He puts the end of the pen in his mouth with his head angled to the side contemplatively. “When did you see her and where?”
“Around seven or so and I saw her… across the street from the bar.” I pause, remembering what I saw that morning; the blood, the dead body, that stupid button that is practically screaming to be found from the box in my bedroom. “When the police and the ambulance were there.”
He swiftly flips the page in his book, then reads over something, his brows furrowing. “I have a note in here that the bar closes at 3:00 am. But the police and paramedics weren’t there until after 7:00 am, so why were you still at work?”
“I had an… incident that night with one of the coworkers.” I feel like I’m failing a test.
He becomes very interested, even more than when I entered the room. “Incident?”
I wet my lips with my tongue and speak in my most sensual voice I can muster up, let myself pretend to be Lily for a brief moment. “Sexual incident with one of my coworkers. Completely welcomed and all, but we did end up falling asleep there.” I wink at him, playing the part of Lily. Playful, fun, and composed and it almost feels like I’m watching myself in a mirror, instead of inside myself, actually doing it. “You know how that can go.”
I think he might with the way he bites his lip, as if remembering some hot sex he had once and I seriously consider pinning him down on the sofa, tearing his shirt open, and watching the buttons fly all over the place. Maybe that would get me out of this mess.
Doubtful.
“Yeah, I guess.” He presses the pen against the notepad again, preparing to write, I’m sure a big F for Fail. “Do you mind if I ask who the guy was?”
“River Everett, the manager of the bar.” My hand twitches when I say it. I know I’ve made a huge mistake. I’m so screwed. He’s going to talk to River and he’s going to say that I didn’t sleep with him. That I’m liar. And that I woke up in the freezer without any recollection of what occurred the previous night when Sydney disappeared.
After he scribbles a few more things down, along with River’s name, he puts the pen and notepad back into his jacket pocket. I expect him to leave, but instead he sits back in the chair. “Have you always lived here in Grove? He wonders, mildly interested, tapping his foot on the floor as he looks around the room.
I shake my head, my eyes fastened on him as I slide my arms onto the armrests and I curl my fingers around the edges, pressing all my energy there. “No, I used to live in Fairfield. We actually moved here when I was fifteen.” I don’t like the personal questions. “But what does this have to do with Sydney?”
“It doesn’t have to do with Sydney.” His blue eyes now look like steel as his mild interest turns to fully absorbed. “It has to do with me.”
I’m hesitant to answer, but I don’t think he’ll drop it until I do, so I tell him the year I would have graduated if my mom hadn’t made me change to home school after the accident. His eyes rise to the ceiling, recognition lighting up on his face. When he looks at me again, I can see in his eyes that he knows me. “Asherford… I knew you looked familiar. You were the girl who—”
“That lost her mind?” Bad choice of words. “Yep, that would be me.” Bitterness seeps into my voice. I don’t like that he knows me and perhaps even knows me before I lost my mind.
“Yeah, I remember when that happened,” he says, then scrutinizes me. “You look a lot different now.”
I self-consciously run my hands over my hair and down the front of my shirt. “How did you know me exactly?”
“I was one of the cops that showed up the night you were hit,” he says and it clicks in my head. That’s why he felt familiar. “I wasn’t on the case or anything. Just called to the scene that night for a little bit.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. He was there. The night when my life restarted. Suddenly I’m the one interested in keeping this conversation going. “How did I look different?”
“Your hair was a lot longer and blond and of course you were a lot younger.” He scans me over with perplexity. “I remember when I arrived at the crime scene, you were calling yourself Lily… and we had a hell of a time figuring out who you were because you had no identification on you at all.”
There is no fear inside me anymore. I’ve gone beyond fear. My heart stops. Dies. I feel like I’m back lying in the street again. Speechless. Frozen in terror. Lily? I was calling myself that that night… how… why… was it because—
A door slams shut in my head. Hard. Causing me to flinch.
I stab my nails deep into my palms, channeling the terror inside me to my hands, to the pain. “Can I ask you a question?”
“That all depends on what it is,” he treads cautiously.
“How did they figure out who I was?” I straight up ask him. “That night.”
“I’m not sure. My partner and I got called out on another case before that happened.” This strange look crosses his face and I can tell he’s calculating his next words carefully. “It was really strange, you know. A girl in the road in the middle of the night with no identification on her. Some of the cops thought you were a runaway or a drug addict with how strange you were acting, but then your mother shows up out of the blue, like she knew you were there, but she said she didn’t. And then there was that fire just a few miles down the road…” He itches his cheek. “Very strange.” The way he says it sounds like he doesn’t think that it’s strange, that it wasn’t a coincidence, that he’s accusing me of something.
“What fire?” I wonder.
He shrugs, lowering his hand to his lap. “Just a building. No one got hurt or anything, but still...”
I don’t like the accusation in his voice at all. “Well, don’t you have a file or something that says if I was involved in any of this?”
His gaze is unwavering. “Maybe, but that doesn’t really matter at the moment. I came here to question you about Sydney.”
“You brought it up.” What the hell am I doing? Stop arguing with the detective.
“I know.” His tone conveys speculation, his eyes lock on me as if he’s ready to turn bad cop and break me open. “Tell me, do you or have you ever gotten into trouble Maddie? Or should I call you Lily?”