Lib Novel Page 37
“No, just Max. Why?”
“Cats sometimes leave dead things for their owners. Have you seen a cat around?”
“No.”
He kept poking at it and I averted my eyes. I was such a wimp.
Something he’d said bothered me. “What did you mean by that?”
“By what?”
“The chances are almost zero that a squirrel would just die right there.”
He stood. “It didn’t just die. Something, or someone, killed it.”
I winced. “What would have killed a squirrel and left it lying around?”
“I don’t know. Have you ever had this happen before?”
“A dead animal on my doorstep? No, definitely not.”
He grunted.
I swallowed hard to suppress the rush of heat that burst right between my legs when he made that noise. What was that about?
“The guy at the bar last night,” he said. “How long ago did you break up?”
“Colin? Years ago.”
“Is it normal for him to harass you?”
“No. He doesn’t harass me, really, he just—”
“He was harassing you.”
“Okay, he was. But no, it’s not normal. Although after I moved away, I went a long time without seeing him, so I guess if he wanted to harass me, he didn’t have the chance. He was a little weird at my dad’s funeral, but that was two years ago, and it could have been because it was a funeral and everything.”
“Do you always make excuses for people?”
I crossed my arms again, feeling suddenly defensive. “I don’t make excuses for people.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
I wasnotmaking excuses for Colin. “Are you asking about him because you think he might have killed a squirrel and left it on my doorstep?”
“The thought did occur to me.”
“That seems – I don’t know, crazy.”
“Yeah, you think?”
I made myself look at the squirrel. “I can’t imagine Colin doing something like that.”
“How well do you actually know him?”
“True, I don’t know him very well now. I don’t know how well I knew him back then, either. Then again, how well can you know a guy in his late teens and early twenties? Their brains are still developing until what, twenty-five?”
“Audrey.”