I brace for an angry rejoinder, but Tiana only sits, her expression unreadable. One seemingly endless minute of silence, and then she says, “You were my first crush.”
I must give a start at that because her lips twist in a smile.
“Not what you expected to hear?” She reaches for the linen napkin and folds it over her lap. “I’d started feeling as if I liked girls. That’s why I bugged you so much about your dating. I was working through my own sexuality. Somewhere along the way, you answered my questions, not by anything you said, but because I fell for you. My first crush.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sputters a choked laugh, relaxing as she settles into her chair. “And that’s not what I expected to hear, but oddly appropriate, under the circumstances. It screwed me up for a while. The first girl I liked slept with my father. Freud would have a ball with that one. Took me a while to get over it. I even tried boys, which did not go well.”
“Iamsorry.”
She eyes me and then nods. “Well, you mentioned having a complicated relationship with my mother. I have a complicated one with you. So we start on similar ground.” She takes a bite of salad and then says, casually, “Mom said you never had sex with Dad. That those photos caught the extent of it. She believed that, you know.”
“Good, because it’s the truth, and I suspect she believed it because your father’s story matched. I can’t makeyoubelieve it, though, Tiana. It sounds like a convenient fiction – the camera caught our one and only encounter. But it did. I made a mistake. A horrible, drunken mistake that I will never live down. I hurt your mother. I hurt you and Jamie. I cannot undo that.”
She flinches at her brother’s name.
“How is Jamie?” I ask, my voice softening.
“Fine,” she says brusquely. She meets my gaze. “My brother had problems before you came along. You didn’t help them, but you didn’t cause them, either, so don’t go taking credit for that.”
She sips her water. “Mom said you had medical proof that you were a virgin after you left us.”
I wince. “I stupidly thought that would resolve everything. I was, thankfully, convinced otherwise. If you want to hash out what happened fourteen years ago, we can do that. I’d rather not. Blame me for whatever you want – or need – to blame me for, Tiana. I’ll accept it. What I came here for today was the one thing I won’t accept blame for. Your mother’s death.”
“Then turn yourself in. Let the police sort this out.”
“Right, trust that the truth will set me free just like it did the last time. No one wanted to hear my story then, Tiana. Including your mother. I poured my heart into a letter for her, and she sent me a vitriolic response that I can recite from memory. I thought that meant she rejected my apology and my explanation, but she never even read it. She judged me without opening–”
I stop abruptly. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I…” I take a deep breath and rise. “I think I should leave now. We aren’t going to get anywhere with this. We can’t. Too much anger and too much bad blood, and I’m going to say things I don’t want to say to you.”
“If you killed my mother by accident–”
“I was nowhere near your mother when she died, Tiana.”
“Then there wouldn’t be a warrant for your arrest. You seem to want honesty here, Lucy, but you’re obviously lying. You were in her room.”
“Yes, hours after her death. I was summoned by whoever is trying to frame me.”
She shoves her chair back. “Frame you? Is that where you’re going with this? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I found her body. I lied about that because I panicked. I was summoned to breakfast by the killer, who was using your mom’s phone and pretending to be her. When I arrived, the door was ajar. I walked in and found her, and before I could report it, the hotel staff arrived. I hid in the closet because I was about to be discovered at a murder scene holding the victim’s phone.”
“So youdohave her phone. Which you just happened to be holding after finding her body… instead of calling the cops.”
“I was confirming that she’d sent me those texts because I was freaking out. Yes, I should have called the police first, but at the time, all I could think was that I’d been summoned to a murder scene.”
“I’d like her phone back.”
“And I would like to stay out of prison.” I take out my old cell phone, open my messages and pass it over. “This is our conversation thread. You can see her asking to switch to breakfast – and why – and me agreeing. Then you can see me texting from inside her room, saying the door was left open.”
She reads the texts. Then she scrolls up, as if making sure this is part of the thread where I definitely had been speaking to Isabella earlier.
“I’m telling you my story,” I say, “knowing that when I leave, you might contact the police and pass all this along, including the fact that I lied to them and fled the scene of a crime. I won’t ask you not to. There’s isn’t a nondisclosure agreement on this conversation, Tiana. I made a mistake, one that I couldn’t figure out how to undo. I still can’t.”
“You’re digging yourself into a hole. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Of course I realize that. But from where I stand, I’m not digging a hole. I’m sliding down a slope into a fiery pit, and at any moment, I can decide to fling myself into that pit, and I’ll be exactly where I would have been if I let the hotel staff find me at your mother’s murder scene. I’m scrabbling up this slope, and I’m still slipping, but I’m not ready to jump to my doom.”
