The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,44
I was still trying to escape. Wondering if I ever would.
“Okay,” he said, eyes closed. “I get it. I’m sorry.” He looked around the room, out the window, back at me. “We don’t have to do this right now.”
But I wanted to tell him something on my own, something he wouldn’t just read on his phone later. “I have a scar,” I told him. I lifted my left arm out to the side. “Can’t move my shoulder above this.”
His eyes settled on my upper arm. I knew he’d seen it before. “I thought it was from an accident.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “Dislocated shoulder. Fractured humerus. I needed surgery to get things back in place. Nails and wires to hold it together.”
“Broken and dislocated?” He winced. “That’s rare in a kid. Must’ve been incredibly painful.”
“I don’t remember it,” I said, shrugging it off. “I also don’t like enclosed spaces.”
He scratched the back of his head, looking off to the side. “And here I thought you were a germaphobe.”
“I mean, I am. But the space is the primary culprit.”
He smiled then, eyes lighting up in that familiar way, so I knew I was amusing him, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Maybe I could do this. I could be both Olivia and Arden, and Bennett could accept past and present as one.
But then his face darkened, jaw tipped toward the window, to the invisible place where someone had just died. “You didn’t recognize him? At the store?” A tone of incredulity. Bennett, sifting through the facts, like the police would be doing somewhere else.
I shook my head. “It’s been twenty years.” To me, he remained that ageless photo in the papers. That single clip from his lone interview. He’d faded into the background after, an ancillary piece to the story. I could see the similarities, now that I was looking for them, underneath the passage of time. The deep-set eyes. The shape of his mouth. But in my mind, he was still so young.
Sean Coleman. To think he wasn’t much older than we were now when the media first shone its light on him. That he was thrust into the camera with the same speed at which he’d grabbed my wrist. What I’d remembered from his interview was that he was soft-spoken and tentative. Nothing like I’d remembered of the man in the store: Hey, I know you. So sure. So different from the soft-edged, shell-shocked face after the rescue.
Bennett paced the room slowly, scanning the surfaces he’d seen dozens of times before, like he was looking for something new. Something that might clue him in to a different person—one he’d never met.
“What were you seeing Dr. Cal for?” He wasn’t looking at me when he asked it, and the entire room suddenly changed.
My jaw tensed. “I told you,” I said, words even and measured. “I couldn’t sleep.”
I knew why he was asking. The information at his fingertips, tucked away in his palm. The girl from Widow Hills had been sleepwalking. That’s what made it such a compelling story. She’d been swept away at night, and she hadn’t even seen it coming.
He turned to face me, no longer acting nonchalant. “I’m just saying, you know how the hospital can get.” And didn’t I? How long had it taken for Elyse to show up in the ER after I’d been brought in? How long before everyone knew the details of the case? About the body and the method of death?
“There are HIPAA laws, and like I said, I’d been having trouble sleeping.”
I could imagine the detective asking it instead, the implied meaning underneath. I was glad she had left. But Bennett was doing the same, seeing the present through the filter of something that had happened long ago.
Bennett had his eyes closed, one hand held out in front of him in defense. “I’m just saying. Someone must’ve seen you walk into his office. That’s it. The rest is conjecture, nothing more.”
Bennett was probably filing everything away in his mind. Deciding, right then, which side of the line I fell on. “Seriously, Bennett? It’s your conjecture.”
He cringed, then took a step closer. “No, I wasn’t saying . . . I’m sorry. I’m having kind of a hard time with this. It’s just a lot of information all at once.”
“I didn’t even know who he was,” I said, hands balling up. My nails dug into my palms. “Or do you think I’m lying?”