“I don’t know.”
“You let us bury someone under your name. So who was she?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then explain it.”
She looked toward the window.
“I left the motel before the fire.”
“Why?”
“Tyler found me.”
My anger stumbled.
Tyler.
The boyfriend Rebecca had claimed she was no longer staying with.
I’d met him twice.
He’d been charming the first time.
The second time, Rebecca wore long sleeves in July.
I had asked.
She’d laughed it off.
“Did he hurt you?”
Rebecca stared at her hands.
“Yes.”
I waited.
“He’d been hurting me for months.”
Something old and ugly shifted in my chest.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because you’d warned me about him.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It was to me at twenty-four.”
She swallowed.
“The night I asked you for money, I wasn’t trying to rent a normal room. I was trying to get enough cash to leave Virginia.”
