“Okay…” I feign confusion. “But why? I don’t know her.”
She stares at me for the longest time. “You should change first,” she mutters with disappointment in her tone, eyeing up my outfit with disdain. “You look disgusting.”
“I look fine for going out into the living room.” I tug the hem of the shirt down and start to step by her.
She snags me by the elbow. “Maddie, please change—”
“I said it’ll be fine,” I interrupt her, staring at her hand on my arm then lift my cold gaze to her. “Now let me go.”
With her eyes pooling with tears, she withdraws back and grudgingly steps aside and lets me through so I can go down the hallway. As I step into the living room, I discretely wipe the sweat off my damp hands as I spot the detective. He’s fiddling with one of my mom’s knick-knacks, a unicorn missing half it’s horn. There are actually a lot of knick-knacks in the living room, practically taking over the shelves, the tables, the windowsill. It overwhelmed me when I was first brought home from the hospital, feeling like I was being watched by the little glass figurines.
“Can I help you?” I ask, my guard up, an invisible wall around me. I am unreachable. Untouchable. You need to be Lily, if you want to get out of this. She’s much stronger.
Never.
My arrival must surprise him because he drops the figurine, but recovers it mid fall before it can hit the hardwood floor and shatter. “Dammit,” he curses under his breath, then carefully sets the unicorn down before he stands up from the chair and crosses the living room with his hand outstretched.
“I’m detective Elliot Bennerly, from the Grove Police Department,” he says, waiting for me to shake his hand.
It takes me a moment to shake it, not to gather the courage, but to debate whether it’s a good idea to touch him. Finally, though, I decide it’ll make me look suspicious if I don’t, so I gently connect my hand with his and shake it politely and a shiver goes down my spine.
Do I know him?
“I’m Maddie Asherford,” I say.
“It’s nice to meet you Maddie.” He pauses, his ice-blue eyes sweeping over me, either looking for evidence or checking me out. He looks familiar but I can’t figure out from where. Late twenties, smooth skin, short brown hair, and nice facial features covered with a little bit of scruff. The only thing he doesn’t have going for him is the suit, otherwise he could be a Ken doll too, although the brunette one. Even though he’s good looking, I don’t want him—or anyone else—looking at me so intently at the moment.
“Likewise.” I causally slip my hand out of his and lower it to my side, unable to endure the touch of him any longer.
I wait for him to say something but he just stares at me with a pucker at his brow. The longer it goes on, the greater the urge gets to pick up the unicorn he was messing around with and bash him over the head. Elimination. This whole process would be a hell of a lot easier if he was unconscious and I just ran from it all.
There you go. Now you’re getting it. Survival.
“So, my mother said you wanted to talk to me about something,” I say, ignoring Lily’s voice the best that I can.
“Oh yeah.” He rips his attention away from me, and then ruffles his hair with his hand before reaching for his jacket pocket. “I’ve came to ask you a few questions about Sydney Ralwington’s murder.”
“Okay…” Adrenaline is soaring through my body. Fear. Even Lily’s afraid. I can feel her in me. Squirming. Restless. Worried.
Just be me and you’ll be okay. Be Lily.
“It’s strictly protocol,” he explains, retrieving a miniature notepad out of his pocket and pen. “We’re just questioning all the people who knew Sydney.”
“I didn’t really know her very well.” I take a seat on the sofa and then motion for him to have a seat across from me.
He sinks into the chair, pen poised on the paper. “But if I’m correct, you worked with her.” He fans through the pages of his notebook then squints at the paper as he reads over something. “At the Devils & Angels Bar?”
I nod. “I’m a waitress there and so was Sydney.”
He glances up at me. “Are you a dancer like Sydney was?” he asks, his gaze flicking to my bouncing knee.
“Dancer. Bartender. Waitress.” I place my hand on my knee to hold it still, attempting to keep my nerves under control. “You name it. I do it.”
“Sounds like you can do just about anything.” I’m not sure if he’s flirting with me or accusing me of something, so I’m uncertain how to respond. Do I flirt back, bat my eyelashes, and show a little skin? Or is he hoping I’ll do that so he can understand me better?
Let me take over.
I shut my eyes and open them, I swear I almost feel Lily slide under my skin and take over my body. I almost allow her to—let her handle the situation that she created. But right at the last second, I shove her away, not ready to accept that I can fully be her if I want to.
“When it comes to the bar, I do.” I recline back in the sofa, my focus on Elliot, portraying that I’m steady, confident—innocent. That I’m not guilty. “In life though, not so much. I only do the things I want to.”
He gives me a cryptic look then jots down some notes. “Did you see Sydney at all the night of March 15th?”
I twirl a strand of my hair around my finger and for a moment I swear it turns blond. “Yeah, at the bar when we were opening up.”
“Was she with anyone? Or did she talk to anyone at all that seemed suspicious?” he asks. “A customer perhaps?
I shake my head. “ I barely saw her for like maybe ten minutes, so I’m not really a good person to ask.”
Then pen stops moving across the paper. “What about later that night? Did you see her at all after the bar closed up?”
“No, not that I can recollect,” I answer as innocently as I can.
He assesses me again, his dark eyes drinking every detail of me in, from my messy hair to my bare feet. “What about the next morning?”
I feel like I’ve been cornered, walked straight into a trap. Either I can answer truthfully and have to explain why I was at the bar afterhours or lie and tell him that I wasn’t. But so many people saw me yesterday morning. Including River and everyone else standing around the crime scene. “Yeah, I saw her the next morning.” I let a slow, uneven breath escape my lips.
He puts the end of the pen in his mouth with his head angled to the side contemplatively. “When did you see her and where?”
“Around seven or so and I saw her… across the street from the bar.” I pause, remembering what I saw that morning; the blood, the dead body, that stupid button that is practically screaming to be found from the box in my bedroom. “When the police and the ambulance were there.”
He swiftly flips the page in his book, then reads over something, his brows furrowing. “I have a note in here that the bar closes at 3:00 am. But the police and paramedics weren’t there until after 7:00 am, so why were you still at work?”
“I had an… incident that night with one of the coworkers.” I feel like I’m failing a test.
He becomes very interested, even more than when I entered the room. “Incident?”
I wet my lips with my tongue and speak in my most sensual voice I can muster up, let myself pretend to be Lily for a brief moment. “Sexual incident with one of my coworkers. Completely welcomed and all, but we did end up falling asleep there.” I wink at him, playing the part of Lily. Playful, fun, and composed and it almost feels like I’m watching myself in a mirror, instead of inside myself, actually doing it. “You know how that can go.”
I think he might with the way he bites his lip, as if remembering some hot sex he had once and I seriously consider pinning him down on the sofa, tearing his shirt open, and watching the buttons fly all over the place. Maybe that would get me out of this mess.
Doubtful.
“Yeah, I guess.” He presses the pen against the notepad again, preparing to write, I’m sure a big F f
or Fail. “Do you mind if I ask who the guy was?”
“River Everett, the manager of the bar.” My hand twitches when I say it. I know I’ve made a huge mistake. I’m so screwed. He’s going to talk to River and he’s going to say that I didn’t sleep with him. That I’m liar. And that I woke up in the freezer without any recollection of what occurred the previous night when Sydney disappeared.
After he scribbles a few more things down, along with River’s name, he puts the pen and notepad back into his jacket pocket. I expect him to leave, but instead he sits back in the chair. “Have you always lived here in Grove? He wonders, mildly interested, tapping his foot on the floor as he looks around the room.
I shake my head, my eyes fastened on him as I slide my arms onto the armrests and I curl my fingers around the edges, pressing all my energy there. “No, I used to live in Fairfield. We actually moved here when I was fifteen.” I don’t like the personal questions. “But what does this have to do with Sydney?”
“It doesn’t have to do with Sydney.” His blue eyes now look like steel as his mild interest turns to fully absorbed. “It has to do with me.”
I’m hesitant to answer, but I don’t think he’ll drop it until I do, so I tell him the year I would have graduated if my mom hadn’t made me change to home school after the accident. His eyes rise to the ceiling, recognition lighting up on his face. When he looks at me again, I can see in his eyes that he knows me. “Asherford… I knew you looked familiar. You were the girl who—”
“That lost her mind?” Bad choice of words. “Yep, that would be me.” Bitterness seeps into my voice. I don’t like that he knows me and perhaps even knows me before I lost my mind.
“Yeah, I remember when that happened,” he says, then scrutinizes me. “You look a lot different now.”
I self-consciously run my hands over my hair and down the front of my shirt. “How did you know me exactly?”
“I was one of the cops that showed up the night you were hit,” he says and it clicks in my head. That’s why he felt familiar. “I wasn’t on the case or anything. Just called to the scene that night for a little bit.”
“Oh yeah,” I say. He was there. The night when my life restarted. Suddenly I’m the one interested in keeping this conversation going. “How did I look different?”
“Your hair was a lot longer and blond and of course you were a lot younger.” He scans me over with perplexity. “I remember when I arrived at the crime scene, you were calling yourself Lily… and we had a hell of a time figuring out who you were because you had no identification on you at all.”
There is no fear inside me anymore. I’ve gone beyond fear. My heart stops. Dies. I feel like I’m back lying in the street again. Speechless. Frozen in terror. Lily? I was calling myself that that night… how… why… was it because—
A door slams shut in my head. Hard. Causing me to flinch.
I stab my nails deep into my palms, channeling the terror inside me to my hands, to the pain. “Can I ask you a question?”
“That all depends on what it is,” he treads cautiously.
“How did they figure out who I was?” I straight up ask him. “That night.”
“I’m not sure. My partner and I got called out on another case before that happened.” This strange look crosses his face and I can tell he’s calculating his next words carefully. “It was really strange, you know. A girl in the road in the middle of the night with no identification on her. Some of the cops thought you were a runaway or a drug addict with how strange you were acting, but then your mother shows up out of the blue, like she knew you were there, but she said she didn’t. And then there was that fire just a few miles down the road…” He itches his cheek. “Very strange.” The way he says it sounds like he doesn’t think that it’s strange, that it wasn’t a coincidence, that he’s accusing me of something.
“What fire?” I wonder.
He shrugs, lowering his hand to his lap. “Just a building. No one got hurt or anything, but still...”
I don’t like the accusation in his voice at all. “Well, don’t you have a file or something that says if I was involved in any of this?”
His gaze is unwavering. “Maybe, but that doesn’t really matter at the moment. I came here to question you about Sydney.”
“You brought it up.” What the hell am I doing? Stop arguing with the detective.
“I know.” His tone conveys speculation, his eyes lock on me as if he’s ready to turn bad cop and break me open. “Tell me, do you or have you ever gotten into trouble Maddie? Or should I call you Lily?”
Fucking asshole. “No, I’m perfect. Just ask my mother,” I say wryly. “And it’s Maddie.” Is it?
His expression is indecipherable, but I have a feeling I’m in deep trouble. “What about that bar you work at? Does your mother know about what that turns into after hours? I’m guessing no.”
“If you know what it turns into afterhours, then why don’t you shut it down?” I question with a curve of my brow.
“I’m working on it.” There’s a silent warning in his eyes.
“Well, I’m not part of it,” I lie breezily. “My job title strictly sticks to during hours.”
I can tell he doesn’t believe me. I don’t know why I care, but I do. I’m about to insist he’s wrong about me, that I’m a good girl that never does anything wrong when his cellphone beeps inside his pocket.
He checks it and then quickly gets to his feet. “I have to go. I have a lot more rounds to make today. If you can think of anything else at all, feel free to call me.” He rushes for the door and it takes a hell of a lot of restraint not to grab his collar, throw him to the ground, pin him down, and force him to tell me everything he knows, then eliminate him because he clearly knows something, or thinks he does anyway.
“Okay, but what’s the I number I can call you at?” I round the coffee table after him.
He hands me a card from his wallet. “My number is on the card. Feel free to call me day or night.” He pulls open the door and I itch to slam it shut in his face. Lock him in here. Torture everything out of him. “It was nice talking to you Maddie.” He pauses with the door cracked. “Why did you say you were Lily that night, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Maddie’s my first name.” I’m fighting really hard to keep it together as I lay my way out of this mess. “Lily’s my middle name.”
“Hmmm…” That’s all he says and then he steps outside into the frosted air and sunlight, turning on his heels as he reaches the path in front of the house. “Take care Maddie Lily Asherford,” he says, flashing a grin at me from over his shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”
I have no clue what the grin is about—it seems more sinister than anything. Still, I give him a wave, then close the door as he walks toward his car in the driveway. I slide the chain over, like I’m locking all the bad out, even though it’s living inside me.
Bravo. You really fucked that one up.
“Oh, go to hell.”
“Maddie, what was that all about?” My mother asks as she tentatively enters the room, rubbing her hands up and down the sides of her arms like she’s cold. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
I’m leaning against the shut door, arms to my side, hands tremulous, palms bleeding from where my nails split open the flesh. “Why would I be in trouble?” I ask, watching her reaction. “If what you say is true, then I never get into trouble.”
I detect a hint of a nervous fidget in her hands as she fiddles with the buttons on her shirt, her hair—anything she can get a hold of. “Maddie, please don’t start with this,” she says. “Just tell me what the detective wanted.”
I don’t know what comes over me. Or maybe I do and I don’t want to admit that I’m allowing Lily to control me so much at the moment because I’m frazzled and irritated. I stand up straight, calm as can be, embracing the darkness, the anger, instead of fearing it. “He wanted to see if I murdered Sydney Rawlington.”
br /> Her skin turns pale and I get a sick gratification over it. This is who I am and what I want to know is if my mother knows who I really am too. If I’ve been this person my entire life and she’s just trying to keep it hidden, hoping it’ll go away.
“Maddie Asherford, you will not take that that tone with me.” She aims for a stern tone but it comes out quivery.
“Don’t you mean Lily?” I observe the way she blinks, note the way she moves her hand to the bottom of her neck where her necklace rests, a nervous habit of hers.
Her jaw drops. “Maddie, what are you talking about?”
I move toward her, past the coffee table, the sofa, the pictures of me on the wall when I was younger, taking each step calculated. “That detective said he was there that night of the accident.” I halt only a few long steps away from her. “And that I was calling myself Lily and that somehow you knew about the accident before they even called you. Who’s Lily mother? Because by the look on your face, I’m guessing you know something about it. And how did you know I’d been hit if no one called you?”