Page 48 of The Inmate
I can’t help but think about the turtle I found on my desk the last three days. Or that live one I found crawling around the tank in Dawn’s house. Or the bookcase brimming with turtles. She has no idea how creepy turtles can be.
“I wasn’t bullying her,” I insist. “I would never do that.”
“You said that thing about how she lost her virginity to a turtle.”
“Oh my God, that was ajoke.” I cringe. “It wasn’t a big deal. Everyone made jokes like that about her. If I was bullying her, so were the rest of you.”
“Whatever, Nat.”
“Listen to me, Kim,” I say through my teeth, “you need to stop lying about me to the detective, okay? Because this looksreallybad for me.”
“I just told him what really happened.”
“Oh, is that what you did?” I raise my eyebrows. “Well, maybe I should tell your new husband whatreally happenedthe night of your bachelorette party. About that guy at the bar who you—”
“Natalie!” Kim reaches out and grasps my hand across the table with lightning speed. “Youpromisedyou wouldn’t tell anyone—”
“And I won’t.” I level my eyes at her. “But you need to stop making me look bad. Okay? This is a murder investigation now. It’s no joke.”
For a moment, Kim looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal. So you messed with Dawn a little bit. We all did.”
“Right,” I say, “we all did.”
I give Kim one last long look. I feel confident that she’s going to keep her mouth shut—she does not want her husband to know what she did that night. Lucky for me, I had the foresight to take a lot of photos the night of the bachelorette party.
Unfortunately, I have worse problems than Kim.
ChapterTwenty-Six
I eatlunch again at my desk. I’m usually a very social person, but all anyone is talking about is Dawn’s murder, and it’s starting to make me physically ill. Also, I hate the idea that several people in the office thought that I was bullying Dawn. I still don’t understand how anyone could have said that. If anything, I was the only one who tried to be nice to her!
While I am taking a bite of my turkey sandwich, a text message pops up on my phone. It’s from Caleb.
Can we talk?
No good conversation has ever started with those three words. If he had something good to tell me, he would just come out and tell me. He wouldn’t preface it by asking if it was okay to talk. This is a pre-break-up text.
I scoop my phone off my desk and stare at the screen. I don’t want to break up with Caleb. Despite my little lapse in judgment last night, I still think he’s the perfect boyfriend. If anything, I want to move things forward. Before this week, I would have said he adored me. That he was stupidly infatuated with me.
What if he knows about Seth? What if he came to my house last night and saw his car parked out front? That would give him ample reason to initiate a break-up conversation.
I’m glad he didn’t hear the detective’s comment about how he and I could have killed Dawn together. That’s beyond ridiculous. We certainly didn’t kill her together. We weren’t even actually together that night. But of course, I couldn’t tell the detectivethat.
I can’t take it anymore. I have to talk to Caleb.
I click on Caleb’s number from my list of recent calls. I feel a tiny bit of relief when he doesn’t sound outright angry when he answers the phone.
“Hey, Nat,” he says.
“Hey…”
“I heard about Dawn,” he says quietly. “Are… are you okay?”
My eyes fill with tears. “Not really. I… I can’t stop thinking about it. What happened to her…”
“I know…”
“She wasbeaten to death, Caleb. Can you imagine?”
