Page 62 of The Couple's Secret
Josie hated the way this case cut her to the bone.
Pushing the morass of feelings down deep, she focused on the information she needed to get from Zane. “Did she wake up after that? Go to bed?”
“She had a blanket. I left her there. Things were so awful.” He pressed the pack against his nose again. “You know how when something bad happens and it’s like every minute that you’re awake is torture and you can’t stop it or get away from it? Like just breathing is hard and distractions don’t work and you kind of want to die even though you would never hurt yourself just because the pain is, like, constant?”
Josie did know. “Yes,” she said, keeping her voice and her expression carefully neutral.
“Right, and so the only relief is sleep. When you’re asleep, you can’t feel it but when you wake up, it’s all there again and sometimes you’re sorry you woke up because it all rushes back. Well, that’s what it’s been like, especially for Ri, so I didn’t wake her up. I left her on the couch, figuring if she woke up on her own, she could just go to bed. That was the last time I saw her.”
“How much had she had to drink?”
“I don’t really know. I wasn’t counting or anything. Hol and I were over at the office for a while last night. We had takeout there with Ellyn while Jacks and Riley were home. They’d already eaten when we got back around nine or nine thirty so I don’t know what she drank before that. You can ask Jacks. She had a few beers that I saw and after Jacks went to bed, she opened a bottle of wine. We split it.”
Josie glanced over her shoulder to see that Gretchen was still conducting her interview. “Jackson didn’t join the two of you?”
“No,” Zane said.
“Why not?”
He removed the ice pack and pointed to his blood-crusted nostrils. “Why do you think?”
“But he woke you up this morning when he couldn’t find Riley?”
The skin beneath Zane’s eyes was already starting to bruise. “Yeah, it was around ten, I guess. Hols was already at work.”
“How long have you and your brother been on the outs?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Since I was in high school.”
“Because of Riley?”
He pressed the pack against his nose again, tipping his head back so she could no longer see his eyes. “No.”
“He’s implied more than once that you contributed to her drinking.”
“Yeah, well, he’s wrong. I never made her drink or encouraged her to drink. Sure, we got busted a few times in high school, but she made her own choices. She always made her own choices.”
“The two of you disagree about a lot of things when it comes to Riley, don’t you?”
“What? No.”
“Zane,” Josie said, suppressing a sigh. “The jealousy isn’t subtle. I’ll ask again: is the tension between you and Jackson because of feelings you both have for Riley?”
“That’s not how it started.” His free hand drifted over his bloodstained T-shirt. The streaks ran from collar to hem and had even dripped onto his jeans. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that when we were younger—before Dad met Cora—Jackson wasn’t all that morally upstanding when it came to women, okay? He didn’t make good choices.”
“What does that mean?” Josie asked.
“What do you think it means? He was an asshole.”
“I’m going to need a specific example, Zane.”
With a heavy sigh, he pulled the ice pack from his face. “He was twenty, I was thirteen. Dad was working all the time, like he always did. Jackson was usually the one who picked me up from school. That’s how he met my eighth grade English teacher. She was almost thirty. Really pretty. Nice, too. Patient, especially with all of us wild, hormonal boys in her class. Anyway, he started dating her.”
“That made you uncomfortable?”
Zane dug a nail into one of the blood droplets on his thigh. It had dried some time ago. “She was pretty upset when he dumped her, so yeah. Made it real awkward for me for the rest of that year.”
“Did you have a crush on this teacher?” Josie asked.
