She screams. She drops the cinderblock onto the ground, thankfully missing all four of our feet. She clutches her eyes and doubles over. “You bitch!” she hollers.
Damn, I got her good. She’s writhing around on her knees, still clutching her face. I hope I didn’t somehow blind her. I don’t need to add that to the list of crimes I have committed against Dawn Schiff.
When she finally stops screaming and looks up at me, her eyes are bloodshot and watery. On the plus side, she doesn’t seem to be blind.
“Fine,” she says. “You win. He’s yours.”
I crouch down beside her on the pier. I’m going to get splinters, but I try not to think about that. “Dawn, I don’t want Caleb. And he doesn’t want me. Trust me on that.”
She buries her face and her palms, just shaking her head.
“He loves you,” I tell her. “You and only you. I was throwing myself at him, and he always kept me at a distance. Now I understand why. And you know what he did tonight?”
She shakes her head again.
“He cried.” I think back to the tears in Caleb’s eyes. No man has ever felt like that about me before. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever happen. And yet Caleb feels that way about weird Dawn. “He couldn’t bear it that something might have happened to you.”
“He would have gotten over it.”
“I don’t believe he would have. It would’ve destroyed him.”
Dawn considers this for a moment as she sits on the pier, wiping away the chemicals I sprayed into her eyes.
“What I said before is true, you know.” I look out at the ocean, watching the waves crash against the shore. “There hasn’t been a day that goes by when I don’t think about Amelia and hate myself for what I did. Yes, I made up the part about us being friends, but I was always running in her honor. It was all for her. My penance.”
“That doesn’t erase what you did.”
“I know. I wanted you to know it though.”
Dawn’s eyes go down to her ankle. The cord is still secured to her right leg. She starts working on the knot, attempting to untie it.
“Caleb really cried?” she asks as the knot pops open.
I nod.
“He didn’t even cry over Mia,” she murmurs.
She doesn’t say anything else. Neither do I. We just sit together, watching the tide come in, both of us glad it’s not pulling us into its clutches as we realize how close each of us came to suffering that fate tonight.
Chapter Sixty-One
My phone is buzzing in my purse. It’s a text message.
I pull it out and realize that I’ve missed several messages. Two from Seth, and five from Caleb, all asking where I am. I text them both that I found Dawn, but not our exact location. I’m not even entirely sure how to describe where we are.
“Hey,” I say to Dawn, “Caleb and Seth are looking for us. We should head back.”
She frowns. “What happens next?”
That’s a great question. The first thing I would like to do is march Dawn right back to the police station so Santoro can see she is still alive—that I’m not a cold-blooded murderer who bullied my coworker and killed her when she discovered I was allegedly stealing money. I want to hear him tell me that all the charges have been dropped.
Unless he plans to pin the murder of that stranger on me. Frankly, I wouldn’t put anything past him.
“Caleb just wants to see that you’re okay,” I tell her. “And then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Dawn considers this for a moment. Then she struggles to her feet, wobbling a little bit before she finds her balance. Part of me is scared she might throw herself into the ocean at the last second, but she doesn’t.
“He’s going to be mad at me,” she murmurs.
“He won’t be mad. He’s just going to be relieved you’re okay.”
I turn on the flashlight on my phone so we don’t accidentally walk off the pier before we get back to dry land. I also shoot off a quick text message to both Caleb and Seth:
We are on the pier right near the Angry Crab restaurant.
Just as we get back to the main road, a pair of twin headlights approaches us. Both Seth and Caleb are here. Caleb pulls over first in his green Ford and leaps out of the driver’s seat while the car is almost still moving. His hair is disheveled and his coat is hanging open as he runs down the street to where we’re standing. Before we can even acknowledge his presence, he throws his arms around Dawn, holding her close to his chest.
“Jesus Christ.” His voice cracks. “I was so worried about you. How could you think of doing something like that? How could you, Dawn? I’d never…”
Dawn doesn’t say anything, but she hugs him back. Her skinny little fingers cling to him so tightly, I can see how white they are even on the dimly lit street. They just stand there like that, holding each other.
It makes me tear up a bit if I’m being honest.
“Nat!”
Seth has parked behind Caleb, and he’s getting out of his own car now, at a lot more leisurely pace, but he still sprints the rest of the way over to me. I’m not going to kid myself that Seth loves me the way that Caleb loves Dawn, but he’s gone out on a limb for me today. He bailed me out of jail. He drove me out to Rhode Island. He was going to foot the bill for a lawyer if it came to that. I may have underestimated Seth Hoffman.
“You okay?” he asks when he gets within comfortable earshot.
I nod, although when I wrap my arms around my chest, I realize I’m not as fine as I thought. I was in jail this morning. Dawn was about to clock me on the head with a cinderblock roughly twenty minutes ago. I am far from okay.
But I will be.
“Are you cold?” Seth tugs at the zipper of his coat like he’s going to take it off and give it to me. “You look like you’re freezing.”
“I’m a little cold,” I admit. It’s got to be thirty degrees out here—maybe less when you factor in the breeze from the ocean.
Seth doesn’t take off his coat, but he unwraps the scarf that was around his neck. He gently places it around my own neck—it’s a black fleece scarf that has a hint of Seth’s aftershave. It radiates his warmth.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
His eyes linger on mine, and I wonder if it would be inappropriate to ask if he would come home with me tonight. It’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with him.
“Oh, hey,” he says. “Guess what? I was listening to the radio on the way over, and apparently they identified the dead body of that woman in Cohasset.”
I nod. “That’s good for her family.”
“Yeah, and I bet Santoro is going to get a lot of shit for arresting you for the murder of somebody who turned out to still be alive. They should’ve waited for the DNA to come back—they really jumped the gun.”
Yes, Santoro should have waited. But he was just too eager to nail me. All because he got bullied as a kid.
Caleb and Dawn have finally disentangled themselves. He’s got his arm around her shoulders, keeping her warm with his body heat.