Someone slashed her tires. Juniper’s vision spun for a horrifying moment and she put both hands on the hood of the car to steady herself. Violence was always shocking—a reminder that nothing was as it should be—and Juniper couldn’t help but recoil at the thought of someone plunging a knife into the tires of her car and tearing. Methodically, viciously. One by one. And Juniper doubted that the job could have been accomplished by a run-of-the-mill kitchen knife. This was the work of a weapon. Something saw-toothed and evil.
Juniper had been asleep only a few feet away. Willa had been. The reminder that her daughter had been curled up and oblivious beyond a window that could easily be seen from the driveway made Juniper’s stomach pitch. Needing to ground herself in reality instead of the wrenching worst-case scenarios that were playing like a string of horror movie scenes in her mind, she reached down to run her thumb over the jagged line of split rubber. Juniper didn’t flinch when a tiny wire pierced her skin. The pain helped. She could feel her heartbeat in the place where a line of blood quickly bubbled to the surface, and without thinking, she stuck it in her mouth.
“Are you hurt?” her daughter asked, reaching for her.
Juniper hadn’t realized that Willa had followed her around the vehicle.
“I’m fine,” she said, balling her hand so Willa couldn’t see the cut on her thumb. Juniper tried a smile; it didn’t work.
“Who did this?” Willa looked very young in the pale morning light. She had raked back her hair unevenly and her ponytail was lopsided; her bottom lip trembled just a little.
Juniper thought about saying that it was an accident. But that was ludicrous. “I have no idea,” she said honestly.
“What if…”
“Don’t.” Juniper put her arm around Willa and turned her away from the car. “Let’s not speculate. It was probably just some kids. We’ll walk to the library and see if we can borrow Barry’s car.”
“We should check for footprints. Maybe they left something behind.” Willa tried to spin out of her mother’s grip but Juniper held on tighter.
“I’ll call the cops when we get to the library. Everett will know what to do.”
“Everett?”
But she was too distracted to worry that Willa now knew she was on a first-name basis with a town cop. “What time does first period start?”
“Eight-fifteen, but I’m not going to school.”
“A couple of flat tires don’t equal a free pass, Willa.”
They argued back and forth all the way to the library—a welcome distraction that they both automatically indulged—but it wasn’t a long walk, and when Barry entered the picture, the drama was sucked right out of the situation. Juniper snatched a few tissues from the box on the counter to wrap around her cut while Barry listened to a pared-down version of the predicament they found themselves in.
“You probably overfilled them,” he told Juniper with just a hint of superiority. “Tires will deflate in cold air, but a warming trend changes everything.”
Warming trend? The temperature was barely in the teens. But Juniper didn’t bother to challenge him, and when Willa opened her mouth to object, Juniper took her by the wrist and led her away. “Thank you so much for letting us borrow your car,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll drop my daughter off at school and be back in just a few minutes.”
When they were settled in Barry’s tiny two-door import, Willa shot Juniper a scathing look. “?‘You probably overfilled them’? How stupid is he?”
Juniper barked a wry laugh. “Amen, sister.”
“I mean, there’s no way.”
“They were slashed,” Juniper agreed, putting the unfamiliar car in drive. “But it was probably just a prank, Wills. A sort of hazing for the new kid in town. Or a bet. Some self-proclaimed badass is going to be in a lot of trouble.”
Willa’s eyes widened at Juniper’s word choice, but the ploy worked: she seemed to relax just a little.
“Besides, I don’t have any enemies in Jericho,” Juniper lied, “so the chances of this being a targeted attack are pretty slim. Unless, of course, there’s something you’d like to tell me…”
“Oh, you know me: I’m a total badass.”
Law would have told Willa to watch her language, but Juniper grinned. If an off-color word or two put them on common ground, so be it. “Just like your mama,” she said without thinking. It was the wrong thing to say, and she regretted it the moment the words were out of her mouth. Did Willa want to be compared to her? Was it insulting? Premature? A reminder of what might have been? But when Juniper glanced over at Willa, the girl gave her a rare, hesitant smile.
By the time they pulled up in front of the school, Willa was convinced that the incident was haphazard, and she seemed eager to share the whole salacious story with her friends. Juniper sat in the car for a moment after she’d left and watched her daughter race up the wide front steps. Willa turned around at the door and gave Juniper an unexpected wave, and when Juniper raised her fingers in return, she did so with a mixture of gratitude and dread. Gratitude because the thought of her daughter living in fear made her sick—Willa wanted to believe that her mother’s tires had been slashed for some arbitrary, almost casual reason. After worrying for a few grueling minutes, she happily accepted it was random and unspecified. But Juniper also felt dread because she knew the narrative she spoon-fed Willa was hollow. Her ruined tires were a gauntlet thrown. Someone was trying to send her a message.
Juniper wished, not for the first time, that she had been able to have that heart-to-heart with Jonathan. Her conversation with Mandy had given her a faint impression of what they were up against, and she didn’t like the trajectory of those seemingly innocuous intimidations. She knew where they ended. Had whoever harassed Jonathan moved on to her? Juniper’s stomach curdled at the thought.
Calling Everett was the logical next step, but instead of punching in his number, Juniper called Barry.
“Hey, do you mind if I stop by the garage to get a quote on a tow and four new tires? I kinda need a car.”
“Not a problem. I’ll cover for you. Cora said she hopes to be in around nine, so take all the time you need.”
“Thanks, Barry.”
Juniper clicked off the phone and threw it on the passenger seat, then sped right past Tucker’s Garage on her way out of town. If it hadn’t been for that shadow of a smile from Willa, for the tender way that a strand of her hair had missed the swoop of her ponytail entirely, Juniper would probably be parking in Barry’s designated space in front of the library right now. She would have called Everett and let him investigate instead of racing off to do something that was poorly considered and most likely a terrible idea. Maybe even dangerous.
But something had risen up in Juniper that made her wild and reckless and brave all at once. Juniper had dealt with the fallout of everything that happened that summer for nearly fifteen years. She could handle the uncertainty, the painful memories, the knowledge that beneath the surface everything was rotten and black. Willa, on the other hand, was innocent. The fact that someone would commit a crime with her daughter in the picture solidified Juniper’s fear into fury. God help whoever brought the fight to the doorstep of a thirteen-year-old. Juniper’s thirteen-year-old.
She didn’t have a plan, but she did have a destination. The Tate Family Farms was where Sullivan had grown up, and though Juniper didn’t know who lived there now, she knew that he was poised to inherit. “Someday,” he had told her once, “this will all be mine.” They were sitting cross-legged on the nearly flat roof of one of the machine sheds, a riot of stars poking holes in the night sky above them. June wasn’t really paying attention—Sullivan was tracing lines on her bare arm with a single fingertip, and she was aching for more—but he was obviously proud, so she tried to focus.
“You’re the youngest,” June said. “You’re fourth in line for the birthright.”