Guilty

Chapter 27

After.

"I guess I don't understand what you're doing here. Shouldn't you be off making poor decisions in honor of your freedom?" Romano suggests. "I'm only a homicide detective, you know. I have no business getting you in trouble for teen drinking." He winks and leans back in his office chair, kicking his legs up on his desk.

I adjust my weight onto my right foot in Detective Romano's office door, unable to smile in the glow of the light bulb on the ceiling that gives the room an orange tint. My focus flickers between family photos that are displayed across the front his desk. "Um, no, I don't drink."

"Ha! Of course not. You're definitely your father's daughter." He rests his legs back on the floor. "...Though I have been forgetting that lately. Did he bring you here? I'd love to catch up with the DD of the justice department."

"I actually rode my bike here myself...for investigation reasons."

You were right all along.

Darius Blecker did not force Samara Galen to kill herself.

He did not. He did not. He did not.

Romano frowns at the loss of hope that he'd never have to compete with me again. "Oh, right." He coughs, straightening a stack of papers in front of him that I can imagine contain a hurricane of names.

I grasp the door frame, shutting the door behind me. "In investigating Darius' murder, has the name Violet Wren ever come up?"

Romano recoils. "I can't give you that information or account it for anything if it's not first recorded. I could lose my job." His eyes narrow. "Would you like to make a statement for the case?"

"It's not necessary." I step backward, the wooden doorframe clapping my back. "Did I say Violet Wren? I meant Violet Farr."

"Excuse me?"

My hands fold, building a barrier between us from opposite sides of the room "I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for?"

I killed a man for no reason.

No reason at all.

"Nothing--I just--um...."

"Farr?" Romano leans forward.

In and out. To the detective, the floor, the detective, the floor, floor, detective, desk, detective, wall, detective, floor.

Concentrate concentrate concentrate concentrate.

"Thank you for your time."

Darius Blecker deserved to die.

I exit the station and ride my bike out onto the highway and pedal down the road in the direction of Patapsco Ridge.

* * *

When I wake up, I am not in my bedroom.

I know this for two reasons: before my eyes are even open I'm aware that this is not where my mother lives. My mother, who does so much laundry that Tyler and I tend to be perfumed of lavender and honey all the time, would have scented my sheets in the same sweet way. That sweet smell is shrivelled completely now, into some cold, smoky odor blanketed with green apple.

(Green apple ?)

Reason two: at home I have light purple sheets with polka dots scattered all over them that are melted into a beautiful, softer shade as the morning sunlight hits them during the summertime. Coming into waking life now, however, I glimpse at the rusty, copper color of the sheets in which I am tangled in.