“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We left the station just after one.
Emily was quiet in the car.
“You did good,” I said.
“It didn’t feel good.”
“It never does.”
She looked out the window.
“He’s going to hate me now.”
“He already hated you, baby. He just called it love.”
Emily flinched.
But she didn’t argue.
We stopped by her apartment at 2:30 with Officer Mendez and another officer named Liu.
Caleb wasn’t there.
He was still in custody.
But walking into that apartment felt like walking into a tomb.
Everything was beige. Neat. Controlled.
There were no pictures of Emily on the walls.
No sign that she lived there at all.
“He made me take them down,” Emily said quietly. “He said they were narcissistic.”
Diane made a disgusted sound.
We packed fast.
Clothes. Toiletries. Laptop. The few personal items Caleb had allowed her to keep.
In the closet, I found a box shoved in the back.
Inside were Emily’s nursing textbooks.
Her acceptance letter to the hospital program.
A birthday card from Madison.
A photo of the two of them at graduation, smiling so wide it hurt to look at.
“He told me to throw these away,” Emily said from the doorway.
“But you didn’t.”
