“We found him. Single GSW to the head.” When the call crackled in, the rookie officer who had been assigned to keep an eye on Juniper frantically turned down his radio and gave her a shocked look.
She wasn’t surprised. Her stepfather had been a coward to the end.
Still, Juniper was grateful for that one bullet-sized grace. For the knowledge that it had been quick.
Dropping the oxygen mask, she turned her back on the sunrise.
She didn’t make it far.
“Ma’am!” A young deputy in a telltale khaki uniform ran after her. “You can’t leave. This is a crime scene. We’re going to need a statement.”
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Juniper said. Her chest felt empty, void as a deflated balloon. “The man at the top of the hill is Lawrence Baker. He killed Calvin and Beth Murphy almost fifteen years ago.”
The deputy’s eyes went round. “Wait. How do you—”
“I was there. I witnessed the whole thing.”
“But—”
She started walking again, and he tripped over his own feet to fall in step beside her. “I’ll explain everything. I’ll be in the house. Just…” She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t even know what she wanted. To be left alone, if only for a moment before the interviews and the wild claims. The accusations that were so true they stung.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll need to take you to the station.”
But Juniper was already gone.
She let herself into her childhood home. It looked different. Smelled different, even. Maybe it was the bone glue pellets still strewn across the kitchen floor. In another life, Juniper would have gotten down on her hands and knees to clean them up, but she ignored them. She walked past her mother sleeping fitfully on the couch beneath the watchful eye of a social worker and climbed the stairs to her old bedroom.
It was Willa’s now. Lavender walls, a tufted cream duvet. There was a corkboard on one wall with dozens of photographs and other paraphernalia thumbtacked to every available square inch. Right in the center was a picture Juniper didn’t recognize. Reb must have snapped it without her knowing. It showed nineteen-year-old June sleeping in this very bed, body curled protectively around an infant Willa. The baby was maybe a week or two old. And Juniper didn’t look like the scared little girl she had always imagined herself to be at that juncture. Instead, she looked almost happy, lips curled in a soft half smile, even in sleep.
She looked like she had known love. Like she could be the kind of person who would make a good mom.
Juniper was past caring about how it would be perceived or who she would anger. It was time to do the right thing. She took out her phone and looked up the number for Tate Family Farms. She could picture the phone on the desk in the office of the machine shed, and because it was early, she expected the call to go straight to voice mail.
Sullivan picked up.
“Hey,” she said softly, recognizing his voice at once. She willed him to stay on the line. To listen. “It’s Juniper. We need to talk.”
EPILOGUE
TWO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER
The forsythia is in full bloom on the path beside Jericho Lake. The golden spires explode like fireworks, each separate blossom a tiny, burning star that makes the air heady with the scent of almonds and earth. In a day or two, if I walk this trail, each little buttercup along these gnarled branches will be spent and fading on the ground. But today they are resplendent.
He’s waiting for me at an old picnic table, and just seeing the sunlight drape across his head in blessing convinces me that May could very well be my favorite month. How could it not be? Its blue skies and new shoots, pistachio-colored buds that unfurl into the promise of summer. Everything is filled with hope, made new.
“Hey, you,” I say, slipping onto the bench beside him and pulling him into a side hug. Jonathan lets his head rest against mine for a moment, and together we look out at the lake. It’s glass this morning, and so opaque that the tufts of clouds above us are reflected on the mirror surface. The world upended.
“Hey, you.” His cane is propped against the top of the picnic table, and the presence of it hints at the kind of day my brother is having. We didn’t know that after he woke up it would be weeks before he would be able to leave the hospital, or that when he finally did it would be with so many medications, restrictions, and therapies. Now, a cane. It’s hard for a man who has always prided himself on his strength and capability, his quick mind and able body, to walk assisted. It’s even harder to accept that his heart will never quite be the same.
Still, I thank God every single day that Jonathan lives. And that Everett Stokes was convicted of reckless endangerment resulting in serious injury and is serving a two-year sentence at the North-Central Correctional Facility. The gross misdemeanor charges of stalking and harassment were dropped when a court-appointed mental health expert diagnosed him with episodic psychiatric distress. We’re told Everett will likely get out earlier due to good behavior, but he’ll never work in law enforcement again. It’s not enough, but it’s what we got. I hope he gets the help he needs.
As for the podcast, it’s irrelevant. The whole country knows the story now, the unsolved murder that ended in a blaze one wintery Iowa night. And it’s already forgotten. Our story is significant only to us.
“Happy birthday, old man.” I pull a Tupperware container out of the tote I’ve carried from the car. Popping it open, I reveal not the donuts I promised but a thick slice of carrot cake that Willa and I stayed up half the night baking—Jonathan’s favorite.
He smiles. “Did you do this? You didn’t have to do this.”
“It was awful,” I admit with a laugh. “You know me—I made Willa shred the carrots and do all the tricky parts. We decided this should be called ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cake.’ Pineapple, walnuts, raisins…”
“Are they golden raisins?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“And cream cheese frosting? Full fat, not that sugar-free crap?”
I nod. “Real butter, too.”
“You’re a good sister, June.”
I hand him a fork. I’m not sure when he started calling me June again, but in the beginning it felt wrong to correct the guy who had just cheated death, so I let it go. Now it’s spreading like a virus to everyone else. Even his boys have started to call me Auntie June instead of Aunt Juniper. I don’t mind.
“I was going to bring a candle but I forgot. We’ll have thirty-three candles at your real party, and you can give yourself a hernia trying to blow them all out, old man.”
“No matter how old I get, I’ll never catch you, big sister.”
I should needle him back, tease him about how he now sports even more gray hair and I’ve yet to find my first. But Jonathan earned those streaks when he was baptized by ice in the depths of Jericho Lake. Even now, some things are better left unsaid.
Of course, there isn’t much we don’t say these days. Secrets are lies and bad manners besides—though that was never a tidbit of wisdom that our family upheld. The night Law burned the barn to ashes and shot himself on the rise overlooking the Murphys’ old farm, he took pieces of all of us with him.
For weeks after he died, we said all the things there were to say. About what had happened and how we felt and who was to blame. Everyone. It seems we all have to bear our part of the burden of everything that happened in our family, our home, our town.
Yes, Lawrence pulled the trigger, but first Mom broke his heart.
Jonathan went rogue.
I abandoned everything for love.
But the circle is much wider than just us. The Tates were far from innocent, and the rest of Jericho, too. We all turned a blind eye when Cal and Beth were ostracized for being different and beat back detractors who suggested that maybe there were other ways to live and love, to flourish.