had light brown skin and sleek dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail.

Her face gave away nothing. “Nina Rigby,” she said. “I’m with the police department. Mr. Aimes said you’re the one who found the body?”

Her face was completely delicate, as if made of glass—tiny upturned nose, gently sloping cheekbones, rounded chin, like I could fit her entire face in my hand. But it was unlined and expressionless, even now, when discussing a body just steps away. And when her brown eyes set on me, I changed my mind: stone, not glass.

“Yes. Do you know who it is?” I asked, the words scraping against my throat, wondering if she could hear my heartbeat from there. I concentrated on slowing my breaths, counting the seconds, in and out.

She paused, sat beside me on the couch, barely making an indentation. “We’re not sure just yet. But what I’d like to do right now is get your statement while it’s all still fresh. Why don’t you tell me what happened. How you found him.”

I took a second deciding what to say; I had spent my life telling lies by omission. Excising the irrelevant, the past, becoming someone with a different history or none at all. And so it was instinct. To tell the truth without all the facts. The details coming in an odd, detached way, in response to each question. I heard a noise. I found him outside. Yes, I touched him. I’m sure, I touched him. No, I can’t remember how. I can’t remember.

“What did you hear?” she asked, homing in on specific details.

“A phone.” The truth. It had woken me from the haze. Let her think it had carried across the yard.

“Who did you think it was out there?”

Jonah, at his desk, reading my text. Feet up, in his worn jeans, bourbon in a glass—

“I didn’t. I didn’t know. I just heard the ringing, and it was coming from the direction of Rick’s house, and—”

“Liv keeps an eye on me, Nina. She checks in,” Rick said. This, too, was not a lie. In the last few months, I’d started to notice that tremor in his hand—I worried about him. I worried about him driving. So I picked up groceries if I was going to the store, and I knocked on his door if I hadn’t seen him out all day.

Nina Rigby looked at him closely, like she was reading between the lines: Did I head outside because I thought it was Rick needing help? A good story that emerged between the details, whether it was true or not. Couldn’t it be