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Elisa felt a desperate churning in her stomach as her control slipped away. A need to shout and scream until Harris believed her. That was the worry here. That he would hear the denials and stack them with all the other evidence he’d been collecting to question her.
Elisa vowed to fight. “No, lying about this doesn’t make sense. We talked about this in the school parking lot.”
“I don’t have children and don’t hang out at schools. You have the wrong person.” Meredith opened her car door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Elisa used her hip to bump the door shut again. “You’ve followed me all over the area.”
“You have me confused with someone else.” Anger floated through Meredith’s voice. She’d gone from welcoming to blank to indignant in a short span of time. She slipped her cell out of her jacket pocket. “I’ve tried to be nice about this, but if you don’t leave me alone I’ll call the police.”
“Do it.” Elisa figured they’d been headed for this showdown. They might as well have it out. “Go ahead.”
Harris put a hand on her arm. “Elisa.”
“Let her.” She shook off his touch and reached into her bag, searching for her phone. “Then she can explain why she’sbeen following me, hanging around Nathan’s school. You forget that I have a photo of you on my phone.”
Meredith threw the door open again and shifted until she stood in the space between it and her seat. “You’re insane. I’m in a parking lot and you’re attacking me.”
Not insane. Not crazy. Not losing it.Elisa repeated those words until she almost believed them. She could not fall apart.
This time Harris pulled Elisa back and out of the way. He gestured for Meredith to leave. “Go ahead. We clearly made a mistake.”
“No, Harris.” Elisa tried to type in the cell’s password but her hands were shaking too much.
Meredith jumped into her car and shut the door. A second later the lock clicked.
The sound ticked off something deep inside Elisa. Anxiety pumped through her until she could feel a flutter around her heart. She put her hand against the car window because they needed to have this conversation. There had been so much lying. She couldn’t let Meredith get away with one more lie.
“Elisa, stop.” Harris moved her away from the car.
No, no, no.She needed everyone to listen. For people to stop pushing her and insisting a serious flaw existed inside of her.
“Wait, I have it.” She scrolled through the fifteen photos Nathan took of the cats this morning. Past the blurry ones and a shot of the kitchen floor.
It was too late. The car jerked and Meredith backed out of her parking spot. Tires squealed and horns honked as she pulled right in front of another car and sped away.
Now the pitying looks would start. The talk about medications and doctors.
Elisa grabbed onto Harris’s jacket sleeve, begging him with every part of her to listen. “Harris, you have to believe me. I can show you. She’s lying.”
“I know.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“You...” That’s as far as Elisa could go. Her arm fell to her side. She almost dropped the phone.
Wrapping her mind around Meredith’s blatant lies and the way she pushed the whole thing back as some sort of mistaken-identity issue made Elisa want to scream. But if she lost control—started yelling and slamming her hand against the roof of a car—like she’d wanted to, then all those accusations about how she’d lost it and needed help might ring true.
The bitch. Until now Elisa had a bit of compassion for her. She’d gotten tangled up in Josh’s life, and few women Elisa knew had survived that yet. But Meredith had gone the extra step today. Made Elisa look like a fool in front of Harris. Tried to make her question her memory and her sanity.
She realized Harris stood in the middle of the lot, watching Meredith’s car pull away. “Harris?”
“I know that woman was lying,” he said in a flat voice.
Elisa honestly had no idea how to respond. She didn’t expect support, not on this. Ever since the strain with Josh started, she felt like Harris had picked sides. Not hers.
“You believe me?” She still couldn’t process that. The weight of it was so profound that she feared believing.
He spun around and faced her. “Of course.”
