He knew we were going up to the overlook. He didn't follow us by luck. He's been watching me on a map this entire time. The room held the weight of it. Henry felt the pieces lock together with a terrible clarity.
The night he could not remember had not been undone by rain or bad luck or his own carelessness. A man had hunted them up a mountain in the dark because he could not bear that Lia had chosen to leave. "Miss Bennett," Alvarez said evenly. "I'm going to need everything you can give me about Mr. Whitlock.
His full name, where he lives, where he works, what he drives, any threats he's made. If what you're describing is accurate, this stops being an accident investigation and becomes something a great deal more serious. " He never threatened me directly, Lia said. He was too careful for that. It was always beneath the words. He'd talk about how he'd never let me go, and he'd smile when he said it, so that if I ever repeated it to anyone, it would sound romantic instead of like a warning.
It was then that Denise returned to the doorway. She had stepped out for air during the worst of it, and she came back into a room that had transformed in her absence. She read it instantly. The detective's grim posture, her daughter's face, the rigid line of Henry's jaw, and she stopped where she stood. "What is it? " she said.
"What's happened? " "It was Simon," Lia told her. "The accident wasn't an accident. It was Simon's car that ran us off the road. " For a moment, Denise did not move at all. And then Henry saw something break open in her face, the very thing he had glimpsed when he first woke, the guilt that had seemed too large for a mother's ordinary worry. It rose up in her now, and overwhelmed everything else, and her hand found the doorframe to steady herself.
"No," she said softly. "No, no. " "Mom. " Lia rose from her chair. "Mom, sit down. You're white as a sheet. " But Denise was looking at Henry, and the words came out of her like something she had been carrying for 2 years and could no longer hold. "It's my fault," she said.
"All of it. The reason any of this is happening, it goes back to me. " The detective looked between them. "Ma'am. " Denise ignored him. She crossed to her daughter and took Lia's uninjured hand in both of hers, and her eyes were already filling. "When Henry pulled away from you 2 years ago," she said, "I was glad.