I do, however, snap the latex against my wrist. Because. I won’t be doing it again though because it does kinda sting a little.
’Kay. A lot. Ouch.
“You take upstairs,” Drake says. “I’ll do downstairs.”
“Got it.” I put my foot on the bottom step and start slowly walking up. There are two bookcases on the U-turn of the stairs, each of them filled bottom to top with books. Some are fiction, popular romance and fantasy novels and the like, and others are nonfiction books.
How to Change Your Life in Ten Easy Steps. The Art of Feng Shui. Confessions of a Female Stripper. 50 Easy Recipes for Chicken.
Well, she had a varied reading taste, huh?
I comb my fingers across some of the hardcovers on the middle shelf as I walk past. Such a random mixture of books. I wonder if there’s a parenting one in there covered by another book’s dust jacket.
I stop halfway up the second set of stairs and turn back to the shelf. One by one, I pull each hardcover down and open the fronts of the dust jackets, leaving them in a haphazard kind of pile by my feet as I sit on the bottom stair.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter to the books, starting on the second shelf.
“What are you talkin’ to?”
I ignore him and continue on my quest. I’m going to look like a total dick if my gut feeling proves to be wrong.
Except it isn’t.
So You’re Having a Baby? is hiding beneath a dust jacket for homemade Chinese meals.
“Yes!” I fist-pump the air. “Sneaky!”
“What is?” Drake appears on the stairs, his face peeking out around the corner.
“This.” I hold the book out. “She knew she was pregnant, for sure.”
He takes it, briefly flicking through its pages. “So, why let someone whip her stomach the way she did?”
“People don’t necessary want the babies they carry.” I gather a few books and put them back on the shelf in the order I took them off in. “Maybe she was too afraid to have the baby but too afraid to have an abortion, too. Maybe she thought continuing on her sexual lifestyle, the whippings and abuse to her body, would kill the baby. It’s not beyond the realms of possibilities. She could have drunk lots and taken drugs and done whatever to kill the baby in a way she deemed natural without having to risk the condemnation of nurses at the clinic…and the medical bills.”
“What about the father?”
“He didn’t have to know. She told me that Nick was cheating on her, but if she was the one cheating, then it’d make sense that there wasn’t another man on the scene to help her.”
“Do you think she was cheating?”
I slot the last book onto the shelf and pause. “I don’t know. The only person who does is Nick Lucas, and he’s annoyingly absent right now.”
Drake nods. “Carry on up and see if you can find out anything else. Here.” He pulls a couple of evidence bags from his pocket and hands them to me. “Just in case.”
I take them and stuff them into my own pocket, focusing on moving upward. Her bedroom, the spare room, and the bathroom. The spare room gives me nothing, and her bedroom gives me nothing other than a tiny desk calendar with stars marked onto it and a half-eaten package of crispy M&Ms. With a huff, I take to her bathroom, pulling her medicine cabinet open.
Everyone has secrets in that thing.
And bingo.
Contraceptive pill packets are in abundance here. When I turn each foil strip over, each pill is labeled with the date. I look to the trash can, and one totally empty strip stares back at me.
Hmm.
I check each strip and finally find one with three days missing. The last day missing being Friday.
How did this get past her doctor? How was she prescribed the pill without being tested for pregnancy?
Of course, I know. You can go so many months without any kind of tests past blood pressure. And if Natalie had been taking this pill for a long period of time without any problems…
But if she was on the pill, how did she get pregnant? Antibiotics? A day missed? Carelessness?
Sweet shit.
I perch on the edge of the bathtub. All of these boxes—they don’t even have her name on them. Some of them don’t even have doctor’s labels.
She wasn’t being prescribed them. She was getting them illegally.
To try to kill her baby.
Why wouldn’t you take the easy route? If you don’t want a baby, why not get a medically safe abortion? Or put it up for adoption? Or anything other than try to to kill your baby at home.
Illegal pills and stomach lashes.
I drop the strip to the floor and press my mouth against my upper arm. What on Earth could drive her to do something that drastic? I don’t understand it, not for a second.
“Noelle?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, because I can’t imagine the torture Natalie was going through—mentally or, indeed, physically. To do that… Gosh. It doesn’t even make sense, does it?
No, I answer. No, it doesn’t. It also tells me that the baby didn’t belong to her boyfriend. Unless there was an underlying veil of abuse she never passed on to me at her interview, but I didn’t get that feel.
The more I learn, the less certain I am that she was honest at all. Aside from the obvious in the form of her stalker. But who even knows if all of her claims were true?
I hate doubting people. I want to believe that every one of my clients has a spouse who isn’t cheating or they aren’t being followed or that lie their teenaged daughter told them was really a lie. I want to see the good in people, because where’s the use in going through life seeing the bad? Why would you look at a dark-gray, stormy sky if you had the option to stare at one where the sun’s light was filling it?
I’m sometimes harder than situations call for, but when it comes to truth and lies, I want to believe that lies don’t exist. That everyone can be honest. That lies are merely made up of misunderstandings and fears warping together.
I’m cynical, too, though, and I know that, sometimes, lies aren’t that simple. Lies can be intricate webs of deceitfulness so carefully woven that, soon enough, even the liar can’t distinguish between real and make-believe.
“She has several appointments with her gynecologist on her calendar in the kitchen. At least I’m assuming so. And a star every few weeks.”
“Her period,” I say softly. “Mom used to do that—mark on the calendar approximately when it was due so she knew to be ready. Except Natalie was marking when she should have been due. I don’t think her ex knew she was pregnant, Drake.” I turn my face and meet his eyes. “The pill strips—the last one taken was Friday, and none have her name on. She was trying to kill the baby.”
I could say it a hundred times and it’d never sink in.
He leans against the doorframe, his eyes moving between the cupboard, the trash can, and the strip I’ve dropped between my feet on the floor.
“Shit,” he breathes.
“We really need DNA on that baby.” I drop my eyes to the pills. “This could change everything. She wanted that baby dead, Drake. Dead. But not so badly that she’d get an abortion.”
“Which means the father wasn’t her boyfriend, but someone who could change her life without it being too bad. But who?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
A rock has settled in my lower stomach ever since we left Natalie’s house armed with evidence that’s already been handed over to forensics. The images we took are being copied and handed to Sheriff Bates to place onto his board.
I wasn’t expecting him to be involved, but apparently, when the mayor’s daughter is the one finding the body, it changes everything in the police hierarchy. The soft-spoken yet commanding gentleman who usually takes Sundays off to take his wife for dinner and dancing is dressed in a suit, wading through sex club memberships with my baby brother.
Meanwhile, Drake and I are on the way to the mayor’s house, and I’m trying to stop feeling so sick at the news we discovered in her house.