She nodded slowly. She was curious about us. Detective Thurber nodded approvingly. We were extremely cautious when advancing -- we were still at a safe distance, but close enough to do our jobs.
We fell into a long silence, and I struggled to read her. She was upset, clearly. Her anger was slowly seething, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it. “So, you two don’t know Mason at all,” she scoffed and turned to Detective Thurber. “Ya’ll lied to me.”
Uh-oh.
“Natalie,” Ace said in his usual way, that slow smooth voice that is so hard not to be mesmerized by. “It’s gorgeous out here, isn’t it?”
She turned her gaze to the vista. Her aura brightened. This place brought back positive emotions.
“How did you first find this place?” I asked, already knowing the answer. I remembered her ex, Peter. The stylish mop of hair, and the kind eyes. He seemed like a sweet man.
Her gaze darted across the forest behind us. “My ex-boyfriend… it’s his cottage. We used to come here all the time.”
“I bet you loved it here,” I said. “My aunt and uncle have a cottage kind of like this one. I used to go there all the time. I loved it.” This was a little white lie -- I had borrowed Leo’s words.
I was following Detective Watt’s instructions to a T. No talk of Mason Henderson, keep the focus off little Haley, become her friend, bring her out of her shell, and let her tell us her story. “What was your ex-boyfriend like?” I asked. “Was he cute?”
She hesitated for a second, and a smile slowly traced her lips. “Yeah… he was cute. He was a good guy.”
Her smile faded and I felt her sink back into darkness. I didn’t quite know how I had upset her. I just knew that I had. I started to panic.
“I broke up with him. I threw away a perfectly good man,” she wailed. “A man who loved me. For a man who couldn’t give a shit about me.”
Shit… what do I say now?
“Mason ruined my life. I had it all, and then he came along,” she cried. “I might as well be dead, now. And he’s probably going to ruin his kids’ lives, too, so Haley is better off coming with me.”
A horrible image of the both of them leaping off the cliff clouded my brain. I felt sick. I blinked hard and shook the terrible vision out of my head. I was choking.
“He still loves you,” Ace broke in. What the?! What was he doing? I realized that he, too, had read her file, and was familiar with her story, with her history with Peter Murphy.
Her eyes grew wide with hope, and her gaze hung to his. She was his. Ace owned her now. He could do his thing. “Who?! Who still loves me?”
He inched closer to her, beyond the protocol parameters, without a care in the world. “They both do,” he said. “Peter has never gotten over you, and he’s still yours.”
She shook her head, but her gaze was still caught in his. “No… I saw his Facebook page… he’s sleeping with the whole town.”
“They don’t mean anything to him,” Ace said, his voice as smooth as silk. “He’s just trying to get over you, to forget about you.”
She bit her lip. “What about Mason? He couldn’t give a shit about me. He just tossed me like yesterday’s trash,” she cried. “He even as much as told me I was trash.”
Damn you, Mason Henderson. Look what you’ve done?
“He gets to move on with his perfect life… with his perfect wife, and perfect children,” she cried. “And I get left behind. I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something to show him he couldn’t treat me like that, show him that he couldn’t just throw me away, and move on with his perfect life.”
“He didn’t mean that. He was trying to push you away, Natalie,” Ace went on. Damn, he was good, and he was breaking all the rules -- we weren’t supposed to talk about Mason.
“Do you realize how hard it was for him to walk away from you? He still fancies you, love. You’re all he can think about,” he went on. “He can’t walk away and do the right thing when you keep running back to him. He needs to push you away, he needs to make you hate him. Because Mason Henderson is a good man. He wants to do the right thing for little Calvin and Haley. As much as he loves you, they come first.”
I felt her soften -- she was putty in his hands. Ace turned to me for a brief second, and I nodded quietly -- a signal to keep going. He had this.
“It’s up to you to let him go, Natalie,” Ace barreled on. “He’s not strong enough, so it’s up to you. You need to end it with him, and move on, Natalie. Peter is still waiting for you. He’s crazy about you. And wouldn’t you two make beautiful babies? ” he teased. “The bloke seems like the type who could handle a nappy change like a pro.”
She smiled. She actually smiled. It almost brought tears to my eyes.
“You love Haley, don’t you?” he asked. Again, he was breaking the rules -- we weren’t supposed to mention Haley either.
She nodded quietly. “I do,” she said, her words a whisper.
