“Say it,” I tell him. My voice is hollow, but I’ve imagined her death hundreds of ways—he’s not going to tell me anything surprising.
“She didn’t die on impact,” he says quietly. “It says internal bleeding. Probably from the seat belt. There’s nothing in here about a head injury.” He swallows. “So . . . there might have been time. Especially if she had her wits about her.”
There might have been time. If she had her wits about her.
My mother, the woman who strolls through war zones in an effort to bring worldly reality to the American dinner table.
Has the clue to solving her murder been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for the last four months?
Holy crap.
I stride across the room, pick up the bag with her digital cameras, and practically bash them against the wall to get the memory cards free.
“Easy. Easy.” Brandon stops me, prying the cameras from my shaking fingers. “Let me do it.”
He works the latches with practiced ease, sliding the cards free, and we return to Dad’s laptop.
We wait for his photo program to load, and it takes so long that I almost want to go down to the basement and fire up the high-powered Mac Mom uses—used—for photo editing. It hasn’t been turned on since she died—mostly because I know the screen backdrop is a photo of me as a baby, snuggled into her neck.
My eyes fog, and I tell them to knock it off. We have a mission here.
The program finally loads, and the pictures on the memory card appear in thumbnails across the screen.
“Whoa,” whispers Rowan.
The photos are horrific. Dead children in the streets. Bloodied doorways. Dust and dirt and sweat and tears everywhere. Wailing women. Men with injuries so terrible that these pictures should never be seen at anyone’s dinner table.
Brandon scrolls through them steadily, but he looks a little green, too. “These are amazing. Your mom was a badass.”
I know exactly how talented she was. “Those are all work shots. Check the other memory card.”
He ejects and inserts, and again we wait.
Anticipation writhes in my chest. This will be it. There will be something there.
I don’t know why I’m such a glutton for punishment. It’s a blank memory card. There’s nothing there.
Nothing.
Brandon looks up at me. “Did she have another camera?”
I shake my head. “Two more field cameras, but they were her cheap backups. They were in her suitcase.”
“What’s that?” He points to where light glints off a lens poking from a canvas bag.
“It’s her film camera. We don’t have a darkroom. And I have no idea what’s on there. I can’t drop off shots of carnage at CVS.”
“Mr. Gerardi does. Does it have film in it?”
I grab the canvas bag, and it rattles. This was her carry-on bag, and when I pull back the flap, I catch the scent of her hand lotion. Loss hits me in a wave, and I need to close my eyes.
Work, Juliet. There’s time for emotion later.
It still takes me a moment. Brandon and Rowan wait, like the good friends they are.
When I pull the film camera free, I see the rest of my mother’s effects. Tubes of lip balm. A tiny pack of tissues. The edge of her boarding pass, tucked into a side pocket. An old Us Weekly magazine.
A sad smile finds my face. I would have given her hell for that if I’d seen it. If that Saturday night had turned out the way it was supposed to.
I need fluff sometimes, Jules, she would have said.
A tear snakes its way down my cheek.
“Do you want me to take it?” Brandon says softly. “I can develop it and tell you.”
“No.” I shake my head. She didn’t use the film camera for work very often, and when she did, her shots were powerful. Anything on here would have been her own personal pursuits. Something she would have found personally meaningful. I can’t imagine her grabbing this camera to take shots of a car as it sped away—if she did that at all—but if anyone is going to develop these photographs, it’s going to be me. I hug the camera to my body. “They’re her pictures. I want to do it.”
“Okay.” He sits back.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “I’m glad you guys came over.”
Rowan wraps her arms around my neck from behind. “That’s what friends are for.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
From: Cemetery Girl <[email protected]> To: The Dark <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, October 8 10:31:57 PM
Subject: Friends
Yeah. I’m okay. False alarm.
Did you talk to your mom?
False alarm? False alarm? What the hell does that mean?
The green dot sits beside her name.
TD: What’s the false alarm?
CG: Declan Murphy didn’t do what I thought he did.
It takes everything I have—and I mean everything—to keep from writing back JULIET IT’S ME TELL ME EVERYTHING PLEASE I’VE BEEN SO WORRIED I DID THIS TO YOU.
My hands are practically shaking on the face of my phone.
TD: What did you think he did?
CG: He got drunk and wrecked his car on the same night my mom died. I was worried he was involved somehow.
TD: And he’s not?
CG: No.
She is killing me.
TD: How do you know?
CG: My best friend’s boyfriend did an internship in a newsroom over the summer. He still has access to their crime beat database. He looked up both incidents. The times don’t match. Mom died before he even got in the car.
Oh.
I don’t know what I’m feeling, but it’s not relief. It’s not even a hollow victory. I didn’t kill her mother, but she has no closure. I still haven’t told her who I am—and now it’s too late.
I feel like I should apologize, but I’m not entirely sure how. Or why.
Another message appears.
CG: It was a long shot anyway. A coincidence.
TD: I guess their paths didn’t cross.
CG: No.
TD: Are you okay?
CG: I don’t know what I am.
TD: What can I do?
CG: Talk to me. If you don’t mind.