His voice is steady when he says it, but there’s something closed off in his gaze. I don’t know if I believe him. And yet, what choice do I have?
A peal of thunder cracks the night, and a swift wind lifts my hair off the back of my neck to whip it around my shoulders. The temperature drops a couple of degrees as the storm finally reaches the place where we’re standing. I’m shaking uncontrollably, and when Sullivan crosses the space between us and gathers me in his arms, I let him.
“We were here,” I tell him. “That’s our story. We met up at our farm: you, me, and Jonathan. We watched the fireworks from the bed of Jonathan’s truck. And then you went home. I went inside to shower. And Jonathan heard the gunshots.”
“He’s there now?” Sullivan asks, and I can tell that he’s crying.
“Yes. And the police will be coming here soon. You have to go.”
Sullivan squeezes me hard, crushing me against him, and then he threads one hand into my hair and tips my head back. It’s dark, but I can make out his expression in the light coming from the cab of his truck. It’s pure anguish. He kisses me, long and so hard I can feel his teeth scrape against my chapped lips. I can taste the salt of our mingled tears.
“Go,” he tells me, pushing me away. It’s exactly what Jonathan commanded. “Throw your clothes in the washing machine and get in the shower. I’ll move your car.”
I should thank him, say goodbye maybe, but I don’t. I turn and run, skipping every middle step on my way to our porch, and wrenching the screen door open just as the sky erupts. It’s an instant downpour, and I whirl around in the relative safety beneath the overhang to make sure Sullivan is okay. But he’s already in my car, one arm slung over the seat back as he throws it in reverse and parks it neatly exactly where it’s supposed to be.
I watch him for a minute, his long strides as he lopes back to his truck and climbs in. He pauses when he’s in the cab and scans the front of the house, looking, I realize, for me. But the house is pitch-black, the rain falling in sheets, and he can’t see me standing just beyond the screen door. I lift my hand to my lips and then press the spot where he is, my fingers obscuring him as I say goodbye.
CHAPTER 25
WINTER TODAY
Juniper pulled over several blocks away from Everett’s house and called Cora. Her fingers were numb and unresponsive, and it took her a couple tries to get the number right. But by the time Cora finally picked up, Juniper had managed a few deep breaths and was feeling laser-focused. She trained her eyes on her rearview, watching for headlights or—worse—flashing lights and an accompanying siren, and said without preamble: “It’s Everett Stokes.”
“Wait. What?” Cora sounded half-asleep. “What are you talking about?”
“He poisoned Diesel. He’s been harassing Jonathan for weeks. I think he slashed my tires.” She didn’t bother mentioning the podcast. It would all come out soon enough.
Cora’s voice took on a steel edge. “Are you serious?”
“He’s digging into that summer and thought that he could spook Jonathan by replaying the events of the past. He hates my brother. Hates him.”
“Where are you?”
“Safe,” Juniper assured her.
But Cora wasn’t appeased. “He’s insane. You can’t let him get away with this. What if he runs?”
“He won’t run. Everett is convinced he’s right—and that he’s going to catch a killer. He’s too self-righteous to be worried.”
“Sounds dangerous to me.”
“He’s a wannabe detective with a vendetta against my brother.”
“Exactly my point. But we’ll prove him wrong,” Cora said.
“I’ve tried. For fourteen years I’ve been going in circles, coming up empty.”
“The truth is always in the details. What are we missing? Everyone knows the Murphys and the Tates were feuding that summer, but what else was going on?”
Juniper almost dismissed Cora’s question out of hand. But it echoed something that India had said, too. Juniper had never kept a diary, and that summer so long ago was entirely overshadowed by the deaths of Cal and Beth. Sure, she had graduated from high school and fallen in love with Sullivan, dreamed of a life far outside of Jericho and gotten pregnant with Willa, but everything else was obscured beneath the shadow of the Murphy murders.
Except.
The memory was sudden and unexpected: a packed suitcase in her mother’s trunk.
And then there were more: a craving for jam, an unexpected visit from Cal. An easy poolside laugh followed by the hard look in Law’s eyes when he tore his wife away from the Pattersons’ Fourth of July party. There were troubled silences and a feeling of disquiet that suffused Juniper’s every memory of that summer. Tears in the kitchen. Her mother’s bow across her cello like a requiem.
“My mom and Law weren’t home that night,” Juniper said.
“What?”
“The night that Cal and Beth were killed. When I came home from—” She stopped, shocked by how close she had come to revealing her secret, and quickly adjusted her story. She started again: “When I got back from the Pattersons’ party, no one was home.”
If Cora noticed that Juniper had lost her footing for a minute, she didn’t let on. “So they were watching the fireworks like everyone else in town.”
“Law broke his foot,” Juniper said, more to herself than Cora. “They were at the hospital in Munroe.”
“How’d that happen?”
The thing was, Juniper didn’t know.
“What are you saying?” Cora asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. But you’re right. There was something else going on that summer.”
“Does it have anything to do with Cal and Beth?”
“No,” Juniper said, maybe too quickly. “I— I don’t think so. There’s no way. But I think I missed something really big. I was just a kid…”
“And you didn’t see your parents as human beings. As real people with their own thoughts and emotions and inner lives.”
Cora was teasing, but there was so much truth in her words. Juniper had taken Law and her mom for granted. She had ignored the warning signs, dismissed all the times when her mother was acting strange or inexplicably emotional. Juniper cringed, remembering that she had explained away Reb’s behavior that summer by assuming it was precipitated by her daughter’s impending departure. How selfish and shortsighted. Her mother was a woman who had once crossed the country alone for love. Who had left her own parents behind, started over, and then begun again when her happily ever after turned out to be a terrible lie. What did Juniper really know about Rebecca Baker? About who she was, and how she loved, and why she did the things she did?
“I have to go,” she said.
“How can I help? Should I call the sheriff?”
“Stay put,” Juniper told Cora. “Take care of Willa. Keep the door locked. Call the sheriff’s department if anything happens—not 911. I’ll be there soon.”
It was with a twinge of guilt that Juniper hung up, but the need to talk to her mother was suddenly overwhelming. It was too late to call, and so she sent a text:
I need to talk to you.
Her mother’s reply was almost immediate:
We just got home. Everything okay?
Juniper was stunned. She had left them in Des Moines hours ago. Had it only been that long? It felt like days. Weeks.
Wanted to spend a night in our own bed.
We’ll go back tomorrow.
Juniper sat by herself for a few seconds in the dark. Her phone lit up when she moved it, her mother’s last text still framed in gray. She thumbed the screen open and typed quickly:
I’m coming over.
Hitting send, she stuffed her phone in her pocket and didn’t wait for a reply.
* * *