Page 48 of Little Shattered Dreams

“You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

Tears splashed down her cheeks. We came to a stoplight, and I looked around. The surroundings looked familiar, like we were in a town I’d been in before, but I couldn’t place it. One thing I knew for certain, we weren’t in the present day. We were somewhere back in time. How far back, I didn’t know.

We passed an old theater and then it clicked.

“Are we in Cambria?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

If it was Cambria, the old theater had since been torn down, making way for a bookstore and a coffee shop.

“What year is this?” I asked.

“You’re the detective. Don’t you know?”

“I know we’re not in the present. Something happened to you years ago. Something awful. Didn’t it?”

She nodded. “An event that changed my life.”

“What event?”

“Talk to Karl. He knows.”

“I already talked to him,” I said. “He doesn’t know because you never got the chance to tell him.”

A look of confusion swept across her face. She pressed a hand to her damp cheeks, wiping them dry. “I was going to tell him. It’s why I went there, to talk about it, put the past in the past. You believe me, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And yet, you still haven’t figured it out.”

“I will,” I said. “I just need a little more time. Do you know who killed you?”

“Yes, but … I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why they did it.”

She turned, looking out the driver’s side window, and I saw the bloody, gaping hole in her head. The dream sequence seemed to be a mashup of the present and the past.

There must be something here.

Some clue I have yet to uncover.

A clue that resided in my subconscious mind.

“Have you ever done something so terrible, so cruel, that you believed you were better off dead?” she asked. “And no matter how much you tried to turn your life around, to move on, you knew you’d never be able to forgive yourself for it.”

“I have.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’d rather not.”

“If you don’t want to speak your truth, why should I speak mine?”

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