I grab the plastic bottle, twist the cap and suck eagerly on the contents, but turn my head and spit. Orange soda. Bile rises in my throat, and Cal laughs.

“Oh, come on, Melinda. You know you like it.”

“What’s the point?” I ask, my throat scratchy with dried tears.

“Just a little joke between friends.” He rubs his hands over his face, and his voice changes timbre, angry now. “Just be fucking grateful I brought you anything, okay? Drink. There’s nothing in it. No sleeping pills. I’ve already got you down here. I didn’t have to resort to anything so prosaic. I’m better than he was.”

“Is that the point, Cal? Be better than my last captor?”

“I’ve always been better. Smarter, that’s for sure.”

“So how did Jay figure out you killed Annalise Robb?”

“He found the necklace. I told you that. But, well, I got the feeling last year that Jay was uncomfortable around me. Like he was analyzing me. After I got diagnosed last spring, all that rage that I’d kept locked away came back. It was all that fucking bitch’s fault.”

“Whose?”

“My lovely mother. She tormented me for years because she was unhappy. Her first husband left her. My brother was gone. My dad apparently cheated on her, and it was all my fault. But then I got away from her. Went to college. Got married. Had a family, career. Everything’s great. Then bam!”

I jump as he smacks the floor with his palm. “Her fucking genes get me.” He tips his head back against the wall and laughs. “She got me in the end. Just like she said she would. Well, Jay noticed I’d changed. He kept asking me if I wanted a referral—you know, after I found out I was going blind. He said it might help to talk to somebody.” He laughs again. “Like a goddamn therapist was going to stop me from losing my sight.” He’s quiet, head down, looking at his hands. “They didn’t help you, did they, Melinda? All those eager therapists prodding you to give up your secrets.”

I shiver and inch farther away from him.

“But I know all about what happened in that cellar.”

“No. You don’t,” I whisper. I don’t even know what happened, not all of it. I’ve blocked it out, Jay said. I was so little and drugged besides. Keith had stolen his aunt’s sleeping pills, crushed them, and put them in our orange soda.

“You killed little India, didn’t you?” Cal says quietly. “Smothered her when she wouldn’t stop crying.”

My breath flies from my chest, as though it’s being sucked out by a demon. “No. That’s a lie,” I mumble, barely able to form words.

“Is it?”