Veronique stops and turns back to me. “Why not?”
“Heights aren’t really my friend.”
“All the more reason you should go. You can’t let one incident rule all of your lifetimes.”
I hesitate. “Can’t I just show you the articles I found down here?”
Veronique’s face droops, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was pouting. “You said that you want to start our relationship over again. The roof is the perfect place to start over.” Without waiting for a reply, Veronique disappears through the door, and facing the choice between being left out here alone and following, I take a deep breath and follow her. I want to get this settled once and for all. It’s only three flights up, and we walk in silence; the only sounds are our footsteps on the old, wooden stair treads. I try to calm the fear that’s rising in my heart by reminding myself that, amid all of the bad things that have happened lately, Veronique has been doing everything she can to help me. I have to believe that, because at this point, I have no other choice.
At the top of the last flight of stairs is another wooden door, much less fancy than the one at the bottom. Veronique twists the knob and pushes the heavy door with her shoulder until it gives, opening onto the gray, overcast sky.
I stand in the doorway, not needing to look over the edge to know how high up we are. My breath begins to come in short bursts as I look around. Where the inside of the building is full of heavy, ornate decorations, the roof is almost bare, with just a few chimneys and a couple of skylights dotting the huge, flat space. In the middle there’s a big open square with light shining up from below and a waist-high stone railing surrounding the roof on all sides.
“Seriously,” I say, “can’t we do all of this on the ground floor?” I cling to the doorway with my right hand, not trusting myself to inch any farther onto the roof. “There’s got to be an empty meeting room down there somewhere.”
“Oh, come on. This is perfect,” Veronique says, throwing her arms to the side as if embracing the San Francisco skyline. “It’s private, so we can talk without thinking that someone’s going to overhear us. You’re not afraid, are you?” She turns back to me. “You don’t trust me. You think I’m out to get you just like Griffon said.” She pauses. “He really messed you up, didn’t he?” I don’t want Veronique to think that Griffon still has any power over me.
“It’s not that. It’s just the last time I was up here, things didn’t go well.”
Veronique drops her arms and looks over at me. “Exactly why you should come away from the doorway and check it out. Only by facing what happened to us in the past can we participate in our future.” She grins. “Okay, I read that in a fortune cookie, but still, it applies.” She holds out her hand, and after a few seconds I take it, allowing her to pull me out of the doorway and onto the roof. I feel nothing from her touch. She seems almost hyper, but it’s as if her essence has shut down. She tilts her head toward the railing on the other side of the roof. “Do you remember anything else about that night?”
“Not really. But I don’t have to.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the papers Rayne and I printed out at the library. “This is what I want to show you. I can prove that it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t me who killed you.”
Veronique twirls away from the pages in my hand. “I don’t want to read anything right now,” she says.
I watch her sway to some private music only she can hear. None of this is going the way I planned. Veronique seems so different than the other night, and I feel a creeping fear about my choice to trust her. She spins back around quickly. “Read them to me.”
“Um, okay,” I say. I read the article about the trial slowly as Veronique sways from foot to foot, her back to me the entire time.
When I’m done, she turns to face me. “So you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t push Alessandra off the roof? That it was Signore Barone?”
“Exactly,” I say, wondering why she’s started referring to herself in the third person. “I didn’t do it, and the courts of San Francisco agreed.”
Veronique stares at me. “That’s crazy,” she says, a lock of hair falling in her eyes. “Why would Signore Barone kill his own daughter?”
“I don’t know,” I say, turning back to the pages in my hand, panic starting to build. This is not the way it’s supposed to go. Veronique was supposed to see the newspaper and realize it was all a big mistake and be grateful to me that I’d finally shown her the truth—that I didn’t hurt her. I try again. “But it says second-degree murder, so that must mean that he didn’t try to do it. That it was an accident.”
For a second, I see understanding in her eyes and I think I’ve done it, but then she waves her hand dismissively in my direction. “Anyone can fake an old newspaper.”
“But look at this one,” I say, the desperation obvious in my voice. It feels like I’m losing control of the situation. “Here’s an article about Paolo.”
Veronique stops moving at the mention of his name. “What about Paolo?”
I hold it out to her. “About his suicide,” I say. “How he killed himself because he couldn’t stand being without you.”
She takes the paper and quickly reads the article, her eyes twitching as she digests the information. “How did you get this?”
“It’s from a newspaper, a few days after you died.”
Tears shine in her eyes as the news that Paolo took his own life registers. She’s about to say something else when the stairwell door opens and Griffon stumbles onto the roof, followed by Giacomo.
“Griffon!” I look from him to Veronique, who doesn’t look surprised at all. Despite everything that’s happened, despite the danger I know he can cause, despite the lies I know he’s told. I still find my heart pounding at the sight of him. But I force myself back to reality. “What are you doing here?”
Griffon pulls his arm free from Giacomo’s grip. “You texted,” he says, not looking directly at me. “You said to meet you in front of the building at five.” He glares at Veronique.
“I didn’t text you,” I say, feelings of betrayal starting to overwhelm me. “I lost my phone on Friday.”
“Well,” Veronique says, waving a small, blue metallic object at me, “lost is a bit of an exaggeration. You really should keep better track of your things.”
“You texted me?” Griffon looks at her questioningly. “On Cole’s phone?”
“I didn’t really think you’d agree to come if it was from me,” she replies, walking to the edge of the roof and dropping my phone over the side, watching as it hits the ground after a few seconds’ delay.
Griffon takes a few steps toward Veronique, but Giacomo blocks his way. He’s got ten years and probably forty pounds on Griffon, so there’s not much he can do. Griffon squares his shoulders and turns away from me. “So, what’s this all about? Kind of dramatic dragging us all up here to the roof, don’t you think?”
Veronique looks at the wide expanse of sky in front of her. “Maybe,” she says. “But up here on the roof is the only place that will really work.”
“Because this is where it all started,” I say, realizing what she’s up to, why we had to come back to this spot—so that she can reenact everything that happened that night and right the wrong that she thinks was done to her. She wants to see my broken body down on the sidewalk like hers was back then. I turn to her. “Why bring Griffon up here? So that he can be some kind of sick witness?”
“Witness?” Veronique smiles in a way that sends shivers down my spine. Her eyes look dead. Emotionless. Unforgiving. “No. If anyone’s here to be the witness, it’s you.”