Page 37 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
“Oh,” Emily begins, her voice shaking. “Thanks. It happened a long time ago.”
“How long?” I ask.
“I was in college. It was seven years ago this month.”
“And you found her.”
She bites her lip. “Yeah.”
This is like pulling teeth. But I persist, keeping my tone friendly and concerned. “It was storming?”
She lets out a ragged sigh. “Right. Our apartment leaked—in Cassie’s bedroom. So when it rained hard, she just slept in my room. Our landlord kept promising to fix it, and there were only a few months left in the semester. So we just dealt with it. The night she died, I had been at a poetry reading a few towns over from ours. The storm came out of nowhere. It was a downpour. Visibility was so bad, and it took me a long time to get home. It was intense.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say to encourage her to keep talking. “I’ve lived through storms like that.”
We both glance at the window, probably thinking the same thing. We’re living through one right now. As if to prove the point, the wind picks up, knocking a chunk of snow from the roof. It lands on the porch with a thud. We both jump.
I tell myself to keep it together. This woman and her story must be getting to me. Despite my history, I rarely have a strong startle response.
“Anyway,” Emily continues, clearly invested in finishing this story now that she started it. “It was almost five in the morning by the time I finally got home. I was drenched just from running from my car to the building. And I remember, standing on the floor mat inside the door dripping and I swore I heard it raining inside.”
“The leaky roof,” I guess.
“No, it was more than a leak. I could hear the whole storm, the wind, the lightning, all of it. It sounded too close. When I went into my bedroom, that’s what I saw first, that the window by my bed was broken. It was storming in the bedroom. The rain was coming in through the shattered pane and it was nearly as windy in there as it had been outside.”
“That’s how the killer got in? Through your bedroom window?”
“Yes. I was so focused on the rain coming in the window that I almost tripped on Cassie before I saw her on the floor by my bed. She must have been asleep because the blanket was hanging off the edge of the bed, soaked in her blood. There was so much blood.” Her voice quakes. “She was covered in blood, and her throat was hanging open. She looked like she was staring up at the ceiling, but I knew she was dead.”
She closes her eyes as if that might block out the images in her head and drains her glass. I ease it from her hand to refill it, then top off my own because I’m nearly as shaken as she is.
When I return to the living room, her eyes are open and she’s just staring off into middle distance. I don’t like to touch people or be touched unless it’s by Robert, but something about the abject misery on Emily’s face makes me reach out and squeeze her hand.
“I know what you’ve been through,” I tell her.
Emily laughs shortly. “You can’t.”
“You’d be surprised.” I hand her the glass and sit down next to her.
Emily wipes her tears and flicks her gaze toward me. “What, you found your roommate stabbed to death, too?”
“Not exactly. I’ll tell you the story, but first can I ask you a question?”
She nods wordlessly.
“Was Tristan with you at the poetry reading? Did he come home with you that night?”
She gives me a confused look. “What?”
“Tristan. Your husband,” I prompt.
“Oh, no, we didn’t start dating until after. I met Tristan almost a year after Cassie died.”
This isn’t the response I expected. I press my lips together and try not to frown. “How did you meet him?”
Emily smiles despite the pain on her face. “I ran into him, literally, in the lobby of my psychotherapist’s office.”
“And the rest is history.”
