Chapter 15: Evanston

Natalie's POV

Jocelyn lived on the nineteenth floor of a building on Lake Shore Drive, and I had been in her kitchen two hundred times.

At half past midnight I stood outside her door with my phone recording in my coat pocket.

Patrick was in the lobby with Annie. I had told him to stay.

I had also told him I would shout, and that he was to come only if I did.

I rang once.

She opened it in grey sweats, with her face washed and her hair tied back.

She looked like the girl who had lent me her notes for every exam in our second year.

"Nat," she said. "I was hoping you'd come alone."

"I'm alone."

"Come in. I'll put the kettle on."

I followed her into the kitchen where she had held me through my father's funeral.

I sat down on her stool and made my shoulders fall.

It was not hard. I had cried on that stool before.

"Where is she, Joss?"

"Safe. Warm. Eating better than she has in a year."

"Please."

I said it in the voice I had used in the prison infirmary, when I'd been asking a guard for water.

"Please. I'll do whatever you want."

Jocelyn turned off the kettle.

I watched her decide to believe me.

She had been waiting for this, I think, for a very long time. She wanted me to be broken, and I was good at it.

"Don't be dramatic," she said, sitting across from me. "Nobody has to lose anything."

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