AllFreeNovel
Share Us
JADE: Probably not. When are you coming back?
ME: …I don’t know. Until I’m ruled out at least, but then I have to get the B&B fixed up.
JADE: You’re not still thinking about that???? A man died there!!! Why don’t you just sell it and come home?
ME: I told you that I can’t sell it.
JADE: And your job???
ME: Dunno. Is the boss pissed enough to fire me?
JADE: I think so.
ME: Problem solved.
JADE: Lottie, you’ve lost your fucking mind. You cannot stay there.
ME: Why not? I have property here, and it’s not like it’s a bad place to live.
JADE: You said you’d never go back. I can’t believe you’re upping and moving on a whim, especially to a tourist town. You’re a MURDER SUSPECT. These people think you’ve KILLED SOMEONE.
ME: Funnily enough, I’m aware of that.
And actually, most people didn’t think that.
Just Noah.
Probably.
Hopefully.
JADE: Think about what you’re doing. And call the boss before he fires you. I have to get back to work.
I stared at my phone for a moment before I blew a raspberry at it.
I didn’t expect my best friend to understand my choice, but I did think she’d respect it—accept it, even. She hadn’t sounded like that on the phone and even less so in those messages, and I couldn’t lie, it was a bit upsetting.
If she’d told me what I was telling her, I’d have supported her, no questions asked. I wouldn’t have dreamed of shitting all over her the way she seemed to be doing to me.
For God’s sake, when Ash had found out I’d been accused of murder, she instantly pulled up her socks and decided we’d become some super sleuths to find out who was really responsible, and we hadn’t spoken for a decade.
Yet my best friend, who I saw every single day, who I worked with, who I’d gone to university with and lived with during that time, couldn’t understand that I wanted to stay here. A place where I’d inherited a whole bloody property. Even temporarily.
I put my phone back in my bag and stared at the zipper.
Life had a funny way of showing you things.
Like maybe who your friends really were.
Hell, Jade hadn’t even asked me how I was.
Call me old-fashioned, but that was a basic check-in for someone who’d just lost a close family member, never mind everything else I’d been through.
It was fine.
Whatever.
I had an annexe to clean, and absolutely no cleaning supplies to my name.
