Still, I thank God every single day that Jonathan lives. And that Everett Stokes was convicted of reckless endangerment resulting in serious injury and is serving a two-year sentence at the North-Central Correctional Facility. The gross misdemeanor charges of stalking and harassment were dropped when a court-appointed mental health expert diagnosed him with episodic psychiatric distress. We’re told Everett will likely get out earlier due to good behavior, but he’ll never work in law enforcement again. It’s not enough, but it’s what we got. I hope he gets the help he needs.
As for the podcast, it’s irrelevant. The whole country knows the story now, the unsolved murder that ended in a blaze one wintery Iowa night. And it’s already forgotten. Our story is significant only to us.
“Happy birthday, old man.” I pull a Tupperware container out of the tote I’ve carried from the car. Popping it open, I reveal not the donuts I promised but a thick slice of carrot cake that Willa and I stayed up half the night baking—Jonathan’s favorite.
He smiles. “Did you do this? You didn’t have to do this.”
“It was awful,” I admit with a laugh. “You know me—I made Willa shred the carrots and do all the tricky parts. We decided this should be called ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cake.’ Pineapple, walnuts, raisins…”
“Are they golden raisins?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“And cream cheese frosting? Full fat, not that sugar-free crap?”
I nod. “Real butter, too.”
“You’re a good sister, June.”
I hand him a fork. I’m not sure when he started calling me June again, but in the beginning it felt wrong to correct the guy who had just cheated death, so I let it go. Now it’s spreading like a virus to everyone else. Even his boys have started to call me Auntie June instead of Aunt Juniper. I don’t mind.
“I was going to bring a candle but I forgot. We’ll have thirty-three candles at your real party, and you can give yourself a hernia trying to blow them all out, old man.”
“No matter how old I get, I’ll never catch you, big sister.”
I should needle him back, tease him about how he now sports even more gray hair and I’ve yet to find my first. But Jonathan earned those streaks when he was baptized by ice in the depths of Jericho Lake. Even now, some things are better left unsaid.
Of course, there isn’t much we don’t say these days. Secrets are lies and bad manners besides—though that was never a tidbit of wisdom that our family upheld. The night Law burned the barn to ashes and shot himself on the rise overlooking the Murphys’ old farm, he took pieces of all of us with him.
For weeks after he died, we said all the things there were to say. About what had happened and how we felt and who was to blame. Everyone. It seems we all have to bear our part of the burden of everything that happened in our family, our home, our town.
Yes, Lawrence pulled the trigger, but first Mom broke his heart.
Jonathan went rogue.
I abandoned everything for love.
But the circle is much wider than just us. The Tates were far from innocent, and the rest of Jericho, too. We all turned a blind eye when Cal and Beth were ostracized for being different and beat back detractors who suggested that maybe there were other ways to live and love, to flourish.
“How’s Mom?” Jonathan asks around a mouthful of cake.
“Okay.” There’s no point in lying to him. She moved off the farm and into a small apartment in Munroe. It’s not nearly as far as she’d hoped to fly, and yet so far away that she tells me she misses us every day—even though we see each other all the time. This is good for her, we’re told. A fresh start. A new beginning away from all the rumors and gossip, the memories that threaten to tear her apart.
I still wonder, sometimes, how much my mother knew—or if she suspected back then who had really pulled the trigger. But guilt and grief and love are sometimes impossible to untangle, and we all have regrets. Our mourning is a layered, complicated thing.
“And when do you leave?” Jonathan is trying to sound nonchalant, but there’s a catch in his voice.
“As soon as school gets out.”
“You’re sure we can’t change your mind? Mandy and I—and the boys—would love to have you here.”
I shake my head and give him a soft smile. “We won’t be gone forever. But Willa wants this. Denver will be a good place for us to start over—to be a real family.” I don’t tell him that Reb might come with us. We’ll see.