“She can go home with a friend.” Cora solved the problem with a wave of her hand. “Zoe?”
Yes. Zoe. Juniper could call the school, get the number. Make arrangements as she drove. Suddenly nothing was as important as getting to Des Moines. Juniper held out her hand and Barry dropped the keys into her palm. “Thank you,” she said around a lump in her throat. Then Cora swept her into a gruff hug and shoved her out the door.
“If you leave now you’ll be there shortly after three. Call me on your way home, okay? I want to know how he’s doing.”
Juniper nodded as she rushed down the steps, but she didn’t look back.
Barry’s car still smelled of strawberry lotion and spearmint gum—of Willa. Her daughter had left a pack of gum in one of the cupholders in the console, and Juniper reached for a stick. Her hands were quivering. She wasn’t okay to drive, not quite yet, so she chewed the gum in the cold interior and tried to take a few deep breaths.
In all these years, Juniper and her brother had never spoken about that night. It was scorched earth, barren and ruined. But Jonathan had been there, he could testify to the way their bodies fell, and Juniper was keeping a secret so big it was destroying her from the inside. Everything came back to this. She had come home, and Jonathan had almost died. She had no doubt her brother had wanted to talk to her about the night of the Murphy murders, and now, finally, it was time.
She slipped a hand into her coat pocket for the car keys and came up with an evidence bag. Her necklace was pooled in the bottom, a tangle of tarnished chain and pendants she hadn’t worn in years. She thought it had been lost that night. How did he find it? And why did he keep it? As a memento? Leverage? Proof? Maybe he thought he was protecting her.
The clasp stuck a little, but even with cold, stiff fingers Juniper was able to fasten the chain around her neck. She inhaled sharply when the berries hit her chest just as they had done in another life. If she closed her eyes she was nineteen again, and her whole world was about to explode.
Again.
But she wasn’t that girl anymore. She turned the keys in the ignition and stuck her phone in the car cradle so that she could make all the necessary calls and arrangements while she drove. It was impossible to guess what Jonathan would say, what ghosts he would resurrect, but their reckoning was so long overdue Juniper hardly cared anymore. Whatever came next had to be better than almost fifteen years of looking over her shoulder, of wondering and waiting, of exile.
She made the trip in record time and found a parking spot in the hospital ramp. She had only been here once before, but the steps were all the same: elevator to ICU, lift the receiver, wait for entry, follow a nurse down a chilly, wide hallway. But this time felt different. Jonathan was awake.
“Your father is waiting for you in the family room,” the nurse said when they reached the doorway to the same room that Juniper had met Mandy in before. Surprise must have registered on her face, because the nurse continued, “I believe your mother stepped out for a little fresh air, and Mandy went back to the Rainbow House for a shower.”
“Thanks,” Juniper managed, but it didn’t sound very sincere. She had spent the majority of the two-and-a-half-hour drive imagining what she would say to her brother. Law hadn’t come into the picture at all.
The nurse continued toward the triage station and Juniper didn’t have much of a choice. She turned the handle to the family room and let herself in.
Law was standing in the corner of the small room, a Styrofoam cup clutched in one large hand. When Juniper opened the door, he didn’t even flinch.
“Hi,” she said carefully, hesitant to break whatever spell had been cast over the room. “I came as soon as I heard the news. How is he?”
Law waved one hand as if shooing her away, and his forehead descended in a heap of wrinkles.
“What is it?”
“Yeah, he’s awake,” Law confirmed. “Kind of. But something’s off. He’s not… he’s not Jonathan.”
Juniper had no idea what to do with this information, but she had to see her brother for herself. She peeled off her winter coat and tossed it on a nearby chair, stowing her backpack underneath. No one would cross Law, but if he decided to riffle through it, he’d only find her wallet with exactly seven dollars in cash and a couple of tampons. She said, “I’m going in.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.” Juniper shook her head, and then employed a word she rarely used with Lawrence. “Dad, please, I want a few minutes alone with him.”
But Law already had the door open and was holding it for her. “He’s my son. I’ll see him when I like.”
Juniper knew there would be no reasoning with him. It was clear that he was going whether she liked it or not. Maybe he’d tire of the ICU room quickly, or they’d only allow one visitor at a time. Juniper gritted her teeth and followed her father to the triage desk where they were cheerfully informed, “The more the merrier!”
Because Jonathan’s risk for infection had decreased significantly, they were no longer required to suit up before entering his room. However, the nurse directed them to the hand-washing station, and Juniper and her stepfather scrubbed up before pushing open the glass door to Jonathan’s room.
As far as Juniper could tell, not much had changed. The machines still whirred and beeped, and the room still smelled of antiseptic and something much more base and corporeal. Juniper didn’t want to know. But someone had thrown open the window shades, and a flimsy late-February light bathed the entire room in a soft glow. And on the raised bed, buried beneath a mountain of blankets and attached to more tubes and wires than Juniper could possibly find uses for, was Jonathan. Awake.
A sob caught in her throat, but Juniper swallowed it down and gave her brother a watery smile. “Hey,” she said, moving closer to the bed.
Jonathan was staring out the window and hadn’t so much as flinched when Juniper and Law walked into the room. Nor did he register Juniper’s soft greeting. He was probably used to a steady stream of doctors, nurses, and therapists cycling in and out of his room, and there was no reason for him to assume that Juniper was anyone other than another person sent to poke and prod, test and adjust.
She paused for a moment, uncertain of how to proceed. Did Jonathan know she was coming? Would he be excited to see her? Or upset?
Jonathan’s mouth was obscured by a breathing tube that was fastened to his head by a plastic contraption that pinched his cheeks and caused the hollows beneath his eyes to look cavernous. One cheekbone was tinged yellow and green from the remnants of a bruise that must have formed when he fell through the ice. When he was rescued? It didn’t matter. It looked painful. Worst of all was the way that Jonathan stared at the smudged gray sky, unblinking, unseeing, as if he wished his eyes weren’t open at all. Juniper watched her brother and knew that this was not how he wanted to wake up. It gutted her.
“No need to hover!” A nurse came bustling past Juniper and went to stand beside the hospital bed. “You have visitors,” he told Jonathan.
She felt almost shy as her brother’s eyes swept from the window to Law and then, finally, to her. She lifted her hand in a little wave and took a single step closer to the bed, her heart beating madly in her chest. Jonathan stared at her, his blue eyes achingly familiar but clouded with medication and emotions she couldn’t begin to guess. Pain? Regret? It was impossible to read his expression.