“It’s okay,” Juniper soothed, changing tactics. Whether her mother knew what happened that night was secondary right now. She had to get to Law, and quickly. So many things were locking into place at once that Juniper could hardly keep up. Had Law seen her crouching in the barn? Had he recognized her? Is that why he spared her life but convinced Reb to exile her only daughter? And did Jonathan know? The hospital marker board flashed in her mind’s eye: Dad. Had Jonathan been trying to warn her?
“It’s going to be okay,” Juniper said again, easing her hand from beneath where it was pinched between her mother’s arm and the cupboard door. “We’re going to be just fine.”
Her mother seemed to be in shock, or at least completely numb to the world around her. Sleepless nights, long days in the ICU, and now her entire life imploding before her eyes. What was going through her mind? Juniper had so many questions, but they would have to wait.
She grabbed her phone from her back pocket and unlocked it, then paused with her finger over the nine. Calling the police made the most sense, but what if Everett responded? Juniper couldn’t trust him. She also refused to call Cora, and didn’t know India or Barry well enough to drag them into this nightmare. Jonathan was in the hospital. She and Ashley were estranged. There was no one in Jericho that Juniper could call. A lightning bolt of longing made her heart sigh Sullivan, but she shoved the thought away before it could reduce her to tears.
Juniper was on her own.
The wind had started to howl, and Juniper instantly regretted her decision to forgo her coat and slip out the back door. But the barn wasn’t far, and Law was somewhere inside. Juniper ducked her head and ran, her feet sure from a lifetime of walking the path.
The Bakers’ barn was larger than the Murphys’， and much more modern. Cement floors, large doors for machines, rows of fluorescent lights so that Lawrence could work on engines and honey-do projects after sunset. When Juniper laid her hand on the pedestrian door, it was unlatched and the barn was bathed in darkness. Still, she was freezing, so instead of being careful, she yanked it open and stepped inside.
Juniper should have been grateful to get out of the incessant wind, but the second she crossed the threshold she was aware of only one thing: the scent of gasoline. It was so strong, she pulled her sweater up over her nose and mouth while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the silty dark. Even breathing through the thick fabric, she almost had to back out.
“I wondered if you’d come.”
The voice was much closer than Juniper anticipated. She couldn’t stop the yelp that escaped her lips. Law’s workbench was just beyond the door, and the scrape of his feet on sawdust-covered concrete betrayed his position.
“I guess it’s kind of dark, isn’t it?” Almost before the question was out of his mouth, Law had flicked on the lights over his workbench. The line of bare bulbs wasn’t nearly as bright as the full fluorescents that lit up the barn like daylight, but Juniper had to throw up her hand to shield her eyes anyway.
“What have you done?” Juniper asked. She meant the stench of gasoline, the wide, wet lines of it that she could see crisscrossing the floor like modern art. But Law didn’t take it that way.
“You don’t waste any time, do you?” He coughed out a harsh laugh. “Not even a hello for your old man?”
Juniper swallowed. “Hi, Dad.”
“I’m not your dad.”
She had nursed hurt about her biological father for years, but wasn’t Lawrence the only father she had ever known? “You were all I had,” she said.
Law’s face was lined from years of farm work and disappointment, the wrinkles deep as the rows he would disc every spring. It was a hard face, but one she had known since the day she was born, and when it crumpled, she took a step to comfort him. It surprised her as much as it did him.
He stopped her with a raised hand. “Neither of you kids were ever mine.”
“That’s not true—”
“Calvin Murphy was Jonathan’s father.”
The final bolt slid home, and suddenly Juniper knew. She knew everything as if her whole world had finally snapped into Technicolor focus. Juniper knew that over thirty-four years ago Rebecca Connor had married for convenience. That she had found solace in the arms a neighbor—someone handsome, someone closer to her age—for a time. Maybe it was just sex. Maybe it was more. Did it matter? Juniper understood that unhappy years had gone by, until Rebecca’s daughter was finally leaving home, and the possibility of leaving herself was suddenly a hope she dared to hold in the palm of her hand.