Twenty-Nine

Clara Addas




I chew on my bottom lip and glance at detective Jones. His face pinched. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Clara, we found your foot print and your blood in your father's bedroom. Now I want you to explain how your blood got there if you weren't involved in the crime?"
Jones regards me. He's stroking his moustache while he does so. Tingles pierce through me. Something fills my stomach. Dread. The dead weight of it. Has settled in.
I close my eyes. The best way for me to deal with a situation when it becomes too much for me is to close my eyes and mentally escape. It sometimes helps. I need an out.
A few minutes pass.
My eyes fly open. One second they were closed and now they're wide open. Jones startles and leans away from me. So fast that his chair actually tips over.
His arms were resting on the table between us and he was leaning in, close to my face. So close that if he wished to do so, he'd be able to count my pores.
He clears his throat, rummages through his stack of papers without really paying attention. He's trying too hard to look nonchalant. Unruffled. In control. Ha.
"We thought you were sleeping." His voice shakes. He gulps. Weird.
"I was," I lie. I'm not a murderer. I could never kill my own father.
"Uh... Okay. why don't you tell us how your bloody footprint ended up on the crime scene?"
I pull my left foot from the four inch pump and put it on the table so that they can see it. He squints his eyes and smirks.
"My foot is like this because I self harm. When someone gets too close to me physically, like you were just doing when I was 'sleeping', I get uncomfortable."
"That still doesn't explain how your DNA ended up in the crime scene."
"Detective Jones?"
He perks up.
"If you stop interrupting, I'll get there."
I pull my foot back down. "When I was fifteen I used to slit my wrist. One day I cut too deep and, like any other parents, Mama and Papa thought I was trying to off myself. Just for the record, I wasn't. It's how I deal with things. And since I don't want to end up in hospital (again), I slit my foot. When I found out about my father, of course, I did a line or two on my foot and if you remember I was already limping when you got to the house. When the police came over that night, I was barefooted, remember?"
The smirk drops from his face. I guess he's just realised that he wasted the entire day on me and he has nothing useful from it. "You should see someone for it."
"I already am."
"Oh?" He scribbles furiously on his notebook. "Who?"
"Your wife sir. Dr. Jones," I lie. Dr. Jones is a therapist. The best in the business. I saw her twice and I never went again even though Papa still thinks (thought) I am. And still pays the bills.
"I'll be asking her about it."
I shrug and pull on my shoe again. "Sure."