Page 56 of Traces Of You

“Yes. Randy never laid a hand on me, but I’d heard him talking to Oliver before to take care of me. Put me in my place. I felt he egged Oliver on.”

“Don’t make excuses for someone that hurt you,” he said, his arms tightening around her. Not to hurt but rather show his reaction.

She looked into his eyes and pushed out of his hug as much as she wanted to stay there for hours. “I’m not. I never would. I’m only saying that sometimes Randy made it worse. Or wound Oliver up. Whenever he would come over, I had to be on my best behavior.”

“Did you know Randy was a drug dealer?”

She closed her eyes, her shoulders slumped. She felt like such a damn fool.

“No, but it’s making sense now.”

“Tell me,” he said. “Everything. Hold nothing back. I mean it. Nothing you say will end up anywhere it shouldn’t. The girl I knew never opened up. If you want me to believe you, I need you to give it all to me. Now is your chance, Reenie.”

“Do I need Gale here?”

She wanted to be protected. She might need an attorney if she said something so that Ford didn’t think she was part of anything illegal.

“No,” he said. “But if you say something that I think you do, we’ll call her.”

She squared her shoulders. “I found pills once in Oliver’s jacket. I was doing laundry and his jacket was dirty. I thought I’d wash it and when I emptied the pockets out, I found a small baggy of pills. Maybe five or six of them. He took sleeping pills, but these weren’t them. I asked him what they were. They didn’t look like aspirin. I mean sometimes I’d put a few in a baggy myself.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That it was none of my business and I had no right to go through his things. We fought that night.”

She ended up with a lump on the side of her head where he’d shoved her hard into the wall and she’d hit her temple. When her fingers came away with blood, he’d backed off.

That was one of their first fights, and she should have tried to leave then.

But he’d apologized, then turned it around as her fault. She shouldn’t have gone through his stuff.

She’d spent so much of her life believing everything she did was wrong that a small part of her thought he was right, thatthis was her punishment. He promised it wouldn’t happen again, told her he loved having her in his life and appreciated all she did for him. And because she craved even the smallest scrap of acceptance, she’d foolishly believed him.

“Did you ever see him with anything else?”

“Only when he didn’t know. There were a lot of quiet conversations between Randy and him. They always told me to leave the room or leave the house, or they’d go outside and talk. Once in a while I’d see Oliver with a few pills in a bag. Not enough for me to think he was selling, but more like using. He always complained his back and legs hurt. I thought they were pain pills. He couldn’t sleep at night because of the pain and had the sleeping pills to help.”

“He took those pills in front of you?”

“Not that I knew,” she said. “But when he took any pill I didn’t ask him to show it to me.” She wouldn’t be that stupid. But she had to tell Ford everything even if he got upset with her. “When I was leaving two weeks ago, I left my clothes with blood on them in the back of the closet. I noticed a lifted tile in a corner. As if the tile hadn’t been sealed like the rest.”

“Did you look at it closer?”

“I shifted it out of the way and there was a box in the floor. I opened it and found several bags of those mixed pills. As if he was collecting them or something.”

“Maybe skimming off the top? Clay found out that Randy was selling and Oliver would keep stashes at his house along with money so that no one would find it on Randy. Do you think that was possible?”

“Seems like anything is possible and I wasn’t aware. I’m such an idiot. But I’ve never seen money. There were only pills in there. All different colors and sizes, and just a few of each.”

“As if he was collecting them for a sale on his own or to use?”

A few more tears escaped. More from embarrassment at what a fool she’d been.

“I don’t know. I don’t think that way. But I took two of those bags and put them in the pocket of some of his clothes. I thought there wouldn’t be enough for sale, but possession. So you know, if the police searched his house for me, they’d find them. It’s not like I planted it. He had them. I moved two bags, right?”

“You wanted to get away,” he said. “You were buying time. Not the way I’d do any of it.”

“I know. I was desperate, but I didn’t think he’d go to jail for murdering me and hiding the body, but just kept in the area for questioning. Once I was safely in Canada, I would have let Gainesville Police know I was safe, but not where I was. It’s not like I was going to tell them I cleaned up blood to frame him for something. People knew he abused me. There was probably blood in other places too. I’m not a horrible person to let someone go away for a crime they didn’t commit. But the baggy of pills, that was already there and it was only shifting the spot. Just in case he did call the police saying I was missing. Which we know he didn’t, but I did it hoping if he had, they’d find those drugs and it’d slow him down from looking for me.”