He grinned. "Look, I get it. Your best friend was seeing your boyfriend behind your back. You had to follow them, take a few photos to make sure. Cheating is a hard thing to deal with—trust me, I know. I mean, what a bitch. She was screwing your guy one minute, visiting you in the hospital the next. Playing BFF the whole time. I mean, the fucking bitch needed to be taught a lesson, right?"
I didn't respond. They couldn't have any fingerprints. They wouldn't have had enough time to test for any, right?
Someone knocked on the door. Gray stood up, talked to an officer outside, stepped back in. "You're free to go."
As I passed him, he whispered in my ear. "We have her diary, Miss Travis. Confess now. Make it easier on all of us."
I didn't face him as the uniformed officer escorted me out. Ash waited for me in the lobby and held me against his chest when he saw me. "I got you out as fast as I could. It was easier with your medical condition."
The police had given me my medication, but lying on a cot in a cold cell followed by an interrogation wasn't exactly the ideal place for my body to heal. Maxwell stood behind Ash, and I thanked him once Ash let me go. "I couldn't stand another minute in there," I said.
Maxwell squeezed my hand. "You didn't say anything, did you?"
"No, nothing. I did as you said.”
He nodded. "Good. I'll come by later so we can strategize but, first, you've got an appointment with your therapist. She helped us get you out faster, contingent on you meeting with her as soon as bail was posted."
I just wanted to go home, take a long bath and curl up on the couch with Ash while we listened to music and read books, but I guess this was better than staying in jail.
Lauren looked composed and beautiful as always in an expensive suit skirt and blouse in neutral tones. Ash waited outside for me, kissing my forehead before Lauren closed her door and I sat in my customary chair.
She sat across from me, a notebook posed on her knee, the scent of her unique perfume filling the room. "How are you?"
I was going to say "fine," but instead I burst into tears that turned to body heaving sobs that left my ribs sore and my eyes swollen. Lauren handed me a box of Kleenex and waited until my breathing slowed and I could talk again.
"I'm scared," I said.
"That's understandable." She handed me a glass of water and I drank deeply. "What scares you most?" she asked.
"That I'm being framed for Bridgette's kidnapping. That they will convict me of murder and I'll spend my life behind bars. That I'm going crazy and imagining things, even though I know I'm not. Honestly, I'm terrified of everything right now. The whole world seems out to get me and I know that makes me sound paranoid but what other explanation is there?" I dabbed at my eyes. "Maybe not the whole world, but certainly someone. I'm sure it's my parents' killer. He wants me to suffer, though I can't imagine why. And that means he has Bridgette and who knows what he's doing to her and setting me up for." My whole body shook as I talked and I had to forcibly calm myself to maintain composure.
"Everything you're feeling is completely normal, Catelyn. I know it doesn't feel like it, but it's true. You have a lot of people around you who love you and want to help, and you have one of the best attorneys in Massachusetts. It's not hopeless."
I sat back, pulling my legs up and hugging them like a child. "How was my mom before she was killed? Did she behave any differently?" I'd been thinking more about my mom lately, how she might have been, what she was like as an adult. Until recently I'd always seen her through the eyes of a child, or young teen, but now I was starting to look at her through the eyes of an adult and it made me curious about what she was going through. Did she suspect something bad was going to happen?
Lauren paused for a long moment before speaking. "I suppose it can't hurt to share with you about her. She's dead and you are her next of kin." Lauren's eyes unfocused to something in the past and I waited for her to compose her thoughts. "Alice was scared in the last few weeks of her life."
My heart pounded in my chest and I dropped my feet to the ground, sitting forward, attentive, soaking up each word in hopes it would loosen some secret that would help me figure out the truth.
Lauren took a bottle of perfume out of her desk and dabbed her wrist with it. The sweet scent filled the room again. She was lucky I wasn't sensitive to smells, but some of her patients would have been. I wondered if they ever said anything about it.
She settled back into her chair and frowned. "She started having doubts about some of the people closest to her."
When she didn't continue I prompted her. "Did she ever say who?"