Page 93 of What They'll Say About Us

"You have enough to worry about here."

"That's true, but I still have time for you, Tessa."

"I know," I said as our gazes met. "You always made time for me, and I don't think I ever told you how much I appreciated that. I'll talk to you soon."

I moved through the theater and into the lobby. The ticket office window was open and Nate was inside, sorting through a box of printed programs. He didn't look surprised to see me. He just waved a hand toward the open door.

I stepped inside. "Hi again."

"I had a feeling you'd be back," he said. He waved his hand toward the rolling stool I'd sat on a few days ago when all this had felt a little more manageable than it did now. Since that conversation, Cabot had died, someone had tried to kill me, and things had only gotten worse instead of better, with more questions than I'd had when I started.

"I heard about the fire," Nate said, leaning against the counter, his arms crossed, his gaze serious and thoughtful. "And Detective Cabot's death. This has gotten insane, Tessa. How are you doing?"

"I'm still standing, or sitting for the moment," I said lightly. "I need to ask you something, Nate, and I want you to think before you answer."

"Okay."

"Do you think there's any chance Paige killed herself?" The words came out in a rush, but I needed to say them out loud to someone who had known Paige better than anyone.

The color drained from his face. "That's a harsh accusation. How did you land on that idea?"

"I was looking at photos of her earlier, some taken right before she died, and I realized how much she had changed. She'd lost weight. She looked stressed. Put that together with excessive drinking, drugs to give her energy, drugs to help her sleep…it just makes me wonder more about her mental health."

"All of that is true. It was a hard time for her, and I couldn't seem to help her. When I tried to offer encouragement, I just pissed her off. She said I didn't understand. I wasn't an actor. Working on the crew wasn't the same thing, as if I thought it was. She was pretty condescending about it all, frankly. And the last person she had time for that week was me. That's one of the reasons I decided to go away."

"You haven't said whether it's possible she killed herself."

"No. I don't believe that," he said, shaking his head. "She was overwhelmed, yes. But she was still making plans. She wanted to go to dinner the next weekend. She wanted to make more time for me, for us. She said everything would be better after opening night, and that was only two weeks away. I believed her then. And nothing you've said, or that others have suggested, has changed my mind."

"Did she mention any problems with Ray?"

He nodded. "Yeah. He was asking her for money, I think. She didn't say how much, but she said he was getting into a lot of trouble, and she couldn't keep bailing him out." Nate paused, his expression shifting. "Do you think Ray had something to do with her death? Because Paige adored him. He might have been a screwup, but he was her little brother. If I said anything bad about him, she'd shut me down. In fact, I told her to tell him to talk to their parents. She wasn't helping him by enabling him. But she didn't want to hear me."

"What did he want the money for?"

"Drugs, gambling? I know he gambled online. But I think he cared about Paige as much as she cared about him, even if they were angry with each other. That didn't change the relationship."

"I'm not so sure it didn't."

He let out a sigh. "I might have made things worse between us. I couldn't seem to say the right thing to Paige. That's why I left that weekend. I had to get away. I have wished a million times since then that I'd stayed in town, because maybe I could have changed what happened. But the trip had been planned for a while, and she insisted I go. She had Sloane. She had Carrie. She had her girls as she called them. She told me she'd be fine. They'd already agreed to have a girls' night out. And Sloane reassured me that she'd take care of Paige."

Something about his words bothered me. Sloane had said something different when we'd spoken. She'd said she wasn't worried the first night that Paige didn't come home because Paige often stayed with Nate. Sloane hadn't realized Nate was out of town until the next day. But that wasn't true. She'd known before that.

My heart began to race. I had no idea what that meant. Had it just been a lapse in memory now? But I was pretty sure that Sloane had made that same statement in the police report. Why would she have said she didn't know Nate was out of town? Had he actually taken that trip? Was she lying, or was he?

"Tessa?" Nate asked, his gaze questioning. "Where'd you go?"

"Just thinking."

"Well, I need to get back to work."

"Of course."

"And Tessa." He paused, as if searching for the right words. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just don't want to believe that Paige was so unhappy she would want to kill herself. Because if that was true, then I was nothing to her."

"If she did take her life, Nate, I doubt it was about you."

"Yeah, it was probably about the damn theater, or maybe that professor, who was always on her to be better. They mattered more to her than I did. I was barely a thought in her head those last few weeks; I've just never wanted to admit that."