“Oh?” Reb paused with the mug an inch from her mouth. “What’s that?”
But a whiff of sulfur alerted Juniper to the fact that she had left the eggs too long. She lunged for the spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan. They were fine. A little dry at the edges, but salvageable. She clicked the burner off, turned the fluffy eggs a few more times, then slid them on a plate and put it in front of her mother.
Watching Reb carefully, Juniper said: “I want to talk about the night that Cal and Beth Murphy were killed.”
The older woman choked on her tea, eyes watering as she gestured wildly at the flour sack towel hanging over the handle of the stove. Juniper snagged it and tossed it at her mom, watching guiltily as Reb’s eyes watered and she struggled to breathe. It was over in seconds, but shock lingered in the kitchen, sharp as the scent of a struck match.
“Not again,” Reb whispered. Her eyes were bloodshot and her words savage. “You ambushed us in the hospital and now you want to bring this up again? How dare you? Don’t you think we’ve been through enough?”
Juniper felt her resolve fray at the edges. She had once been headstrong and independent, a carefree teenager with the world at her fingertips, but the murders—and everything that happened afterward—had changed all that. When her mother told her to keep still, she did. When she took Willa from her arms, Juniper let her daughter go. And when Reb decided that the best thing for Juniper was to go far, far away from Jericho and leave the past behind, she had done exactly as her mother instructed. “You banished me,” Juniper said, finally giving voice to something she had never been strong enough to name. Or even admit to herself.
“What?”
“And you put Willa in my place. You started over.”
“Oh, June.” Reb shook her head. “Don’t you see? I didn’t banish you. I saved you. I wasn’t going to let you repeat my mistakes.”
My mistakes. Juniper recoiled. Like I was a mistake? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t have time for this conversation right now. The clock was ticking, and she expected Law to walk through the back door any second. Nothing made her mother clam up as quickly as a harsh look from Law. “We’ll get to that,” she said. “Later. Right now I need to know how Law broke his foot.”
“Are you kidding me?” Reb threw the towel down on the counter and pushed back as if she was going to leave the room. “I’m not doing this. I am not having this conversation with you. Not now. Not ever.”
“Stop!”
Juniper didn’t mean to shout. She didn’t even know where all that vehemence came from. But Reb stopped. Sat back in her stool and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Please, Mom.” Juniper leaned with her forearms on the counter, begging her mother to listen with the desperation in her eyes. “Don’t run away from me. We have to talk about this. I was right all along—Jonathan’s accident is tied to what happened to the Murphys. And this will never be over, we will never be okay until we finish it once and for all.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Let’s start with the truth. How did Law break his foot?”
Reb squeezed her eyes shut and yanked her cardigan tighter across her chest. It seemed to Juniper as if she were trying to disappear, to scrunch herself smaller and smaller until: poof! It was as if she had never existed at all. It made something shrivel in Juniper’s chest. Beautiful, mysterious Rebecca Baker shouldn’t feel the need to make herself nothing.
“Mom,” Juniper said, softer this time. “Please. I think this might be really important.”
For a long moment Reb said nothing, and Juniper was sure that coming home had been futile. But then the older woman’s shoulders began to shake, and Juniper realized that her mom was crying. Nothing could have been worse. Juniper could handle shouting or icy silence, fury or disappointment. But seeing her mother cry made Juniper feel like she was six again and Reb was her sun and her moon. Her mommy who still kissed every scrape and tucked her in at night with an almost ethereally sweet rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in her lilting soprano. To this day, the first few bars of that tune made Juniper’s soul unfurl like the sail of a ship at sea.
“Mom…” she whispered.
“I was going to leave him.”
“What?”
“That summer. You were off to college and Jonathan was…” Reb lifted one shoulder and sniffed. “Jonathan.”