I slide the phone across the table to Gertie. Who then takes out her reading glasses. God, I forgot all about Gertie’s reading glasses. She has this pair of purple-rimmed giant reading glasses that she always keeps stashed away in her purse. Whenever she’s asked to read anything, she takes about five hours to pull out those stupid reading glasses. I’m beginning to remember how annoying Gertie used to be.

Finally she gets out her reading glasses and peers through them at the image on my phone. She squints a bit, then lifts the phone up in the air to get more light. Then she turns it around. After about sixty seconds, I’m ready to shake her.

“Well?” I say.

“She does look a bit familiar,” Gertie admits.

“So you think you’ve seen her before?”

“Yes, I think I have.”

My heart speeds up. “Do you think she’s the person who pushed you down the stairs?”

Gertie looks up sharply. She pulls off her giant reading glasses and her eyebrows bunch together. “Abby, are you all right?”

“No!” And now I can’t hold it back anymore. I really am sobbing. I had so much hope for this meeting, but that was stupid. How could Gertie remember something that happened a year ago, when she couldn’t even remember you had to press “send” on the fax machine before a fax would go through? “I’m not all right. Somebody slipped drugs into my coffee at work and I got fired and my husband thinks I’m a drug addict and…”

Her eyes widen. She gawks at me for a moment, but then she pulls me in for a hug. “This is going to be okay, Abby. I promise you.”

“No, it’s not! How can it be okay?”

“Trust me,” she says so convincingly, I almost believe it. “You’re a good person, Abby. Everyone knows you didn’t do anything wrong. It will all work out in the end.”

While Gertie is hugging me, I hear a buzzing noise coming from my purse. I pull away from her embrace and find my phone in my purse. My eyes widen when I see the name on the screen.

Denise Holt is calling.

Chapter 29

Why would Denise Holt be calling me? It doesn’t make any sense. The woman already fired me. Does she want to fire me again?

No, it’s probably something stupid. Like a complication with my final paycheck. Yet…

“Excuse me,” I say to Gertie, who has a perplexed expression on her face. “I… I’m going to take this call outside.”

I race out of the café with my phone, swiping to take the call just as I get outside. My heart is already racing. “Hello?”

“Abigail?” There’s no mistaking Denise’s clipped voice. I can only imagine her ice-blue eyes shooting daggers at me from across town. “This is Denise Holt.”

“Yes,” I say. “I know.”