“You are, too. Take care, Elise. I’ll call you again soon.”
“You, too,” she says with another audible smile. “Goodbye, Isla.”
I drop the phone and stare at the ceiling. For countless minutes, I turn all the information over in my mind. Over and over and over again, I sift through every tidbit about all of it, trying to force all those little puzzle pieces together into a whole picture, but there are too many missing chunks of it to make sense.
I’m so caught up in trying to make sense of it that I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’ve got the phone next to my ear, listening to it ring on the other end. I gasp and recoil, aghast at my automatic behavior, and immediately end the call.
I can’t callMalachi.
If nothing else, it’s the middle of the night in Corwick, which is justrude. And not to mention, that relationship is even moreoverthan it’s ever been. I can’t call him to just use him as a sounding board to help me sift through my—
The phone lights up, buzzing and ringing, and I guess I woke him up.
Not answering would be equally rude, and he’d probably worry, so I swipe the screen to answer and cringe.
“Hi,” I say timidly.
“Isla?” he says urgently, andoh great. He’s already worried. “Is something wrong?”
“Um.” I pinch a fold in the comforter and release it. “I uh… I don’t know.”
“Is there a problem with your security team? Are they around?”
“They’re fine. They’re on the perimeter and in the cottage.”
“Oh.” Malachi pauses. “Is something else wrong?”
“Uh…well.” I cringe again. “Did I wake you up?”
“No. I haven’t been sleeping much.”
“Oh.” I frown. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What’s going on, Isla?” he all but demands, albeit with a gentle, concerned voice that is the polar opposite of the way he spoke to me theentire timewe were married. Honestly, if he had been nice like this, I probably could have managed to work things out with him like Mamá said I should have.
But there’s nothing I can do about that now, and it’s probably for the best anyway, and since I’ve got him on the phone…
“I just got off the phone with my friend, Elise. We were friends when I was at Columbia. She was the one who—”
“Yes, I know of Elise,” he says pleasantly in that warm, soft, baritone Corwickian inflection that I used to love. One of the first things I loved about him. “How is she?”
“She’s doing really well. She um…” I pause as I sort through the conversation. “I actually called her to ask about that party. I thought she might have some insight into it. I honestly haven’t had a lot to do back here at home other than a lot ofthinking, and I thought it might be good to find out what she remembers about that weekend just for the sake of closure. You know… for when I start going to therapy.”
“Ah.” He inhales and exhales quietly, and the sound of it causes something in my chest to ache. “And was it unpleasant to hear, or do you feel like it was helpful?”
“It was helpful because honestly…” I can feel the spiel of what almost seems like a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory barreling up my throat and out of my mouth before I can think the better of my words. “I feel like someone set me up.”
The line is silent for a beat. “I beg your pardon. Set up, how?”
“Like…” I shift my eyes as I think. “She told me she brought me back to my dorm after we left the hospital so I could rest, and the plan was that she would take me home the next day, but when she came by, I was gone. She said she figured I had decided to go back by myself, and she obviously couldn’t call me, and that’s the last she ever heard from me, butMalachi.” I suck in a breath in an attempt to reel myself back in. “Ineverwent back to my house. My parents hadn’t seen me since before all that, and then they didn’t see me again until they picked me up in Mexico after… you know, after…”
“I know,” he murmurs, his voice still low and soft, but there’s something in his tone that sounds like he’s pondering the information.
“Yeah,” I continue, “and I remembered what Mamá told me the day they brought me home, andshesaid I had told her and Papá that I was going on a weekend trip with one of my girlfriends, butElisewas the only girlfriend I would have gone on a trip with, and I never did. I didn’t go on a trip, and I didn’t go home, andthenthat’s when I started doing all the crazy stuff Mamá told me about… you know… calling them and demanding my inheritance and being hateful, but I wouldnevertreat my parents like that. She said before that they just assumed I was on drugs or something, and maybe I was. Maybe all of it was just me going crazy after everything that happened, but it honestly feels like something else was going on that I don’t know about. Thattheydon’t know about. Thatnobodyknows about because I can’t remember any of it.” I suck in another breath, and my chest is tight like I’m on the cusp of hyperventilating, but I don’t stop. “And you know how Elle and the psychologist think that I block stuff out because of fear and trauma? What if something was going on with me that was so bad and so scary that I just blocked it out, and what if I didn’t actually go crazy and start taking drugs or whatever? I don’t understand any of it, but it feels like I’ve been set up. Or I feel like someone found me in this totally vulnerable state and took advantage of that.”
He’s silent for even longer. “Huh.”
I roll my eyes, more at myself than his abbreviated response. “I mean, it probably sounds crazy, but it was all crazy anyway.” I sigh loudly in frustration and defeat. “Anyway, it doesn’t even matter because it was a long time ago. But, again, I don’t have a lot going on right now, and I have a lot of time to think about all of this stuff.”
