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“Maybe it doesn’t—maybe I shouldn’t even be here asking.” Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright with tears. “You’ve lied to me before.”
“I never lied.”
“You acted like you barely knew my uncle. You made me feel like an idiot. Do you have a key or don’t you?”
Fuck.
This seems like the worst possible time to make an admission, but I really don’t want to lie to her.
Too late…she sees the truth.
“My god, you had one the whole time…” She covers her face with her hands and takes several steps away before turning back again in fresh outrage. “That was you looking in my window that night, wasn’t it? The night of the storm. The night I dreamed—“
She stops herself, clapping her hand over her mouth, shaking her head at me.
“I’m so fucking stupid. Jude was right—I do the same thing again and again. Has this been a game to you the whole time? Breaking into my house, making me think I’m crazy?”
“That wasn’t—I didn’t—“
It’s hard to defend myself when some of what she’s saying is absolutely true, but not in the way she thinks.
Remi won’t let me get a word in anyway.
“You tried to tell me, didn’t you?I’m not a good person, Remi…and I tried to convince you that you were! Because that’s how desperate I am to ignore what’s right in front of my face.”
My temper snaps.
“That’s the one part you got right—you are fucking oblivious.”
“Well, not anymore!” she bellows. “You stay away from me!”
“Gladly!” I shout back. “Enjoy cooking up bullshit with your new friend, Emma; she dishes it out with every fucking pancake. And don’t worry about the fence—it never really needed fixing anyway.”
I close the door in her face.
Then I wait on the other side of it, trapped in the sick and sinking feeling that my own entryway has become a quagmire. Already I regret everything I said and everything I’ve done.
But that’s an old feeling, one I’m damned sure used to.
I can hear that Remi hasn’t moved, either. I feel her on the other side of the door, hesitant, confused…
After a minute, she turns and slowly tramps back across the yard to her car.
* * *
26
REMI
The rest of October passes in gloomy misery. The days are darkly overcast, which makes me unhappy in the most perverse sort of way because I keep thinking of all the fun things Dane and I could have done beneath the blanket of cloud.
I work every waking moment to distract myself from the incessant back-and-forth of my brain.
What if you’re wrong?
I’m not.
But what if you are?
