Page 46 of Stay Away from Him

“No,” she said. “The woman ahead of you paid for it.”

The line cutter? “She did?”

“Yup,” the worker said. “Threw in a snack too.” She handed Melissa a piece of warmed coffee cake in a brown paper sleeve, the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar filling the car.

Melissa glanced ahead, where the gray minivan that darted ahead of her in line had pulled forward but hadn’t yet left the parking lot, brake lights lit up red. The driver’s door opened, and out stepped—

Kelli Walker.

She stood by her open door and waved.

“Oh, this fucking bitch,” Melissa muttered, the words coming out of her involuntarily.

“Excuse me?” the coffee shop worker said.

Kelli stepped toward Melissa, leaving her minivan door open. A long shawl sweater hung almost to her knees, and she gathered the folds of it around her against the cold as she drew close to the window.

“Hey,” she said. “Can we talk?”

Melissa felt her jaw harden, the muscles in her cheeks and around her lips growing tight. “I’d rather not.”

“Please?” Kelli said. “Just give me two minutes.” She tilted her head toward the café, indicating that she wanted to sit down inside.

Melissa glanced at the young barista, her eyes grown large in her smooth face. Two women facing off in the drive-through linewasn’t what she had expected when she clocked in to her morning shift, and she clearly didn’t know how to handle it. Further back in the line, a chorus of impatient car horns rose up once again.

Melissa sighed. “Fine. Two minutes.”

***

Melissa set her phone on the table when she got inside, a timer on the screen set to two minutes.

“All right,” she said. “Go.”

Kelli glanced at the screen. “Seriously?”

“You said two minutes. That’s what I’m giving you. A minute fifty, now.”

“All right,” Kelli said. “Well, first of all, I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me way more than a measly apology.”

“You’re right. Which is why I’m offering to pay the medical bill,” she offered.

Melissa crossed her arms. “There’s no bill. Thomas patched him up for free. A minute and a half.”

Kelli’s eyes flicked down at the timer. Melissa could tell she was rattling her—and she was glad. “Thomas did that?”

“He did. The man you’re so bent on being a murderer. The man whose life and reputation you’re trying to destroy. He helped my son. Gave him first aid, for an injuryyoucaused. And then, he told me not to call the cops on you. I wanted to press charges for assault, but he said there’d be no point. How’s that for rich?Himdefendingyoufrom the cops? When you’re so desperate to get him arrested and put in jail.”

Melissa gave Kelli her hardest glare. Everything she said was true. Thomasdidtry to convince her not to get the police involved—after the experience he’d had with them around Rose’s disappearance, he didn’t trust them. Melissa couldn’t blame himfor that. She ended up ignoring him and calling the cops anyway, too furious to let it go. But it was just like he said. They asked her if she thought Kelli had attacked Bradley maliciously, or if it had just been an accident. Melissa had to admit that it was probably just an accident. They said there was nothing they could do. “I could talk to her,” the officer on the phone had offered, “ask her to keep her distance from you from now on. Would you like that?” Melissa had just hung up on him.

Kelli looked chastened now, ashamed, like she wanted to disappear under the force of Melissa’s fury. “I deserved that,” she said.

Melissa wouldn’t feel sorry for her. She refused. Kelli had done this to herself.

“You’ve got one minute,” Melissa said.

“Okay, look, I’ll just say what I have to say, and if you don’t want to talk anymore, you can leave. And what I want to say is, I messed up. I know I messed up. I’m a little nuts, all right? I know it about myself. I get ahold of something, and I can’t let go. That’s what happened with you and Thomas. I saw you at the wine bar that day—I swear that was random. But I saw you, and suddenly I couldn’t let it go. I shouldn’t have taken the picture of you, and I shouldn’t have posted it. I recognize that now. And then later, when I saw you at the playground—I shouldn’t have touched your son. I shouldn’t have put my hands on him. That was unforgivable. And what happened after, that was all my fault.

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