Page 107 of The Last Time I Lied

“I know it’s yours,” Flynn says. “Three people confirmed they saw you wearing it.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In the canoe.”

I tighten my grip on Krystal’s teddy bear to stave off a sudden onslaught of nausea. The cabin spins. I feel like I’m going to throw up again. I tell myself for the fiftieth time today that this isn’t really happening.

But it is.

It has.

“Would you like to explain how it got there?” Flynn asks. “I know it wasn’t on your wrist when you swam out to that canoe.”

“I-I lost it.” Shock makes it a struggle to utter even the simplest words. “Yesterday.”

“Lost it,” Flynn says. “That’s convenient.”

“The clasp broke.” I pause, take a breath, try to think of a way to not sound insane. “I fixed it. With string. But it fell off at some point.”

“You don’t remember when?”

“I didn’t notice. Not until later.”

I stop talking. Nothing I say will make sense to him. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me. The bracelet was there. Until it wasn’t. I don’t know when or where it went from being on my wrist to being lost.

“So how do you think it got into the canoe?” Flynn says.

“Maybe one of the girls found it and picked it up, intending to return it to me later.”

It’s a stretch. Even I can see that. But it’s the most logical chain of events. Miranda saw me twisting the bracelet during yesterday’s painting lesson. I can easily picture her spotting it on the ground, scooping it up, dropping it into her pocket. The only other possible explanation is that it was found by the same person responsible for the girls’ disappearance.

“What if I’m being framed?”

It’s less a fully formed thought than a desperate attempt to get Flynn on my side. Yet the more I think about it, the more it starts to make sense.

“That bracelet fell off yesterday,beforethe girls vanished. And now it’s in the same canoe as Sasha’s broken glasses. Talk about convenient. What if whoever took the girls put it there on purpose to make me look guilty?”

“I think you’re doing a pretty good job of that all by yourself.”

“I didn’t touch those girls! How many times do I have to say it before you believe me?”

“I’d love to believe you,” Detective Flynn says. “But it turns out you’re a difficult woman to believe, Miss Davis. Not with all that talk about seeing people who weren’t really there. Or your conspiracy theories. This morning, you told me Francesca Harris-White had something to do with it. But less than an hour ago, you were certain it was the groundskeeper.”

“Maybe it was.”

Flynn shakes his head. “We talked to his wife. She confirmed he was in the kitchen at five a.m., right where he said he was. And then there’s all those things you said fifteen years ago about Theo Harris-White. Didn’t you accuse him of hurting your friends back then?”

A sharp heat burns my cheeks.

“Yes,” I say.

“I’m assuming you don’t believe it now.”

I look at the floor. “No.”

“It would be interesting to know when you stopped believing he was guilty and started thinking he was innocent,” Flynn says. “Because you never retracted that accusation. Officially, Mr. Harris-White is still a suspect in that disappearance. I guess you two now have something in common.”

My face gets hotter with anger. Some of it’s directed at Detective Flynn. The rest is reserved for me and how horribly I acted backthen. Either way, I know I can’t listen to Flynn rehash my bad behavior for a minute longer.

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