“Anyway, it didn’t matter in the end because she killed herself and confessed to the crime.”
I shook my head again. It was impossible. Amber couldn’t have killed Ben. She just couldn’t have, and I knew that because I could feel it in my bones. “But how do you know that Amber was the one that took Ben’s gun? Maybe she didn’t even know about it!”
Dad shook his head sadly. “Lily,” he said. “She knew about it. She knew about it because she once told me she was glad he carried a gun with him when he went to mow that field.”
My eyes watered, and I blinked furiously to keep the tears from leaking out and down my cheeks. “I don’t believe she did it,” I said.
Dad sighed. “I know, honey. It sounds like you’ve been looking into this thing a lot, and you probably think you know Amber, but you don’t. I did. I saw how upset she was when she read that note. She was desperate. Crazed. She was quite capable of murdering Spence that night.”
I got up and stood in front of him with balled fists. Cole got to his feet, too. “I need to go,” I told him before I said anything more that I might regret.
“Lily,” Dad called as I fled the room. I didn’t look back. I just ran.
Cole caught up to me at the car. “Hey,” he said, wrapping me in his arms. “What can I do?”
I shook my head into his shoulder, and squeezed tightly against him. I felt like everything that I’d ever counted on was slowly being ripped away from me.
“I just…I just thought she was innocent,” I said. “I mean, I really thought she was innocent, Cole!”
“I know,” he said while I cried. “Me, too.”
We drove back to Fredericksburg, and I was still pretty teary. I just couldn’t believe that Amber had done it. And if she had, then why the hell was she hanging around me?
“Are you gonna be okay?” Cole asked, and I turned to see him looking sideways at me.
“It was almost easier to think that my dad was guilty than it was to think that Amber did it,” I admitted. God, I felt shitty saying that out loud.
“Hey,” he said, reaching to squeeze my hand. “Don’t take it so hard, Lil. At least we know your dad isn’t a murderer.”
I blinked at more unbidden tears. “Yeah, but it feels like that means that I am.”
“But you’re not, Lily. I can’t see you ever doing something like that. That was all Amber.”
I swallowed hard. “Then why all this?” I asked, making an expansive motion. “Why is she in my head, hovering around, pushing me to solve the mystery, if she’s the one who did it?”
Cole shrugged and shook his head. “Maybe she just wanted you to know the truth.”
And that struck me, because that’s what I felt in my own heart. I felt that Amber really did want me to know the truth, even if the truth was that she was guilty. I guess I just hadn’t been prepared for how tragically sad that ending was.
We rode the rest of the way mostly in silence but when we got off on the exit toward home, Cole said, “Is it okay if we stop at my gram’s house to put the yearbooks back? I want to get them into Ben’s room while she’s at work.”
I sat up a little from my slouched position. “Uh, sure,” I said. “Whatever you need to do.”
We got to his grandmother’s house, and Cole drove past to make sure her car wasn’t there. It wasn’t.
“I’m gonna park the next block over,” he said. “I can sneak in through the backyard.” He circled to the other side of the block and stopped the car under a low-hanging oak tree. “Be back in a minute.”
He reached for the yearbooks, and I suddenly felt like I didn’t want to be alone.
“Hang on,” I said, knowing I was being a little bit clingy, but not really caring. “I’m coming with you.”
He paused halfway out of his door. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If she comes home, though, you’d better not run faster than me.”
He smiled. “Deal.”
We crossed the empty lot behind Mrs. Spencer’s backyard and around to the gate, letting ourselves in. Cole hustled to the flowerpot and lifted it, but the key was gone.
“Shit,” he said.
“Where’d it go?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.
“She might’ve needed to use it and forgot to put it back,” he said. “Hang on…” Cole moved over to the kitchen window and took out a pocketknife to ease the screen up, then he pushed up on the window and it opened easily. “She always forgets to lock it,” he said with a triumphant smile. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
Using some pretty good athleticism, Cole let himself into the kitchen and came around to the back door to let me in. I followed him inside all the way past the kitchen, through the living room, and down the hallway to a closed door at the end of the hall.
“You coming with me in here?” he asked.