“Good morning,” Laura said, because she felt like someone should say something. She walked in, her feet taking her by instinct back to that same living room they’d met in before. There was no one else in the room this time, the sofa empty, the whole space seeming smaller and sadder now that it wasn’t full to the brim with people.
“My parents are resting upstairs,” Stephen said, his voice low. “Let’s try not to disturb them. Unless you’re here to tell us that you’ve caught the guy?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Nate said, his tone one of regret. “We actually have a few follow-up questions. We’re getting closer to catching him all the time, and the information you can give us might help us get there.”
Stephen sighed again and sat down, gesturing for them to do the same. “What do you need to know?”
Laura sat beside him on the sofa, finding the seat cushions uncomfortably flat and sunken, while Nate took an armchair to the side. “I believe Veronica was in a car accident not too long ago?” she said, posing the words as a question.
Stephen looked at her with a frown. “Yes. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Let us be the judge of that,” Laura said, gently but firmly. She found that relatives often had the tendency to become armchair detectives, especially if you didn’t get the case solved quickly enough for their liking. They had to be reminded from time to time that actual detectives couldn’t just share all the information on the case with everyone they spoke to – that most of it had to stay classified so that the killer wouldn’t escape. “Can you tell us about what happened?”
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Stephen glanced away, towards the wall, his eyes clearly looking inward to his memory instead of outward. “It was a pretty bad smash. Totaled the car. It wasn’t her fault at all – some loser was drunk behind the wheel, and she happened to be driving home after staying late at work. T-boned her car at an intersection.”
“What about her injuries?” Laura asked. “Her medical records suggest it was pretty serious.”
Stephen snorted. “Serious?” he said, shaking his head. “It was a miracle she survived. She almost didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Laura asked. She could hear a rush of blood in her ears. A thing she didn’t want to acknowledge was coming rapidly towards her, like the very vehicle that had hit Veronica’s car.
“Her heart stopped before they even managed to get her out of the car. The EMTs had to resuscitate her at the scene,” Stephen said. “She had months of problems. Broke her leg in two places. She had to practically relearn how to walk on it by the time the cast came off. Broke her collarbone too, and she had some pretty nasty cuts on her side from the broken glass.”
Laura had a flash of herself, standing in the morgue, looking down at the body. From the other side. She hadn’t gone around to examine Veronica from all angles, had never noticed the scars. The coroner hadn’t mentioned them, but why would he? They weren’t relevant to the cause of death.
“She died, and came back to life,” Laura said, saying the words almost to herself. She felt like she was floating for an odd moment. Like she was looking down at herself having this realization.
That was what she had seen. Veronica Rowse coming back to life. And now that she thought harder about the vision she’d had, the images that were burned into her memory, she could see details. Like the glint of broken glass in Veronica’s hair, just at the edge of the vision. Like the fact that Veronica was only just dead, or she would have looked completely different, as she had in the morgue. This was something that happened not long after her heart stopped. She was resuscitated. The movements Laura had seen – they must have been caused by the EMTs pumping her chest.
Laura felt her own heart pounding and constricting oddly, her head swimming. The sound of her heartbeat echoed in her ears. She hadn’t seen the future.
She’d seen the past.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Laura was still reeling as Nate made their goodbyes. She hadn’t even heard whether he’d asked any more questions, or what Stephen might have said in response to them. She was too shaken. Still trying to understand what all of this meant.
She’d never seen the past before. It had always been the future. This was a complete change, a one-eighty, something so far out of left field she had never expected it. And she had no idea what it meant. Why it was happening.
If the foundations had felt shaky before, now they were entirely gone. Laura was falling through quicksand, and she had nothing to hold onto. She followed Nate out of the house numbly, slumping into the passenger seat, able to do nothing but simply stare ahead blankly.
“Laura?” he said. His tone was urgent but soft, like he didn’t want to startle her. “Laura, are you alright?”
She turned her head to look at him, feeling how slow the motion was. She couldn’t seem to speed up. Couldn’t snap back to normal. It was like she was inside a dream; and in the dream, she was swimming in treacle, and nothing was working properly.
Nate swore quietly under his breath.
“Laura, what’s going on?” he asked, reaching out to touch her arm. “Talk to me.”
The second he touched her, bare fingers on bare wrist, there it was again. The shadow of death. It was dark and roiling and visceral, and Laura felt it hit her stomach before she had a chance to even react. She recoiled with horror, brushing his arm away with a half-whimper, half-shout, unable to bear it. For a moment she thought she was actually going to throw up, right there in the car.
Nate looked at her even more intensely, his eyes wide with what Laura realized was fear. He was afraid for her.
Or of her?
“Just take a deep breath with me,” Nate said, his voice going lower and rhythmic. “In, okay? And out. You’re doing great. In… and out.”