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“Cut the shit, Lane.” She takes three steps toward me and yanks the pen from my hand. She drops it onto the desk, just out of my reach. “You know neither of us enjoy the fact that I’m here.”
She continues to pace the small office. It’s much too early for that kind of fervor. Camille’s known to be a fan of the white stuff, and it looks like she’s had a few bumps already this morning.
She stops, whips her head around, and gives me the once-over. “You know I hate it when you call me that,” she seethes. “My name isCamille. Roberts was my—” She pauses and looks at me with her mouth gaping open. She’s lost her train of thought midsentence. Usually coke heightens a person’s cognitive abilities. Her coke habit seems to have the opposite effect. She’s not making any sense. She recovers, though. “That was my father’s name. You may refer to me by my first name.”
“Of course.” Camille is not a feminist. If she were, she wouldn’t be in my office desperate to get her hands on money she didn’t earn.
“Speaking of my father—”
Camille has come for her weekly progress update. Uninvited. As usual. “I said I’d call with any news. I say that every week. And yet here you are.”
“And yet here I am.”
“Good. Because since you’re here you should know I’m making progress.”
She tilts her head to the side. “What kind of progress are we talking? Because last I checked, my father is still dead, and no one has been arrested for his MURDER!”
“Don’t scream, Camille.”
She looks at me like she’s a child whose just been scolded. A child who doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong.
“Do you have any idea—any idea whatsoever—how humiliating this is? Do you have any idea what people are saying? The lies!”
“I can only imagine.”
She transforms before my eyes from angry Camille into a whiny, malevolent version of herself. This one is extra. Extra hard to get rid of. “People think Daddy had some weird sex fetish.”
“The term you’re looking for is erotic asphyxiation. And maybe he did.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I almost tell her that a thirty-something-year-old woman calling their father Daddy is the ridiculous part, but I don’t want to kick a hornet’s nest. Instead I say, “Sometimes we don’t know people the way we think we do.”
“I know my father. And I know that my father would never in a million years kill himself.”
Her opinion makes me think of Kelsey. I wonder if she might someday say the same.
The TV in the waiting area flashes. I catch it from the corner of my eye. Camille follows my gaze. “Oh God, not her again.”
Ali Brown fills the screen. I can’t hear what is being said, not with the glass wall between me and the television. But I can read body language and hers doesn’t look good. The ticker across the bottom readssex therapist helps victims of sexual abuse.“You know her?”
“Of course I know her,” Camille spits. “Everyone knows her.”
She leans on the corner of my desk and watches the TV, shaking her head. “Daddy was a big fan. Me, not so much.”
“My ex-wife, too.” The jury is still out on how I feel, but this, I keep to myself.
“Funny thing though. She’s just like every other so-called expert.”
“How’s that?”
Camille Roberts rolls her eyes. “She’s full of shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ethan
I’m still at my desk long after the sun has gone down. The office is dark and eerily quiet, the way I like it. Nadia left hours ago, and while I could do the same thing I’m doing here from my home office, there’s something about going home to an empty house I just can’t face.
