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She snorts. “I’ll admit I was a little out of it when you showed up. I half thought I was hallucinating.”
“Yeah. I’m not surprised. How are you feeling now?”
“I’m feeling like an idiot for falling for the whole let’s be friends bit, to be honest,” she says. “I was surprised when he asked me on a study-date, but considering how busy the library has been at school, I figured there was no harm in coming out here. Shows how much I know.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.
“Well, yeah, but, also, I shouldn’t say yes when a guy I dumped after one bad date asks for a platonic study date, to his parent’s house. I should have smelled a rat. Seriously.”
“Not your fault,” I repeat. “He’s the one who did something bad, Beth. You have nothing to feel awful for. Okay?”
She blinks at me. “I should have said no.”
“He should have taken the first no for an answer.”
“The first no?” she asks, looking confused.
“The dumping after the bad date.”
“Oh …”
I don’t think she even considered that.
“Maybe, think about what you should do a little bit longer before you answer a guy next time, but honestly, none of this is on you. He’s the one who couldn’t take no for an answer.”
She smiles faintly. “Secret’s lucky to have you, but I’m still not really sure why you’re here.”
“That’s kind of a long story,” I start. “But basically, I’m working with private detectives now, so when Secret called me worried about where you’d disappeared to, I had a lot of help to find out where you’d gone.”
“Wow,” she murmurs. “So, I might still have been in that closet if Secret hadn’t called you.”
“Maybe. It didn’t take a lot to figure out who was the likely suspect for kidnapping though so the cops wouldn’t have taken too much longer if it had come down to calling them.”
“A minute longer would have been too much to save these jeans from my bladder,” Beth says, shivering. “Ugh. I can’t imagine having to sit around in borrowed pants here. Not after that video.”
“What was the video, anyway?”
She grimaces. “Oh, you, know, how to be the perfect nineteen-fifties housewife. Keep the house clean, keep your body trim, look after your king … I could puke just thinking about it.”
“It does sound kind of sickening.”
“I had to listen to it for like a whole freaking day,” she complains. “I had dreams about it. It’s probably already done me irreversible psychological damage.”
“Everything’s reversible,” I assure her.
“So, I’m not going to turn into a perfect little housewife?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think you should worry about that.”
“I wish I could stop,” she mutters, laughing a little.
I put my arm around her, and she leans into me.
We sit out back for a while until we hear a car engine out in the street. I turn a little and look back at the house to see Mr. Hamilton getting up from the table.
Oh, good. I think the police have arrived.
Chapter Sixty-Three
