“She’s well,” Chloe says, turning her attention back to my mom. “We trade letters every few weeks. We just won her an appeal, and we’re hoping that goes through smoothly.”
I straighten, though the news of the appeal isn’t a surprise to me. I’d seen it in the newspaper and on TV. Heard rumblings about it throughout the department. The reminder that I put Chloe’s mother in prison is a heavy one, a piece of baggage that feels like it may be too complex for us to unpack together if…this turns into something real.Do I want that? Especially if she was involved in her stepfather’s deaths in some way?
My mother tuts, leaning back into the sofa. She absently runs her finger up the length of her forearm, massaging the spot near her elbow that gave her the most pain before. “Good for her,” she says. “I hope she wins.”
Well, I guess today is just my day for lashings. She makes the comment like her son wasn’t the one who put her in prison, and is she…insinuating she thinks it might have been a mistake?
I tighten my jaw, leaning back against the cushion behind me. I want to jump in, defend myself, but this doesn’t seem like the time.
“Those men were horrible,” she continues, and Chloe nods slowly beside me, rolling her lips between her teeth. Her words from last night pummel through me.
They were bad men, Colin. And if you would have continued your investigation into them instead of taking an easy arrest, you’d have known that.
Iwantedto do more digging. Investigating. That’s the job, for Christ’s sake. I wasn’t sold on which one of them had been guilty. I wasn’t convinced either of them had done it over the other—or both, perhaps. But when Caroline confessed, my captain told me to back off, eventually threatening to kick me out of the department if I didn’t.
And then there was the video footage that put Chloe out of the house at the time of her third stepdad’s murder. That should have been the endof the line for me, but I hadn’t been able to quiet the nagging voice in the back of my mind that it was a setup of some sort…
Just before I’m about to jump into the conversation that’s giving me fucking whiplash and ask my mother how she could possibly know those men were horrible, she continues, “I could see it in their eyes,” further sinking me into my pit of confusion and shame. And just like that, the conversation is behind us.
“You’re not here against your will now, are you, Chloe?” My mother is joking, her gaze bouncing between the two of us and the ghost of a smile tracing her mouth. “I know my son has been quite attached to the idea of you…in jail, on the front page of the paper, in handcuffs.” My mother gives me a wink that makes my face heat like an embarrassed teenager.Gross, Mom.“Well, it seems he’s just attached to the idea of you, Chloe. He hasn’t threatened your life to be here today?”
I scoff, stretching an arm behind Chloe as she giggles. “Would you quit? She’s fine,” I say, but I find myself glancing at Chloe anyway for confirmation, her posture loose despite the nerves she’d had leading up to this introduction. “She’s in danger, I brought her with to…” The words die on my tongue, because although my initial goal was to bring her with to protect her, it feels like that goal flew out the window somewhere between Sunset and Devil’s Peak.
“Ahh.” My mom lifts her hand to her own cheekbone, gently touching the pads of her fingertips to the spot Chloe has the remnants of a bruise on her face. “Is that the danger you mention? Someone put hands on you?”
Chloe mimics my mother’s actions, tracing a finger from her temple toward her nose. “Occupational hazard,” Chloe jokes, and then she’s leaning forward, changing the subject.
“How areyou?” she asks my mom, reaching across the space and into my mother’s lap to grab her hand. “The girls at the front desk said you’re not eating. That you’re missing your activities.”
My focus snaps to where Chloe’s thumb is rubbing against my mother’s knuckles, the touch and movement so intimate, I’m utterly dumbfounded at the interaction between the two. They’re talking like they’re old friends, like they know each other. And as confusing as it is, it also sets ablaze a warmth in my chest that speeds throughout my entire body, effectively incinerating every last trace of suspicion in my blood. My hand instinctively finds its way to Chloe’s back, the gratitude I feel toward her right now overpowering any other feeling that might attempt to invade my skin.
Not even my mother’s own children act this gently with her, this concerned. They don’t evenshow up. And here Chloe is, the woman I’ve made sure had zero peace after I put her mother in jail, seeming truly anguished about my mother’s current state.
Yeah. I’m a piece of shit.
21
Chloe
Funny things happen when you find yourself in the vicinity of a serial killer, especially when you are one.
First, my heart skipped a beat, particularly during the moment the redhead at the front desk told us she wasn’t sure what happened to the sweet Diane who’d been found unresponsive in her bed last week. Then again, when Colin’s mother told us she wasn’t on any prescription pain medications, and she still had the narrowest pupils I’ve ever seen. I could see Colin’s unease painted all over his body, in his tense movements and clipped questions about her medications that suddenly made her hot and her apartment’s AC being on full blast, even though the weather outside is fairly cool these days. I’m sure he noticed her pupils as well, because for one, he’s a cop, and two, he said his sister’s an addict. He’s probably more in tune than he wants to be to the side effects of drug use.
My intuition was on high alert the moment I met the lovely Elizabeth Mills. Specifically, when I saw the look on Colin’s face that confirmed his mother was not this sick when he saw her last, which was just a few weeksago. The concern etched into his features could be seen from a mile away, no matter how hard he tried to cover it for her sake.
I was nervous to meet Colin’s mother. I wanted her to like me. To love me for her son. And all my nerves washed away when I saw the look on her face when we shook hands and she used my full name. She knew exactly who I was, and she didn’t shy away from me. And more than that, her asking about my mother and commenting on the men whose deaths put her in prison led me to believe she knew more about us than even Colin did.
Perhaps she’d had her own evil stepdad in another life, or husband.
An hour into our visit when Elizabeth’s nurse, Vera, walked in, Elizabeth’s demeanor went from dull but talkative to alert, quiet, and on edge, and every miniscule hair on my body stood at attention.
Vera seemed surprised that Colin and I were there, but she covered it well, quickly jumping into introductions and letting us know she had some things to do to keep herself busy while we finished visiting. If my body hadn’t already prickled with concern, it would have at the exact moment Vera announced she’d wait for us to be gone before she administered Elizabeth’s medications.
Colin has shared with me that he’d been his mother’s medication dealer since her diagnosis, and Vera should know that. So I can only assume that there’s something she doesn’t want us to see in that medication cart of hers.
“Do you mind if I use your restroom, Elizabeth?”
Colin’s mother smiles weakly, lifting a hand in the direction of her bedroom. “It’s right through there.” My heart aches for the woman sitting on the couch, small and bland when I know I see a spark of fire in her eyes, just like the one in Colin’s. She’s fiery, but her flames have been doused, andI don’t like that.
