Page 47 of Stay Away from Him

“But I swear, Melissa—everything I did, I did because I honestly, truly believe that you’re in danger. I did it because I care about protecting fellow women. Because I care aboutyou. Rose was my best friend—mybest. Friend. Okay? And she told me things about Thomas. Bad things, that made me suspect him when she disappeared. And now I’ve got a contact in the sheriff’s department, someone who was involved with the case—he’s telling me the prosecutor should never have dropped the charges.”

A contact in the sheriff’s department. That must have been where Kelli was getting her evidence from. But who knew if it was accurate or not? Leaking information from an open investigation had to be an ethical violation of some sort. Kelli’s contact must have been bitter about how the case against Thomas ended, must have had some kind of a vendetta clouding his judgment. He could have been feeding Kelli overblown or one-sided information.

A voice in Melissa’s head interjected:But you’re getting one-sided information too.

“You’ve got no reason to listen to me,” Kelli continued. “No reason to trust me. I recognize that. I just want you to listen toyourself. Trustyourself. Is there some small part of you that wants to listen to me? Some small part of you that thinks you might not be safe with Thomas?”

A silence stretched out. Melissa glanced down at her phone screen. The timer counted down:7…6…5…4…3…

She sighed. “Fucking hell.” She reached out and tapped thePausebutton. The timer froze with two seconds to go. She picked up the phone and slipped it into her purse.

Kelli looked amazed, like even she didn’t believe Melissa would listen to what she was saying. And Melissa could hardly believe it herself. Not with what had happened between the two of them.

“I’m still not forgiving you,” Melissa said. “I’m pissed as hell at you.”

“I get it,” Kelli said. “You should be.”

“Maybe I could beat the shit out of one of your kids. Even the score.”

“Go for it,” Kelli said. “My boys are both assholes anyway.”

Melissa burst out laughing, and after a few seconds Kelli laughed too. It felt like a pressure release, letting out something that had been building a long time, and Melissa went on laughing until she was crying, until people at other tables were glancing ather with concern in their eyes. She waved apologetically—I’m okay, don’t mind me—then turned back to Kelli, wiping tears from her eyes. God help her, she thought she might actuallylikeKelli Walker if she’d gotten the chance to know her under better circumstances.

“So you’ll leave him?”

Melissa shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

Kelli squinted, confused. “But you believe me.”

“I believe you believe what you’re saying,” Melissa said. “I believe you think you’re right.”

“But?”

“But…well, you told me to trust myself, right? And you’re not wrong—there’s a part of me that desperately wants to know what happened to Rose. Part of me that’s afraid Thomas might have done it. And there’s another part of me too.”

“Part of you that wants to believehimwhen he says he’s innocent.”

“That’s right.”

Kelli shook her head. “But Melissa, you can’t. Don’t believe his lies. His whole nice guy, doctor, great dad, perfect abs bullshit—it’s an act. Can’t you see that?”

“Maybe,” Melissa said. “But when I look at the way he looks at me, the way he treats me, the way he is with his girls and withmy son—I can’t ignore that. This might reallybesomething, what he and I have. I can’t just throw it away. Not after everything I’ve been through.”

Kelli was quiet. Thinking. She didn’t ask Melissa to explain herself any further, didn’t press her on whateverything I’ve been throughmeant. She was a woman, like Melissa—she could probably guess. Bad boyfriends, bad husbands: bad men. She’d had them in her life too, probably. Women didn’t have to explain to each other. They just knew.

“All right,” she said. “So what, then? What do we do now?”

“We find out who killed Rose Danver. Whoreallykilled her.”

Kelli heaved an exasperated sigh. “But I know already.”

“You think you know, maybe. But you’re not considering all the evidence. And that’s what we do, together. We look at everything. I’ll consider all the evidence against Thomas. And you’ll consider all the evidence in his favor. Take the stalker theory seriously, for instance.”

“And then what?”

“Then, at the end of it all, if the most compelling theory of the case is that Thomas killed his wife, I’ll leave him. But if the bulk of the evidence points to someone else, then you’ll leave him alone. Leaveusalone. Stop harassing us. Stop trying to prove the man I’m falling in love with is a murderer. Deal?”

Kelli considered it for a moment, then extended her hand across the table. Melissa took it. “Deal.”

---