Chapter 13 - Natalie Still Tried to Change the Ending
Natalie came to see me the next morning.
She already knew Travis had confessed.
Her first words were:
“He’s blaming everything on me.”
I almost laughed.
“Is he?”
“He told me to follow her.”
“That part may be true.”
“He was screaming at me to catch up.”
“Also possible.”
“He knew I had been drinking.”
I nodded.
“And you were driving.”
Her mouth tightened.
“He could have grabbed the wheel.”
There it was.
Not innocence.
Division of guilt.
I asked her one question.
“After you heard Claire crash, did you tell Travis not to call?”
Natalie looked toward the window.
“That’s not what happened.”
“What happened?”
“I told him to think.”
“About Claire?”
Silence.
“Or about yourselves?”
She turned back toward me.
“You don’t understand what it was like. Everything would have disappeared. Travis would lose Owen. I would lose—”
She stopped.
“Lose what?”
Her face changed.
Because she had almost said too much.
I stepped closer.
“What were you afraid of losing three years ago, Natalie?”
She refused to answer.
And suddenly the affair no longer felt like the only secret they had been protecting.
There had been something else at stake that night.
May you like
Something they had never told even each other the same way.
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