Now, I wish, but I content myself with linking my pinky with his for just a heartbeat or two. Then he walks away, and I’m left standing in the shelter house surrounded by acquaintances and friends, people I’ve known—and who have known me—since I was born. They feel like strangers to me. I’m pulled taut between wanting to run and wanting to stay, and I’m convinced I have never felt so torn and confused in my entire life.
Until I catch Ashley staring at me across the crowded space. Her look is like a slap to the face, and anyone watching her would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that hitting me is exactly what she wants to do. I’d love to pretend that I’m reading her wrong, but I can’t deny it: Ashley knows.
CHAPTER 19
WINTER TODAY
“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” Cora demanded the second Juniper cracked the library door, a full twenty minutes before her lunch was up. She didn’t have time to stomp the snow off her shoes or unzip her coat before the older woman had caught her in an uncomfortably tight grip. “Where have you been?”
“Lunch,” Juniper said, confused. The door fell shut with a thud behind her. “It’s not even quarter to. I’m not—”
“Jonathan’s awake,” Cora blurted.
“What?” The room went airless and still.
“Your mom called here when she couldn’t get you to answer your cell phone.”
Juniper sucked in a frantic breath. “I turned the ringer off,” she said, shaking off Cora’s hands and fumbling in her backpack for her phone. She hadn’t wanted to be interrupted during her supposedly innocuous conversation with Everett. Sure enough, there were four missed calls, all from Reb’s cell. And then a text:
Call me.
“I don’t know any details, just that he’s awake and he’s asking for you.”
“I have to go.” Juniper felt molded from clay, her mind slow, her fingers fat and clumsy as she dug deeper in her bag for the familiar ring of car keys. As she snagged them with a finger, a thought tried to worm its way to the foreground, but it was sluggish and slow to form. She stared at the keys.
“Your tires were slashed,” Cora reminded her. “You can take my car.”
“No, take mine.” Barry stepped from behind the circulation desk—Juniper hadn’t even realized he was there—and held out his keys. “It’s no big deal. I live a couple of blocks away.”
“But—”
“I insist. Cora lives across town—it’s too far to walk. And clearly you have to go. Take my car. You can return it tomorrow.”
Juniper’s eyes felt hot, but she didn’t know if it was because of the kindness of a near stranger or the fact that Jonathan was awake. Maybe both. “Willa—”
“She can go home with a friend.” Cora solved the problem with a wave of her hand. “Zoe?”
Yes. Zoe. Juniper could call the school, get the number. Make arrangements as she drove. Suddenly nothing was as important as getting to Des Moines. Juniper held out her hand and Barry dropped the keys into her palm. “Thank you,” she said around a lump in her throat. Then Cora swept her into a gruff hug and shoved her out the door.
“If you leave now you’ll be there shortly after three. Call me on your way home, okay? I want to know how he’s doing.”
Juniper nodded as she rushed down the steps, but she didn’t look back.
Barry’s car still smelled of strawberry lotion and spearmint gum—of Willa. Her daughter had left a pack of gum in one of the cupholders in the console, and Juniper reached for a stick. Her hands were quivering. She wasn’t okay to drive, not quite yet, so she chewed the gum in the cold interior and tried to take a few deep breaths.
In all these years, Juniper and her brother had never spoken about that night. It was scorched earth, barren and ruined. But Jonathan had been there, he could testify to the way their bodies fell, and Juniper was keeping a secret so big it was destroying her from the inside. Everything came back to this. She had come home, and Jonathan had almost died. She had no doubt her brother had wanted to talk to her about the night of the Murphy murders, and now, finally, it was time.
She slipped a hand into her coat pocket for the car keys and came up with an evidence bag. Her necklace was pooled in the bottom, a tangle of tarnished chain and pendants she hadn’t worn in years. She thought it had been lost that night. How did he find it? And why did he keep it? As a memento? Leverage? Proof? Maybe he thought he was protecting her.