She was still watching me, her expression calm and curious despite the shaky feeling behind her soft smile. Deciding to indulge her, I thought about her question for a moment, trying to bring to mind whatever answer she was looking for.
“I don’t know. There isn’t much left in the old noodle. I remember having—being forced under duress to ask Mel to have sex with me—”
“I gave you ice cream!” she argued.
“Under duress!” I repeated, pointing at her. Her anxiety cracked a little and I grinned at the relief that started to leak through. “After that, I don’t remember much. There was a fancy house and… I think I got fresh with Norma. It gets blurry after that.”
Truth was, I wanted it to stay blurry. When I thought too hard about anything after checking out the fancy foyer, my thoughts seemed to ice over. If my brain had knees, they would have started knocking any time the subject was brought up. I shook my head, waving away the incident.
“You don’t have to… I’m fine. Is that what you’re worried about? What are you worried about?”
The tension in Chloe’s shoulders relaxed a little and she went back to poking and stirring the colorful mix of food she’d put together.
“So Madeline did a good job, then?” Her gaze rolled to me, but the action was slightly hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet my eyes. “She got it all…it’s gone?”
“What’s gone?”
“The…” She was quiet for a second and I felt dishonesty start to boil up from the recesses of her mind. It burbled back down to nothing after a moment and she licked her lips before speaking the truth. “Norma was in your head, like she was in Stan’s. You didn’t take her death well and I didn’t like seeing you that way.” Fear jittered through her, chased by the ghost of guilt. “I didn’t like what it made you do.”
I thought back to Stan’s comment about how I’d tried to kill Chloe and I jumped to my feet, closing the distance between us so I could hug her. She stiffened slightly when my hands touched her bare arm, but then relaxed almost instantly into the hug.
“I’m sorry if I tried to hurt you. But at least you didn’t have to stab me in the balls to stop me, right?”
“Stab you in the balls?” Chloe asked, leaning away just enough so she could catch my eye. “Honey, I’ve got news for you about the birds and the bees.”
I laughed and stepped back. We smiled at each other for a moment longer before she turned to the food and lifted the pan to flip the contents like an expert.
“Is that why you’ve been coming over to make me broccoli every night since it happened? Is this punishment for me trying to whack you?”
“Yes,” Chloe said. “And had you killed me, I would have come back to haunt you shaped like a giant eggplant.”
“Yes, just what I need whenever Owen comes back into town, a giant purple, dong-shaped ghost going, ‘wooo-ooo-oooo!’ while I’m trying to get him to take his pants off.”
Chloe’s whole face wrinkled with laughter for a few moments before she was able to speak again. “Just don’t try to kill me and things will be fine.”
“Likewise,” I joked. Her expression went tight and I wondered as she turned the burner off and set the pan aside if the faint wisp of guilt she was feeling was real or imagined.
As she piled our plates high and told me to pour us some water to drink with dinner, I decided it had to be imagined. Chloe was one of the best people I’d ever met. She couldn’t have had anything to feel guilty for.
* * *
Business With Pleasure (Empathy in the Preternatural PNW Book 2) Page 24