Chapter Nineteen Nic
Chapter Nineteen
Nic
Harriet is following me.
She’s been tailing me since I left the library, not even bothering to hide it. She really has some nerve.
I pretend like I don’t see her until I reach the station and come to a sudden halt outside its double doors.
Harriet runs straight into my back. “Are we going in?” she asks into the fabric of my shirt.
I turn to find her wearing an eager expression. She’s like a really cute, really annoying puppy. If she had a tail, I swear to god it would be wagging.
“I am going in. You are staying here. Or better yet, going home.”
“Wait.” She presses her palm flat against my chest. Through my T-shirt, her hand is warm.
A second later, she blinks at it like she’s not quite sure how it got there, and her cheeks burn red.
“Oh. Oh god. Sorry.” She pulls it back and stuffs it into her pocket before speaking again.
“Look. You’re right. I… I came on too strong with Mindy.
I’m sorry.” She cringes, like it pains her to say it.
“I’m usually better at all this, I swear, but if you let me come see Sara, I’ll let you do the all the talking.
Promise. I won’t say a single word. I just—I want to help.
Write this article. But part of that is talking to the person wrongly accused.
We’re running out of time, Nic. Her arraignment is in two days. ”
Her eyes are locked on mine, deep and blue like the sky, full of pleading.
Her tongue darts out, licking her full bottom lip, and for a second, I almost forget myself.
I think about cupping her cheek, pulling her close.
Kissing her until all this—all the pain and anxiety of the last week—fades away.
“So?” Harriet ventures, more timid than I’ve ever heard her. “What do you think?”
I feel myself caving. She’s right—she needs to write the article. And in order to do that, she probably does need some face time with my sister.
If we can’t figure out who really killed George by the time Sara’s arraigned, she’ll be charged with murder, and then shit’s going to get real—real in a way that Barry absolutely can’t handle. She’ll need a real lawyer, and if we’re lucky, Harriet’s article will help get us one.
“We agreed to do this together, right?” Harriet says. “Give me a chance to show you I can be gentle.”
I suck in a deep breath through my nose. “Fine. I doubt they’ll even let you in, but if they do, it’s your funeral.”
I should have known that Harriet would manage to persuade the cop at the front desk to let her join me even though she isn’t on the preapproved list. This place isn’t exactly Alcatraz. Now we’re sitting in a small interview room, waiting for my sister to join us.
Unfortunately, Sara’s incarceration in our hometown jail is only temporary.
From what I understand, if she’s officially charged and we can’t make bail, she’ll be transferred to the Atlantic County Jail—a much bigger, much scarier facility on the mainland.
I worry she won’t survive it, given her inability to shut the fuck up.
We’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on plastic folding chairs in front of a scratched-up metal table. The walls are bare, their gray paint peeling in spots.
“Can you please stop doing that?” Harriet whispers.
“Doing what?”
She slaps her hand over mine, pinning it down to the table. “That! You keep tapping your fingers, and it’s driving me crazy.” I’m about to snap that everything she does drives me crazy, but her voice softens. “Sorry. I should have—You’re probably freaking out right now, huh?”
Her hand is still resting on mine. I stare down at them. Does she even realize what her touch is doing to me? It’s been eight years since we slept together, but right now, it almost feels like no time has gone by at all.
She smells the same, of cinnamon and apples.
Her fingers tighten on the back of my hand, her pupils darkening, and I flash back to that very first time, that very first kiss we had in the front seat of her car.
She was crying about Kozel. I wanted to find the guy and kick his ass for upsetting her so much, but instead I finally worked up the nerve to reach out. Tuck a wayward hair behind her ear, my fingertips caressing her smooth cheek.
“Nic, I—” she whispers now.
The door to the room swings opens with a bang, and we spring apart.
Sara appears, clothed in an orange jumpsuit, her hands cuffed in front of her body, and for a moment, I hate myself for what I was just thinking about Harriet. This isn’t the time or the place.
I need to stop. Concentrate on what’s important. Not the girl who abandoned me that summer but the sister who I grew up with, who used to make shadow puppets on the walls of my bedroom to make me laugh.
The cop settles Sara into the chair across from us, then retreats into the shadowy corner of the room. It’s only been a couple days, but her hair is already greasy and limp, her nails bitten down to the quick. She looks like a prisoner.
A pang of pity hits me, so hard and sharp that I lose my breath. I have to get her out of here.
Then she opens her mouth. “Are you fucking serious, Nic? You brought her?”
Shit. “Wait, hold on. Let me explain, okay? She’s here to help. She—”
Sara doesn’t let me finish. “Help? Her mom accused me of murder!”
I lean forward onto the table. “Can I please explain?” The cop in the corner is watching our exchange with a frown.
Sara shakes her head. “Absolutely not. I have nothing to say to her. Her family thinks I’m guilty.”
This is going pretty much how I expected. Which is why I wanted to talk to Sara alone.
“Sara, c’mon. Please. Harriet is—”
Harriet, doing the very thing she promised not to, interrupts.
“Listen, Sara. I get it. If I were you, I wouldn’t be thrilled to see me either.
But I’m not here on behalf of my family.
I’m a journalist. And I’m writing about what’s happening to you for Humans.
It’s a national outlet that I worked for up in the city. ”
She sounds confident, controlled—totally different from the chaotic steamrolling back in the library.
“Thrilling,” Sara says with an eye roll. I think about interrupting, but she’s actually letting Harriet complete whole sentences, so I decide to see what happens.
Harriet continues, lowering her voice. “I want to show how you’re being persecuted by the—” She tilts her head toward the cop in the corner, who’s now intently focused on his phone. “I mean, we all know that if you were from George’s side of the island, this wouldn’t be happening to you.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Sara says.
“But in order to write it well, I need your help.” Harriet leans forward, her full attention on my sister. “Please,” she adds.
There’s a long silence.
“Okay,” Sara says finally.
“Okay?” I say with surprise. Incredible. A surge of admiration rises in me. That was impressive. Harriet Baker just won over my sister. Not an easy undertaking.
“Okay!” Harriet claps her hands together, which is annoyingly adorable.
“What do you want to know?” Sara leans back in her chair, scowling.
She’s trying so hard to seem tough, but I saw how her mouth wobbled at the corner when she first sat down.
The way her hands shook. The pitch of her voice—a whole register lower than normal, like she’s trying to signal she’s still in control.
Harriet glances over like she’s finally asking my permission to keep going. I’m not about to stop her now. I nod.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she says. “You left the party early, correct?”
Sara nods.
“Right. And what did you do after you left?”
Sara rubs her forehead. “I don’t know? Umm…
well, I didn’t have a ride, so I headed out to the main road, but it started pouring after I’d only made it a couple blocks.
I waited it out in an alcove, thinking about…
” She shakes her head. “Stuff. I decided I should probably apologize for what had happened, so once the rain let up, I walked back. Your parents had given us the gate code, so I decided to go around back and in through the basement door. I didn’t want to risk running into anyone.
But as soon as I got to the beach…I saw… ” She swallows. “Him. The body.”
“Did anyone see you while you were out walking?”
“I don’t think so. Some people passed me in cars, but I have no idea how you’d track them down, and I doubt they’d remember me. The weather was horrible.”
“Okay, well, did you see anything suspicious?”
“Like what?” Sara asks with a frown.
Harriet leans forward. “A car speeding away? Someone hurrying from the house?”
“Nope.”
“How about on the beach? Anything weird there?”
“No. Outside of a fucking dead body, of course. I wish I had. I wish I’d gotten there ten minutes before, when that fucker was getting stabbed. I wish I’d—”
“Sara!” I cut her off, afraid she’s about to say I wish I’d been the one to stab him.
“What, Nic?” Sara snaps. “Jesus, will you let me talk? I was going to say: I wish I’d seen who did it. Then I wouldn’t be in this mess, would I?”
“No,” Harriet says. “You would not.”
“Right. You get it,” Sara says to her.
Harriet nods sagely, and I roll my eyes.
Sara continues, “I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous. The cops think it’s some big clue that one of my knives killed him, which is so stupid.
I’m sorry, but it’s not like the kitchen was locked down.
Any number of people could have swiped it!
And of course my fingerprints were on it.
It was my knife!” She takes a deep breath.
“And let’s not even talk about the stupid LinkedIn comments they found, which I posted about a million years ago.
It’s the most absurd, horrible coincidence.
I didn’t know the guy! All I knew was that those assholes forced our restaurant to shut down!
And now they’re saying that someone overheard us arguing in the basement shortly before the kitchen fight—”
The last bit pulls me upright. I don’t remember hearing anything about that.
I interrupt. “An argument?”
“Yup.” She rubs at her eyebrow, another of her tells. “Apparently, someone heard George shouting at someone down there, and of course, they’re trying to say it was me. Which is impossible! I was in the kitchen the whole fucking time.”
My mouth drops open. “What? Either Mom and I were in there with you pretty much the entire afternoon. Why hasn’t anyone asked us about that?”
“I don’t know, Nic!” she says.
The guard’s head jerks up at the volume of her voice.
Sara holds up a hand. “Sorry. I’m calm. I’m calm.” Once he’s focused back on his phone, she whispers, “I don’t know, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Do you really think this article could help me?”
“I do,” Harriet says with a determined nod. “What you just said, Sara…that’s exactly what I’m talking about—why haven’t the cops asked about your whereabouts during that argument? They should have asked around, confirmed whether it was you. Because if it wasn’t—”
“It wasn’t!” Sara barks, and the cop looks up again.
Harriet backtracks. “No, no. I know. I’m sorry. I misspoke. Let me rephrase—since it wasn’t, figuring out who it was seems important to me. Doesn’t it to you? If we can, their case against you will fall apart.”
“We’re going to do everything in our power to get you out of here,” I add.
The corner of Sara’s mouth wobbles again. I want to take her hand, but I can’t, so I say something I hope might help.
“I love you, Sara. Everything is going to be okay.”
As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I realize how weak it sounds, and from her expression, it’s clear she believes it as much as I do.