This one was tricky. Trying to figure out how to write the sort of conversational psychological chess match that Mora and Judith had over the phone and playing with the subtle hints in a way that still made clear sense if readers could decipher it took a few tries. I was thinking Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, except while Judith may be Moriarty, Mora is far below that level, and scared.
“Oh, thank goodness. They told me you fainted. Is everything okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine,” I fib, more or less honestly, answering the first question but ignoring the second as my tongue roots around in my mouth for a lie. “I just got a little bit…dizzy…I guess.”
No use trying to lie about that when she already knows I fainted, but that admission is already good as selling myself out.
My chest starts to feel hot and constricted, or contaminated with this nervous attempt at calm.
“Oh?” The tone is too sweet.
This is the woman who taught me how to lie, how am I supposed to trick her?
We’re playing hangman, but I’m the dummy, betting with my life, or my sanity.
“Dizzy?” There’s a slight raise in pitch at the end of the single word that seems to imply a deeper meaning, but which or what meaning she’s hinting at I can’t guess. I see that look on Judith’s face as I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing. She’s raising one thin eyebrow, always so much darker than the rest of her hair, somehow. For some reason that only makes it seem more accusing as she waits for me to answer a geography question or recite a protocol that I was supposed to have memorized.
I try to guess confidently, filling in the blanks in a sentence that she barely even started writing, but I have no idea what I’m glossing over. What she’s probably assuming.
Correctly.
“Might be heatstroke,” I say quickly, “The weather has been pretty hot lately, and it makes the air really dry.”
“Yeah, and the heat can raise vapors from any number of things.”
She says it casually, but she’s getting warmer.
