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Her brows narrowed, but she still didn’t open her eyes, like she was too tired to do so. “How long?” she whined.
Leaning down close to her, I pushed the dark strands of hair out of her face. “I just want to take a quick shower.” I felt gross and dizzy, and maybe a shower would help.
Her nose crinkled, and she opened one eye a fraction. “Fine, but hurry.” Then she reached for my hand and squeezed. “Did you have fun tonight?”
I squeezed her hand back. “Yeah, I did.”
She gave a sleepy, lopsided smile.
I wasn’t convinced that the party life was for me, but it hadn’t been too bad before the cops showed up.
“I love you, Lark.”
I returned her smile. “I love you, too.”
Thea dropped my hand and reached for her half heart necklace. She caught hold of the small charm and held it out to me. My smile widened as I leaned down more and pulled on my charm, bringing it up to hers and completing the heart necklace. It was a silly little thing we’d done since we got them.
“Sisters forever,” Thea said.
I nodded. “Forever.”
With a tired sigh, she let our necklaces break apart and nestled her head back into her pillow. She closed her eyes again, and I stood from her bed.
I hovered by the doorway, glancing back at Thea. The bed did look comfortable. I debated on skipping the shower, but my mouth was dry and tasted like stale vodka and I needed to at least brush my teeth.
So, I left her room, leaving her all alone, and headed down to the bathroom. I took that shower, slipping back into my butterfly cardigan when I was finished because I hadn’t thought to bring down pajamas. The exhaustion hit me under the warm water and with my brain in a fog, I’d made a little nest of towels right in front of the heater and laid down.
I hadn’t planned to fall asleep, but that’s what happened.
The next thing I remembered was being woken, and the man in black fleeing our home and into the night.
I’d never forgiven myself for leaving her all alone.
20
Lark
Present Day
Everyone in the room held their breath as I finished retelling my memory of that night. I had started from the very beginning, not leaving anything out. My hands itched to reach for Reid, but I forced myself not to look at him. I couldn’t. Shame burned inside my chest, and I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment in his expression.
I hadn’t looked out for Thea like I’d promised him. Instead, I’d left her alone to die.
Emersyn finally let out a huff of air, her eyes glassy behind her cat-eyed rims. “Wow,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “To think, if you’d stayed in that room…” She shivered. Her hands smoothed down her braids again as she glanced down at her notebook. “I guess that actually brings me to my hardest question, then.”
I expected my pulse to soar, because I knew what was coming. But after bringing myself back to that night, after reliving my last moments with my best friend, I was numb.
“What some people criticize you for, Lark,” Emersyn continued, her voice taking on some sharpness, “is the amount of time it took to call the cops after you claimed to have found the bodies. It’s estimated that five hours went by before 911 was called. Can you help explain what happened to cause such a gap in time?”
My eyes flicked to Reid’s briefly before I answered. There wasn’t any disappointment there, as I expected. His face was stoic, like he was trying very hard to keep it blank.
“I understand that people blame me for that,” I said, softly. “And maybe they have a point. I don’t know. The only thing I can say about that is when I walked into Thea’s room and saw the body of my best friend—” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat. I could do this. “Everything inside me just…shut down. Later, it was explained to me that my brain was trying to protect me from what I was seeing. I couldn’t do anything but keep breathing. I fell into shock, frozen until someone else found me and pulled me out of there.”
That someone being Reid.
Emersyn’s eyes softened with sympathy. “I understand, and that had been what the police explained to the public, but I think that’s hard for people who’ve never experienced that much trauma to understand.”
“And that’s their right to not understand or believe me, but it’s the truth.”
