Page 35 of What Happened Last Night

“Carlotta, honey,” I said. “I know it’s scary, but I’ll be right here by your side the whole time.”

She frowned at me like I had gone mad. Okay, maybe I was being too nice and raising her suspicions.

“You need to tell the police that you killed Candy,” I finished up, still talking quietly and gently to her but not quite as childlike as before.

Carlotta shook her head slowly and looked me in the eye, not breaking her gaze for even a second. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who could play this game.

“And what would be the point of that? The police wouldn’t find any evidence to back that back up because I didn’t kill her,” she said. She paused for a long moment. “William, you killed her.”

I opened my mouth to yell at her, to accuse her of lying, but I closed it again. There was a look on Carlotta’s face that took me a moment to decipher. It was partly fear from telling me this and partly empathy for me, and something in that look made me think for a horrible moment that Carlotta was telling the truth about this. She clearly remembered more than I did. I thought of the dreams and shuddered at the thought of what the next one might reveal.

I dropped her hand like it was burning me and took a step back from her, needing to put some distance between us. I was letting her get into my head. She was trying to manipulate me. She had to be. I hadn’t killed anyone... had I?

“I ... I didn’t kill anyone,” I said.

My denial sounded lame even to my own ears. Carlotta nodded her head firmly like she knew something I didn’t. Oh, God, did she know something I didn’t? Was she finally telling me the truth now?

“Yes. You did. And I was happy to keep that knowledge to myself knowing the police could never really prove this case one way or the other, but when you started accusing me of doing it, well, I thought you should know the truth,” Carlotta said.

Her tone was even, unwavering. It was the tone of someone who was stating a fact. Or the tone of someone who desperately wanted you to believe that they were stating a fact.

“But what happened?” I asked. “Why would I kill Candy? I mean, I know she was becoming a nuisance, but murder is a bit of an over the top solution to that, isn’t it?”

“She came at me with a knife and you pushed her away from me. She stumbled and went out the window. She was still holding the knife when she fell. That’s how I know it must be out here somewhere.”

To be honest, that didn’t sound like something I would do. If Carlotta had said that Candy came at me with a knife and I pushed her away, I could maybe have believed that. I would have undoubtedly tried to protect myself if Candy were coming for me with a knife. I mean, who wouldn’t? But surely, this story was a bit of a stretch of the imagination.

Why would I have risked everything to save Carlotta’s life after she had done everything she could to put me down, to make me feel inferior to her? I would like to think I would have acted to save her, that I would have played the hero, but a large part of me doubted that I would have actually done it. I wasn’t about to admit that part to Carlotta, though. I still needed her on my side.

“But you told the police you couldn’t remember anything. You told me you couldn’t remember anything,” I said. “If Candy came at you with a knife and I acted to protect you, then why wouldn’t you have just said so? If I was only stopping her from hurting you, then the police could hardly charge me with cold-blooded murder, could they?”

“I lied.” She shrugged. “Admittedly, it was all a little hazy at first, but it’s clear now.”

Her casual attitude was starting to piss me off, and it annoyed me that she didn’t really answer my real question. If this had all happened because Candy attacked Carlotta, then it changed everything.

“Okay, then explain to me why you didn’t bother looking for the knife before I mentioned it,” I said, trying to keep my tone even like I was trying to reason with Carlotta.

She shrugged again, looking down at her hands rather than at me now. It was the first time she had looked away from me since I had taken her hands in mine, and it raised an instant red flag with me.

“I don’t know,” she muttered.

If her story was true, then she had shown her true colors. She hadn’t bothered looking for the knife because she thought if it was found, it would incriminate me, but once she knew I remembered it, she must have been worried I would find it and try to use it to frame her.

If her story wasn’t true, then she was most definitely trying to throw me under the bus for this. That had to be what was happening here. I wasn’t the nicest guy in the world, and I would be the first to admit that. But murder? There was no way I was capable of murdering someone.

I could feel anger sizzling away inside me, and I knew I couldn’t keep up this gentle act. Carlotta was trying to frame me for murder. Fuck being nice to her. I had tried that, and it hadn’t worked. Now it was time to show her how this would turn out if she tried to fuck with me, and I knew now that’s what she was doing.

“You’re doing all of this to frame me, aren’t you?” I shouted.

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed.

“Why? Are you embarrassed that you’ve been caught betraying me?” I said, still shouting.

“No, I’m worried that someone might hear you and go to the police about it. If we can’t even keep our stories straight, then one of us is going down for this, William. And I haven’t spent all this time lying to the police to cover your ass, only for it to come out because you can’t speak at a civilized decibel level,” Carlotta said.

I wasn’t about to admit to her that she was right, but I did lower my voice.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

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