Sight Lines

by Michelle DiCeglio

  I nodded—but I hadn’t made up my mind yet whether I was going to come back.

  “In the meantime, I have another homework assignment,” she added.

  I looked up and glared. Her last homework assignment was what got me into this mess with Ali.

  “Think about what kind of resolution you want. You don’t have to act on anything—just decide what type of relationship you’d like to have with Ali, if any at all.”

  I thought about what Dr. Winston said and told her I would look over my schedule and get back to her to set up another appointment. But I knew most of that was a lie. My paid leave was ending soon, and I was scheduled to return to the office next week. But first, I needed Dr. Winston to sign off on my paperwork, stating that I was mentally stable to return to work. I was a little surprised when she did. This was the second time she had to sign off on my mental state—although the first time was for a completely separate incident.

  I made my way out of her office and headed toward my car. Although the sun was out, I felt as if I were walking under a giant umbrella. I had thought going to see Dr. Winston would alleviate at least some of the darkness, but it hadn’t.

  Feeling hopeless, I started my car and decided to go to the grocery store. I was low on food. And even though I hadn’t been eating much, I needed to buy more dog food. I had no idea how much longer Viggo would be with me.

  Once at the store, I grabbed the first cart by the door and began filling it with just the essentials. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t want to know who was nearby, and I didn’t want to see their looks of pity. Lyons was too small a town for everyone to be a stranger.

  Turning the cart down the cleaning-supply aisle, I stopped in front of the paper towels and stared at them, lost in thought. I was put into a tranquil state by the quiet hum of the loudspeaker above me. I felt someone walk closely behind me, but I didn’t feel like moving out of anyone’s way.

  “Lace…” I heard someone say. I knew who it was without turning around.

  “I thought I told you not to call me that,” I reminded Ali without turning to face her. I put down the roll of paper towels I had been meticulously inspecting and turned to walk away.

  “Wait,” she said. I paused as she continued to search for whatever words she thought I needed to hear. I honestly didn’t know if there were any. “Did you get my emails?” she asked.

  I hadn’t—but that was because I hadn’t checked my email. With all the recent events, I wasn’t in the mood to be social, and I certainly didn’t need any spam telling me about dating sites or how to be the perfect girlfriend. In my eyes, there was only one thing a person needed to be the perfect girlfriend: honesty.

  “Please say whatever you need to so I can leave,” I said without looking at her.

  “I’m sorry—”

  I instantly scoffed.

  “I know that doesn’t change anything,” she continued, “but I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”

  “For what, exactly? Just out of curiosity.” I was able to look at her now, but I wished I hadn’t. Even with my body overflowing with rage, it wasn’t enough to make me look at her any differently. Her eyes, drunk with sorrow, were still intoxicatingly beautiful. I was caught somewhere between wanting to strangle her or kiss her—but I knew I couldn’t do either.

  “Do we have to do this here?” Ali said as she looked around at the other customers in the store, who were starting to stare.

  “Believe me, you’re benefiting from having potential eyewitnesses,” I snapped. But I only half meant it. She reached for my hand, and I jerked my body away from her.

  “I don’t want you to be scared of me,” she said as her eyes began to fill with tears.

  “Scared of you?” I shouted. “You should be scared of me.”

  She gave me a puzzled look.

  “It’s terrifying how easy it would be for me to hurt to you,” I said. “Not because I’m stronger than you, but because of how much I want to.”

  We just stood there, staring at one another, her eyes full of tears that she had to blink away, and mine iced over from the coldness in my heart.

  “Tell me when you know what you’re sorry for,” I said. “Until then, stay away from me.”

  I picked up a box of tissues that were adjacent to the paper towels and shoved them so hard into her chest that she had to take a step back. Abandoning my cart of groceries, I hurried past her, telling myself not to turn around. My car was less than a thousand feet away. All I had to do was keep my composure until then.

  I fumbled for my keys inside my pocket. I got into my car, but I was too blinded by the building tears to attempt to back out of the parking spot. Before I could compose myself to see clearly enough to leave, the passenger door opened. Ali sat down and closed the door behind her.

  “Witnesses,” I reminded her through my tear-soaked humor. I was too emotionally exhausted to keep my defenses up.

  “I’ll take my chances,” she replied.

  I let her look at me, tears and mascara running down my face, so she could see what she had done to me—what she had done to us. If this was what being in love with her was like, I wanted out.

  “You said to tell you when I knew what I was sorry for,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth. And I’m sorry for doing this to you,” she added, gesturing toward my current emotional state.

  “What truth?” I asked.

  “I can’t do this here,” she said. I watched as she looked around at the customers walking though the parking lot. They all seemed rather oblivious to the two women crying in a car. “I was waiting for the right time to tell you I was following your case,” she said. “But the more time you and I spent together, the worse I felt about lying to you—because I had fallen in love with you.”

  Hearing her say those words, I could no longer keep myself from unabashedly breaking down in front of her. It was almost machine-like, the way my tears poured out, as if I had been programmed to cry. And the tears just kept falling, as if they were jumping off a bridge to meet a welcome death.

  “You’re saying you lied to me because you were in love with me?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” she said. “I swear…I was going to tell you.” She paused, waiting for my response. But I only gave her a blank stare.

  “I was willing to leave with you,” I shouted. “I would have left my job, my town, everything, to go anywhere with you.”

  “We can still do that,” she said, and I scoffed again. “Can we please go somewhere more private so that we can talk about this?”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “What can I do to fix this?” Ali reached her left hand across the center console and wiped away my tears. For three seconds, I gave in to her touch. They were the best three seconds of my week, but I knew the moment couldn’t last. “Losing someone before you’ve finished your time with them—”

  “Is something you’re just going to have to go through,” I angrily cut her off and moved my face back out of her reach.

  “I hate myself for doing this to you,” she said, trying to look into my eyes.

  “No matter how much you hate yourself, I hate you a hundred times more,” I said as I glared at her. And it was true. I did hate her—but not enough to truly mean what I was going to say next: “I never want to see you again.”

  She looked me dead in the eyes and slowly nodded her head twice. “You still have my dog,” she whispered through the disbelief in her voice. “When can I get him?”

  I paused as I thought about what I never want to see you again truly meant. Viggo was more than just a dog to me now. He had been my sanity throughout this entire ordeal.

  “Come by when you’re ready to take care of him,” I replied. “I won’t fight you on this. He’s your dog,” I added. And I knew I had no legal claim to him.

  She listlessly nodded her head again. I reached my arm across her lap a
nd opened the door.

  “Now get the fuck out of my car.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  While Viggo quietly rested across my chest as I lay on the couch, I took the peaceful opportunity to gaze out the open window across from me. The sun carefully peeked through the blinds, casting a promising glow across the room. But the light stopped a few inches short of the sofa. Perhaps the sunlight didn’t want to battle the darkness inside me.

  The abrupt knock on my door startled both me and Viggo. I tried to coax him off me, but he wasn’t willing to budge. So I picked him up in my arms and gently placed him on the opposite side of the couch, where a folded blanket created the perfect spot for him. I stood up slowly. I wasn’t expecting anyone and figured it was a neighborhood kid selling candy for a class trip.

  No such luck.

  “Hi,” Ali said hesitantly as I opened the front door.

  I took a step back without saying a word. Taking that as her invitation, she walked inside and smiled when she saw Viggo. She closed the door behind her, pushing the handle until the latch clicked. Then she turned to face me.

  “My real name is Alison Carmichael,” she said as soon as our eyes met. “Rhodes is my mother’s maiden name. I was hired by the Yui family to look into Crystal’s murder. I’m a licensed private investigator. I grew up in upstate New York, but I moved to Chicago five years ago to start my own agency. I’ve been living in Lyons since May—”

  “No,” I interrupted her. “You told me you moved here two years ago, from New York.” Nothing was making sense. “And that you’re a web designer,” I added, glaring at her in anger and confusion.

  “That’s my cover story,” she said.

  Of course. That’s why it always sounded so rehearsed when she told people her back story—because it was just that: a story.

  “I couldn’t tell you…” She stopped herself. Probably because she knew I would already know why she couldn’t tell me. But that didn’t make me want to forgive her.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, looking at her as if she were a stranger. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

  “Because you need to know that I never meant to hurt you,” she said with a look of pure remorse in her eyes. “Please, let me explain.”

  I remained silent, which allowed her to continue.

  “I was hired by Crystal Yui’s parents. They wanted their daughter’s murder to get the attention the Lyons P.D. couldn’t provide. They paid for my moving expenses and my living expenses in addition to my usual fees,” she said.“

  The first victim…after Tara,” I muttered. “We knew she came from money, thought her murder was for ransom.”

  “They weren’t happy when Crystal got pushed aside and new cases took priority over hers,” Ali explained. “That’s where I came in.”

  “Her murder wasn’t an isolated event,” I said, defending my department and my colleagues. “We had to investigate the new murders to help solve hers.”

  “I know that. But that’s not how her parents saw it,” Ali said. “This isn’t about your department not doing its job. As an independent investigator, I was able to focus all of my attention on just their daughter,” she added. “After interviewing her friends and talking to her professors, I retraced her steps from the day she went missing. She and her classmates had gone to Vantage Woods that afternoon. They had an assignment for their biology class, and all the students drove separately. As they were leaving, one of her classmates saw her turn in to the gas station where Keegan works.”

  “We had no idea she was ever there.”

  “And you weren’t supposed to,” she said. “Keegan purposely didn’t accept credit cards. It would’ve looked suspicious if every single victim had used her card at his station a few days prior to being murdered. I tried to use my debit card there several times, just to see if he ever allowed it…”

  “And…”

  “Not once did he let me,” she said. “I was starting to become a regular there.”

  “That’s why he was so friendly with you that day I stopped by,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked.

  “I didn’t find all this out overnight. It took me quite a while to piece it together. A lot of Crystal’s friends were hesitant to talk to me. And I had to keep the Yui family informed of my progress. But I didn’t want to tell the police until I knew for sure.”

  “You were the tip,” I blurted out. It was all starting to become clear. “You said there was something you had to do before we could leave Lyons. You were the anonymous tip. You told Bishop about Keegan,” I said, taken aback from the sudden realization. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “I asked him not to,” she said. “I told him who I really was, and I told him about my suspicions. I told him that if he really cared about you, he should go to Keegan’s gas station.”

  “Braxton went to the gas station and talked to the owner. Bishop came to your house afterward—that’s when he found Keegan,” I recalled. “But why was Keegan at your house?”

  “I still don’t know,” Ali said and ran her hand through her hair. “I’ve been trying to figure that out. I know he was following you. Maybe he knew I was watching him too.”

  “Did you know it was Keegan when you contacted Bishop?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I didn’t care at that point. I was hoping you and I would be long gone by the time Bishop figured out that it was—or wasn’t—Keegan.” She paused. “I was going to tell you the truth as soon as we left.”

  She seemed to be answering my questions honestly, but something still felt off. The actions of her double life were coming together, like pieces from two different puzzles that had all been thrown into the same box, but it was nearly impossible to separate the two without having the full picture in front of me.

  “But you went out on dates,” I said, remembering portions of her fictitious life.

  “One date,” she stressed. “And it wasn’t real. Not on my end at least.”

  I half-smiled to myself as I thought about how odd it was that she ordered fettuccini Alfredo on a first date.

  “I agreed to go on a date with Tammy Davis,” Ali continued, “because I knew she was a reporter. And I was trying to get information from her.” She paused again. “I feel responsible for her death because I was the one who picked that restaurant.”

  “So those tears were real.”

  “Yes,” she said as she looked down at Viggo and sadly smiled at him.

  “Is he part of your cover story too?”

  “No.” She laughed. “He’s real.” She took a step closer to me. This was the first time she had moved since walking through my doorway.

  “And when you kissed me?” I asked, swallowing the building lump in my throat.

  “That was real too.” She took another step closer. I looked into her eyes and then at her mouth. It felt as if time had stopped and we were the only two people in the world left alive. I watched her as she looked at my mouth then closed her eyes as she leaned in to kiss me.

  Letting myself be kissed by her, I tried to fight the familiarity of her lips. I knew she wasn’t the Ali Rhodes she had said she was. But I also knew that the Alison Carmichael standing in front of me, her lips against mine, was the person I had fallen in love with.

  But that wasn’t enough to mend my broken heart.

  “Don’t—” I said and broke away from her kiss. She took a step back and hung her head. “Why did you come up to me at Denim that night?” I asked accusingly.

  “I was supposed to meet Tammy there. I was going to tell her I wasn’t interested in dating her. But when she…stood me up,” she said, referencing the term we had used that night, although we both knew now why she was a no-show, “I saw you there. And I thought it was a serendipitous opportunity. You had more information than Tammy ever could.”

  “You knew I couldn’t talk to a civilian about a case,” I snapped. “Or was the plan to get me
drunk? Take me home? Do whatever it took to get information?” I could feel my body temperature rising.

  “No,” she said and she took another step back. “I wouldn’t have done that to you.” “

  “Well, for some reason, I don’t believe you.” I knew I had hit her below the belt, but I didn’t care. “What about the fair? And afterward? When we went back to your house?”

  “The fair was real,” she said sternly.

  Mentioning the fair reminded me how naïve I had been. Wanting to enjoy such trivial things—like sharing a bag of cotton candy or winning that stupid stuffed frog for her—only blinded me to the liar I should’ve been able to see. That I had been trained to see.

  “What do I have to do to prove to you that everything I feel for you is real?” she pleaded. “I only lied at the beginning because I had to.”

  “As much as I want to believe you—and a big part of me does—I don’t know how I could ever trust you again,” I said. “You completely deceived me.”

  “What would you have done if I had told you at Denim that I was a private investigator hired by a victim’s family?”

  “I would have said that you were wasting your time and that the police were handling things,” I answered honestly. “Now I know why you were such a good shot,” I added, remembering the night I took her to the gun range.

  “I never said I didn’t know how to fire weapon,” she said defensively.

  “Your story only works as an excuse for the first time we met,” I said. “You had two months after that to tell me who you really were.”

  “I know,” she said softly. We looked at one another for what felt like the last time, and I let myself linger in her grace. “I’ll leave,” she offered, breaking the silence. “I just wanted you to know the truth.” I watched her walk over to Viggo and pick him up. She turned away from me and started walking toward the door.

  “Wait—” I cried out in a strained whisper. She stopped walking but kept her back to me. “How did you know about Tara?”