Page 44 of Dying to Meet You

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Riley smiles for the first time since she sat down. “Noted. When’s the last time you saw your daughter’s father?”

I blink. “We covered this before. I last saw him when Natalie was a toddler.”

“Any contact with him since you and I spoke on Friday?”

I shake my head, bewildered, because she asked me this a few minutes ago. “I told you. He sent me another email, but I didn’t respond.”

“What did he want?”

“Why?” I demand.

She says nothing. Just holds her pen over her little pad and waits.

“The subject line said he wanted to talk about Natalie. I didn’t.”

She nods. “All right. Now tell us again why you went to the mansion on the night of June sixth?”

“To walk thedog. We’ve been through this, too.”

“And did you know Tim would be there in the parking lot?” Riley asks.

“No,” I say without hesitation. But my heart is beating wildly.

“He shared his location with you,” she says evenly. “On his phone. Didn’t he?”

My heart might explode. “Yeah? He shared his location one time, so I could find him on a jogging path.”

“And did you use it to find him after that?” she asks.

I’m sweating through my blouse.

“Rowan,” Beatrice’s voice is sharp. Hearing it is like waking from a bad dream. “I need a minute please. It’s about the drywall order.”

There is no drywall order.

“One moment.” I push back my chair and walk over to Beatrice’s desk on the other side of the room.

“Look,” she says, pointing at her screen. There’s a random email on it.

But then she rests her hand on a notebook, and I see what she’s written there:

“I don’t like your tone. I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“If you’re out of reasonable questions, this interview is over.”

Beneath that:

They need a warrant if they want your phone!

And if you want to get rid of them, just say you want a lawyer.

It’s all very good advice. More crucially, the visit to Beatrice’s desk has given me a moment to regroup.

“Is this okay?” Beatrice asks, waving toward the email on her screen.

“It’s fine. We’ll make it work.”

“Cool.” She tosses her hair in a way that makes her look vacuous.

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