My mind spins away from what this must mean, and finds a frantic, anguished home in nothingness. I hear nothing. I feel nothing. From far away, I discern a nudge of conscience, a murmur that compels me to look, to listen. But I’m on the ground somewhere, and it is not safe, but it is away.
I claw my fingers at the hard-packed earth, and it comes apart as dust beneath my nails. There is pain, and I realize that I must have torn them, that the wetness against my skin is blood. But when I think of blood, my soul begins to howl. It’s a clamor that I cannot contain, that threatens to rip out my throat if I dare to open my mouth. I do not.
It’s impossible to hear the footsteps, but I feel them. A reverberation in the ground that echoes through my very bones. He’s so close I can feel him over my shoulder, sharing the air that I can barely breathe for shock and horror. If I were a different person—braver—I would surprise him in the darkness. Throw myself against him. Look him in the eye.
But I cower. Press my cheek against the hard boards until splinters bite my skin.
“Who’s there?” he whispers. Two hissed syllables, a voice I almost recognize.
And then he’s upon me. So close I could reach out and touch him through the narrow gap behind the door, but instead I tuck my face into my knees. It is dark as pitch all around us, dark as the grave. I hold so still, I am stone. I am nothing. I do not even exist.
The world is blackness and wailing somewhere deep inside my chest. I am unseeing, unfeeling. Undone. The earth has come apart around me and there is no way that I can go on after this. That life can go on after this. It’s over.
But behind my raw fear and the way my heart and mind skitter away from reality, I realize I can smell him. It’s uncanny, this odor he carries with him. It pricks my nose and invades my mouth. It makes me gag, and I do so silently, noiselessly, wishing him away, wishing everything away. But I’m hemmed in by shadows and he’s trapping me there.
He smells of death.
CHAPTER 23
WINTER TODAY
I am the witness.
The thought tattooed itself on Juniper’s skin, driven deeper and deeper by her every frantic heartbeat. Witness. Witness. Witness.
She had been there, on the Murphys’ farm, from the moment that Cal stepped out of the house until everything had been reduced to the freckle of starlight between heavy clouds and blood seeping into the dirt. When she pulled it apart, dissected that night, Juniper could see everything reduced to fragments of a whole. Puzzle pieces that fit somehow, but she couldn’t seem to put them together.
Or maybe she didn’t want to.
I think a witness would crack this whole thing wide open.
Juniper’s skin tingled at the memory of India’s direct gaze, of the fine line of her delicate jaw as it hardened in anticipation of what Juniper would—or wouldn’t—say. India was savvy. She’d solve the mystery sooner or later. Realize the same thing that Everett already had: there was time unaccounted for. Long minutes nobody could explain.
When Officer Stokes looked back at police reports, what would he find? Would he realize that by the time they collected Juniper at her parents’ farm around 11:30 p.m. that her hair was still dripping wet? She remembered sitting in the conference room of the small police department with the weight of her hair sopping the back of her T-shirt and making her shiver with cold. One of the officers wrangled up a dusty blanket from somewhere and tucked it around her trembling shoulders.
It was nearing ten, but Juniper knew that Willa was safe with Cora, so when she pulled into Everett’s driveway, she set her phone to silent mode and stuck it in her coat pocket. She wanted it with her just in case—she didn’t trust Everett for a second—but she also didn’t want it to ring and interrupt them. She had some hard questions to ask Officer Stokes, and she wasn’t about to be sidetracked.
“Juniper,” Everett said when he opened the front door （sidewalk freshly shoveled, porch light on）， “I wasn’t expecting a visitor so late.” He gestured to the sweatpants and gray ISU sweatshirt he was wearing, but Juniper just gave him a tight-lipped smile.
He swung the door wider and she stepped inside. The last time she had been in his house, she’d entered through the garage into the laundry room and, beyond that, the kitchen. Now she was standing smack-dab in the middle of Everett’s living room; only a small tiled square separated the front door from the plush, recently vacuumed carpet that ran through the rest of the house. Directly across from where they stood was the elaborate fish tank and the door that she had peeked through. Juniper couldn’t stop herself from glancing toward the office. The door was closed.