“Naomi please,” I said as I tried to inch forward toward her slowly.
“I was trying to help you and you tricked me,” she said. “You aren’t at all like your mother; I take it back. Paula would never have tricked me. Your mother would never have played with someone’s trust like that. You aren’t anything like her. You’re actually much more like me.”
I watched in slow motion as Naomi looked at me through tear-stricken eyes and took a step over the edge of the roof. It felt like everything happened at once then. Michael leapt forward to try to grab her and save her from falling to her death. I ran toward her, knowing that there was no way I could reach her in time, but feeling as if I had to move and not just stand there helplessly as I watched my mother’s sister jump to her death.
But there was nothing to do but watch it happen.
Michael walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Then he turned back around to me as I walked closer to him and he grabbed me in his arms as I buried my head against his shirt.
“I killed her,” I cried softly against him. “I killed her.”
“You didn’t kill her,” he said as he rested his head against mine. “She killed herself.”
“She killed herself because she felt that I had betrayed her. It’s my fault.”
“Lisette,” Michael said as he pulled back a bit to lift my head up so I could look at him. “None of this is your fault.”
“You’d say that even if you didn’t believe it. You’re just trying to make me feel better,” I said.
“No, I’m not. I will always be brutally honest with you, even when it hurts.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“What?”
“Tell me something brutally honest that you know I don’t want to hear—anything.”
“I don’t see how that will help this situation,” he said.
“I need to know that you’ll be honest with me, even if it sucks,” I said.
I waited to hear what he would say.
“Fine,” he said. “You might hate me for this, but it will at least prove the point that you’re seeking reassurance on. That night—the one on the rooftop here when I held you over this edge; for a split second, I thought about letting you fall.”
“What?” I whispered in shock. “You were going to kill me?”
“Of course not,” he said. “The thought only crossed my mind for a split second. But yes, in that split second, the thought of letting you fall did cross my mind.”
“Why?” I asked in quiet disbelief.
“Because not being able to have you was killing me. It was the worst imaginable torture that I could think of or had ever been through, and I wanted to do something to make it stop.”
I stared at Michael and saw his jaw quiver and his pupils shake. He was telling me the truth; the cold, hard, painful truth about something that I didn’t want to hear.
“How’s that for painful truth?” he asked.
“I believe you now,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Are you upset about what I just said?” he asked with a worried expression.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I would have rather fallen to my death off this roof than to have been without you too.”
When we left the aquarium, we headed straight back to The Sanctuary to look for Adam and Rob. With Naomi dead, there were no clues to follow and no way to find where she might have put them. The first thought was that she would have somehow tricked or overpowered them here at the house and then locked them in a room somewhere. But Michael and I searched the entire place, and there was no sign of them.
“Hey,” Sarah said as she came out of her room and watched us frantically searching the building. “What are you guys looking for?”
“Adam and Rob, the other two guys that you met here last night,” I said. “Have you seen them?”
“No,” she said curtly.
“Have you seen anyone since last night?” Michael asked with tension in his voice.
“No.”
“Have you even come out of your room at all?”
I could tell that Michael was starting to get nervous about what had happened to the guys because he was starting to lose his patience on this poor woman who saw nothing and just came here to try to find some peace. His mood didn’t seem to rattle her though.
“No,” she said for a third time before turning to walk back to her room.
“That girl is weird,” he said to me.
