Read Online Stay With Me by Alison Gaylin - Free Book Online Page B

voice inside her, stunted its growth. “I didn’t know it would be this hard.”
    “Of course it’s hard, honey,” Faith said. “You take as long as you need.”
    Ashley breathed, the breath filling and leaving her chest in halted gasps.
    Faith wanted to look away. How horrible it felt, to watch another person cry like this, a fragile young girl, and not be able to hold her.
    “At night, I keep seeing their faces. I can’t sleep without dreaming about them. It’s like they’re still with me. Just like they said they’d be.”
    “The Lemaires.”
    “Yes. They said no one ever leaves them. Not really.”
    Faith swallowed hard. “No one.”
    The girl nodded.
    “So there were others? Before you?”
    “I think so.”
    “With you?”
    “Can we do the interview again?”
    Faith nodded. She handed Ashley a Kleenex and waited till she gave her the signal, and glanced over at Nicolai. Her own hands were trembling now. Her stomach felt weak. The way Ashley’s voice sounded, the lilt of it . . . at certain times, she sounded so much like . . .
    “Rolling,” Nicolai said.
    Ashley said, “You can ask me that question again.”
    “Are you sure? We can skip it if you like. Move on.”
    “No. Please. Ask it. I need to answer it.”
    Faith placed her hand over Ashley’s. She looked into the blue eyes and felt tears coming. Faith, the complete professional, the planner. Faith, who had never cried, not even when she won Miss Georgia. Not even on her wedding day to Jim, or when the doctor told her she’d never be able to have children of her own . . . Faith, who didn’t cry, not ever, because crying was for the weak.
    Faith shut her eyes. She took a few Pilates breaths and told herself that when she opened them, she’d be looking at Ashley Stanley, a grown woman and a stranger. Not a child. Not her little girl.
    Not Maya.
    Ask her the damn question .
    “Ashley,” Faith said. “What made you get into the Lemaires’ car?”
    “I was lost.”
    “I know,” Faith pushed on. “Let’s retrace that day, okay?”
    She nodded.
    “You’d gone to the movies with your friend and her boyfriend, but you felt like a third wheel.”
    “Yes.”
    “You snuck out of the theater, and you figured you’d walk home, but once you were into the mall parking lot, you realized home was a lot farther away than you thought it would be.”
    “Yes.”
    “And it was getting dark.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then, out of the blue, Mrs. Lemaire pulled up.”
    “Yes.”
    “She was the only one in the car.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “So, tell me, honey. You’re a smart girl. When she rolled down the window and asked if you needed a ride, what was it about this woman—this stranger you’d never seen before—that made you get into the car with her?”
    Ashley shook her head. “I had seen her.”
    Faith looked at her. “Excuse me?”
    “I’d seen her before, at the same movie theater. I’d seen Notting Hill and my friends were teasing me because I cried. She told me not to listen to them. She was crying, too. She was . . . she’d gone with her . . . her husband. Date night, she said . . . First date night since their baby was born . . .”
    “Oh my God.”
    “Yep,” Ashley managed a weak smile. “She lied about having a baby. Wish I could say that was the worst thing she’d done. But when she pulled up in the car . . .”
    “She wasn’t a stranger.”
    A tear trickled down Ashley’s cheek. She brushed it away.
    “You felt safe with her.”
    “Later . . . at her home . . . she said they chose me that night. When she saw me at Notting Hill , when she saw my friends making fun of me, she told Charles . . . She said she told him, ‘She’s the one.’ She said, ‘We chose you, and you’re happy now.’ ”
    Faith’s mouth felt dry. She needed to move on to life in the Lemaires’ house of horrors—she only had fifteen minutes with Ashley, and had to give her viewers what they wanted. But all she could think of