Reb looked stricken. But she said, “I was boiling bone glue to fix the cello. Law was,” she swallowed, “trying to get my attention. The pot fell. Broke his second and third metatarsals through his work boot. By the time we got to the hospital it had swelled so much they had to cut through the leather to get it off.”
Something inside of Juniper deflated. She didn’t realize how afraid she had been until the relief of finally knowing pierced through her doubts.
“He was with you. All night. So there’s no way that…” She couldn’t even voice it. She hadn’t even thought it, not really.
But Reb’s chin cut to the left just a fraction. “No,” she said, refusing to meet Juniper’s gaze. She laced her fingers around the nearly empty mug of tea and studied the dregs as if there were a mystery written in the leaves. “He left for a while. Tried to walk it off. That’s why his foot swelled up so much.”
“What do you mean he tried to walk if off? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. Around. It was a warm night. I cleaned up the mess in here, and when he got back, I drove him to the hospital in Munroe.”
Juniper could hardly form the words. “When was that?”
“Quarter to eleven?” Reb guessed. “We didn’t get home until nearly two, so…”
That night was so suddenly, so viscerally upon her that Juniper gasped. The cool breeze on her hot skin, gunshots like a car backfiring. Her legs throbbed from the awkward way that she knelt, sweat prickling at the small of her back and the line of her upper lip so that she was afraid for a moment she would sneeze and give away her hiding place. She had believed, if only for a few broken heartbeats, that she knew the killer.
Fast-forward. Rewind. Back and forth, zipping to fragments she needed to relive and then flying past in her search for something. Finally, an imagined scene played out in front of the stove beside her. One of her mother’s cast-iron pots, a few chips in the indigo-blue enamel. Reb’s fingers tight on the handle, wrapped around a folded towel. Law turning her roughly. And then. Liquid bubbling over the edge and down his shirt, his jeans. Pooling between the laces of his boots, funneling past the tongue and seeping into thick socks, singeing his skin.
“What’s bone glue?” Juniper asked.
“What?” Reb lifted her tear-streaked face. “I don’t understand.”
“Bone glue. What is it?”
Reb raised both hands, gave her head a little shake. “I use it to repair cracks in instruments. When my students or…” she trailed off. Sliding from the stool, she walked in a daze toward the kitchen sink. She bent and opened the bottom cupboard, and after riffling around, presented Juniper with a small, clear sack of what looked like amber-colored pearls.
It was half-empty, and lighter than Juniper expected it to be. In the split second before she broke the seal and lifted the bag to her face, she contemplated walking away. Hugging her mother. Telling her that she loved her. And going back to the bungalow to pretend that nothing had changed at all. But it was too late for that.
When Juniper inhaled, she breathed in the night that Cal and Beth died. It was muscle and sinew, bones ground to dust. Dirt and stars, a storm rolling in, blood. The scent of death.
CHAPTER 26
WINTER TODAY
“Why?” The word slipped from Juniper’s lips unbidden, the first of many that queued up and jostled for attention amid the growing din inside her head. “Did you know? Did you suspect? I don’t understand…”
Reb tore the bag from Juniper’s hands, spilling the foul pellets all over the linoleum floor. “I shouldn’t have shown you,” she muttered, dropping to her knees to try and sweep them into a pile. It was no use. They had scattered far and wide, tiny spheres of what Juniper now knew to be a natural adhesive made from animal by-products. Such a distinct smell. Unforgettable.
Juniper crouched in front of her mother and took her by the shoulders. Forced Reb to face her, though the older woman was scowling through her tears and refused to make eye contact. “Why?” she asked again, and when Reb didn’t answer: “Mom, I was there.” At this, Reb’s eyes locked with Juniper’s for just a second, but she didn’t say anything, so Juniper went on. “I was at the Murphys’ farm the night they were killed. Do you understand what I’m telling you? There was a witness. Me. And I think Lawrence killed Cal and Beth.”
“No,” Reb whispered, but there was no conviction in her tone. Suddenly, she tipped sideways, off her knees and onto her hip. Juniper knew she would have kept going, but the cupboard was in the way, and her mother slumped against it, all the fight seeping out of her.