RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,138

make a good mother one day if only she can settle down long enough to find someone and fall in love. She loves to be outside. She loves to live by the sea, and craves—

“Elodie? Yes, there you are. Good girl. Come back,” she says, her warm brown eyes full of emotion. “I know this is hard, but I need you to try and focus for a little while, okay?”

I jerk my head up and down.

“I was asking you if you could tell me what happened, please? The officer who found you at your house said you were not making any sense when he...”

She can't even say it. So I do it for her. My voice creaks and cracks as I push the words out of my mouth. “When he opened up the box.”

“Yes, Elodie. When he opened up the box.”

“I don't remember what I said to him,” I tell her.

“Yes. That is understandable.” She's perfunctory. She manages to hide her horror well. That could be why they chose her to come in to speak to me. Aside from the fact that she's a woman, and she has kind eyes, and she shares my mother's nationality—points that they probably figured would help me open up to her. “Do you think you could start at the beginning for me?”

Everything's so confused. My thoughts are all tangled together, like an unspooled ball of wool. I pull memories through my hands like I'm searching for the end of a string, but it just keeps going and going. “I don't—I can't really...”

“Okay. It is okay.” Aimée reaches across the table, touching her fingers to the back of my hand. The contact startles me so badly that I reel back, knocking over the glass of water they gave me. The spilled liquid spreads across the table, running off the edge of its surface, dripping down into my lap, but I don't move. I don't try to mop it up. I just sit there and let it happen.

“Merde!” Aimée hisses. She runs out of the room and comes back a moment later with a wad of paper towels. Between her and the silent guy sitting next to her, they clear up the mess quickly, drying off the table. Aimée gives me a bundle of napkins to pat my jeans dry, but I don't bother. I just hold onto them, my fingers rustling over the rough surface of the cheap paper. Round in circles. Round in circles.

“Elodie? Are you listening?”

I snap my head up. Aimée's back in her seat again. God knows how long she's been sitting there. “I cannot suggest what happened to you based on what we know at this stage, but I can read back what you told the officer. Do you think that would be okay? And then you can tell us if there is anything else you remember, or if there is anything you want to change? And don't worry. There is no right or wrong here. If you remember something differently, that is okay. You are allowed to tell us, and you are not going to get into any trouble.”

I blink to let her know that I've understood.

She cracks her neck, inhaling in and out a few times as though she's steeling herself before she starts reading. And then she begins.

“I came home at six. He was already there at the house. My father. He was supposed to be away on maneuvers, but he must have come back early. I realized he was drunk right away. At least, I thought he was drunk. He was acting weird, staggering around and walking into the furniture. He wouldn't talk to me. I called out for my mom, to tell her that there was something wrong with him, but she didn't answer, so I went looking for her.

“She likes to write letters to my grandmother in the back sunroom, so that's where I looked first. She was lying on the tiles there, covered in blood. She was on her stomach and her skirt was up around her waist. I didn't understand what had happened at first. But then I saw the blood on her underwear.” Aimée pauses. Swallows. Continues. “There was a hole in the side of her head.” Aimée looks up at me. “What kind of hole, Elodie? Like a bullet hole?”

Bile rises up the back of my throat. I'm apart from myself, outside my body, removed from this place and this situation. It's the only way I can give her the information