His fingers spasm. “Even when I knew you?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
With a quiet sigh, he lets go of my arm. “I wish you had trusted me enough to tell me back then.”
I offer him an apologetic look. “I know, but I didn’t really trust anyone.”
“It must’ve been so damn hard for you to live like that,” he says. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d been a better friend.”
“None of this is your fault. I never said anything about any of this because that’s what I was taught to do.” I rub my hand across the bruise on my arm. “Being a liar has been ingrained in me since the day I was born. And maybe that’s the real reason why I can barely remember the truth—because it’s buried beneath so many of my own lies.”
“That’s your parents' fault. Not yours,” he stresses, carrying my gaze.
“I know.” I partly believe the words.
Perhaps one day I will completely.
We plunge into silence, and his expression is set in deep thought.
He tensely massages the back of his neck. “If you were drugged that night at the bar, then that means this guy Clover was seeing—the one she believed would lead her to Zoey’s killer—could’ve been at the bar too. If that is all connected, anyway.”
“I know. I’ve thought about that too. But I also wonder if it happened after I left the bar. Like maybe I was drugged there, and then someone did it to me in my house. Because this kind of stuff happened to me when I was younger, so it had to have been happening at my house.” I fiddle with a loose thread on the hem of my shorts. “Also, I talked to the driver who drove Clara andme home after we left the bar that night, and he said I was acting paranoid and kept saying I thought someone was following us.”
“Really?” he asks, and I nod. “That was smart of you to ask him—the driver, I mean.”
Did he just call me smart? I don’t think anyone has before.
It makes me feel weirdly uncomfortable, like it’s not anything I deserve.
“But if someone did follow you home,” he continues, dazing off with his thinking face on. “And drugged you while you were at your house, that’d mean they would’ve had to have broken in.”
“Or they had a key.”
“You think one of your family members did it?”
“I don’t know.” I chew on my bottom lip. “Maybe. But then it’d mean that one of my family members also drugged Clover. And was dating her. That doesn’t seem likely. My mom does hide a key under a mat outside, so if someone looked in the right place, they could've found and used it.”
He mulls this over. “Maybe it’s not one person doing this, but a group of people,” he says absentmindedly.
“You think multiple people are going around drugging and killing girls?” I ask but then shake my head. “I guess that’s possible since there were multiple people in the woods that day.” Another thought occurs to me, one I should’ve realized sooner. “Trystan could’ve snuck into my house at any time. His parents have a key. And maybe he’s the guy Clover was dating to get to the truth.”
“I’ve thought about that too, but would Clover really have been able to date him without us knowing? We went to school with both of them. It seems like we would’ve noticed.”
“True.” I remain quiet for a while, willing my mind to remember any sort of clue it’s kept hidden from me.
Ellis clicks the mouse on his laptop. “Let’s solve who owns that house in the middle of the forest. I have a feeling the answer to this starts there.”
As he starts sifting through records online, I return to the sofa to continue reading Clover’s diary. The way she writes about this mystery guy… I feel like these could be my own words.
Control.
Power.
Obey.
They show up time and time again, and they might as well be cut upon my flesh—they’re that familiar to me because they fit his description perfectly.
Jason.
