Body Swappers 23
Camille accuses Maya of being dumb.
Maya set her glass down. “He was disappointed our clue hadn’t led anywhere, which makes sense. I’m sure I’d be feeling more disappointment, too, if I weren’t so busy feeling relief.”
Camille stared into her glass, still not drinking. She’d been stony the whole visit, hardly even smiling when Maya said Robert had been released.
“Are you okay, Camille?”
Camille let out a huff. “I just think you’re really smart, but also you’re really dumb.”
“What? Do you know who the killer is?”
“It’s not that,” Camille bit out. She set her glass down roughly, then looked Maya in the eyes. “If the people dying are all abusers, is it a bad thing they’re dying? Don’t you think their victims are getting some measure of peace from them being gone?”
Maya looked down. She’d thought about how these people might deserve to die, anyway. She hadn’t thought about how much better their victims’ lives would be, now they were gone. Her cheeks burned. How could I not have thought about that?
“My father left a voicemail,” she said, and felt her chest tighten.
Camille whirled off her seat, stumbling a little in her haste to kneel in front of Maya. She took her hands. “Do you feel unsafe?”
“I…not practically. I don’t think he’ll try to force contact. But emotionally…” Tears pricked her eyes, and it was hard to keep talking. “He said he didn’t want to come between my mom and I. That if I didn’t want to see him, he could accept that, but to at least see her.” The tears spilled down her cheeks, and Camille squeezed her hands.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. And you know if you visited her, all she’d talk about was him! She’s a victim in denial.”
Maya cried, and Camille rose enough to hug her. “Don’t worry,” she whispered in Maya’s ear. “It’ll all be okay.”