“And what about Seth Montgomery?”
I shake my head. “We hadn’t spoken, either. Until today.”
Ramsay looks at me. “Really? You and your boyfriend didn’t—”
“Ramsay,” Carter says sharply.
I glare up at Detective Ramsay. How I wish I could just tell him to shut up. His fixation with the details of Seth’s and my encounter last summer has always sent shivers of disgust rolling through me. I bet he’s the kind of guy who watches weird, gross porn.
“Addie,” Carter says, in his serious voice. “You hear how that sounds to us, right? You and Seth had a, uh, strong connection. And after that, you didn’t speak at all for a whole year?”
I shift in my chair. “He DMed me a few times. Tried to call. I didn’t answer.”
“Why?”
“I was…trying to distance myself, I guess. I don’t know.”
Ramsay leans across the table, making me lean back. “You don’t know—”
“Ramsay—”
I’m sick of this. “Okay. I do know. I didn’t want to talk to the guy whose family was harboring the guy who killed my sister, who probably paid you off to never arrest any of them.”
There. I said it.
Carter is, as always, impassive. Ramsay’s mean little eyes get smaller and meaner.
“So your theory is Thatcher Montgomery killed himself?”
“I—” I falter.
We heard him yell.
“I haven’t had time to think about it.”
“Well.” Ramsay leans back, looking satisfied. “Why don’t you have a think on it, Addie? Think about how the only two people in the woods tonight were the same people whose only alibi for a nearly identical death were also each other?”
I stare. “That doesn’t make any sense. Seth and Thatcher are—were—close. Like—”
I swallow. But I don’t need to go on. Ramsay finishes it for me.
“Like you and your dear departed sister?”
The way his voice drips with contempt. The way this is all some game to him.
I don’t even remember deciding to get to my feet. Just the rage that overtakes me. And suddenly Carter is standing, too, and in a flash, Ramsay’s leapt around the table and is twisting my arms behind my back so sharply I gasp, my eyes watering in pain.
“You are not to threaten a police officer, not verbally or physically—”
“Ramsay!” Carter barks. “Let her go.”
The viselike grip on my arms is gone, though I can still feel the places where his hands touched my bare skin.
“I’ll finish this up on my own,” Detective Carter says.
I don’t watch as Ramsay walks back around the table and out the door, shutting it behind him.
“Addie.” Carter’s voice is gentle again. “I’m sorry about that. Please sit down, and we’ll go over your story again.”
I sit, not looking at him, keeping my eyes on the table this time. I answer his questions. I rub my arms, imagining them starting to bruise where Ramsay grabbed me.
And I try not to cry.
6
I get home around midnight.
Carter dropped me off, neither of us speaking on the way. The house is silent when I enter, except for my dad snoring in his armchair. I texted him and told him I’d run into Gen on my run and was hanging out at her place so he wouldn’t worry. He doesn’t know she and I haven’t spoken in a year and a half.
I wake him, and as much as I don’t want to burden him with this, I tell him a version of what happened.
My father’s eyes widen. He’s a tall, pale man, brown hair receding from a long, thin face. He’s always been quiet, especially compared to my mom, and he got even quieter after she left. He was hardly home that next year, spending a lot of time at work, leaving Fiona and me and Davy with our grandpa. But then Grandpa died, and Dad was back, home every night by dinnertime. After Fiona died, he started coming home even earlier, asking us about our days, spending long periods in his chair on the porch, staring out at the trees, or peering at us like he was trying to see into our heads, make sure we weren’t on the verge of leaving or dying the way Mom and Fiona and Grandpa did. It’s only the last month or so that he’s had some late nights at the office again, something about an insurance audit, leaving Davy and me alone to order pizza.
But something in his face tells me those late nights are over.
“And…you found him there?” Dad asked me. “At the ravine?”
I nod. “I—went to the Montgomerys’. Seth wanted to talk to me.”