She can’t be alone with Nina. She can’t. Because Nina knows, doesn’t she? She knew when she pulled away from that kiss.
Juliette stands. Nina is going to be back soon. She can see headlights in the distance. She wipes her mouth on the back of her arm.
Alone, less than two hours before a shot is fired into the back of her father’s head, less than five until her sister will instruct her in how to lie, she staggers into the trees, heading toward home, and dark waters close over her mind.
25
JJ
Now
Yellow wallpaper, white grip, red hand.
The memories had been submerged for years, but here in Arden Hills JJ couldn’t seem to keep them from looping through her mind.
Vic hadn’t wanted her to come. They’d fought about it. Loudly, as usual, but that was always a relief. She always knew when it came to Vic that nothing went unsaid, no secret feelings smothered in the name of propriety and appearances.
“It’s a trap,” Vic had told her, chopping onions with a speed and precision that was both impressive and a bit intimidating.
“You think Emma is setting a trap for me?” JJ asked, hip propped against the counter, arms crossed. Vic had her hair in locs piled artfully on her head and a smudge of turmeric on her cheek; her palms were stained with it, too, and the kitchen already smelled divine from toasting spices for the curry.
“No, I think she’s walking into the same trap that you are. It’s not literal, it’s spiritual,” Vic said, gesturing with the knife alarmingly. She was wearing a white undershirt and bright pink boy briefs, since the kitchen in their tiny apartment was too goddamn hot for pants this time of year, by her own official assessment. It made it harder to argue with her. “You’re going back there for, what, closure? There’s no such thing.”
“What if she finds something?” JJ asked.
“If there was anything to find, the cops would’ve found it back then.”
“Hadley kept them focused on Emma.”
“And that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You feel bad that Emma took the blame. But that wasn’t your fault.”
JJ hadn’t answered. She’d told Vic so much—more than she’d ever told anyone. But there were things she hadn’t admitted even to her.
“If I’d told them everything, they wouldn’t have been looking at Emma. They would have been looking at me,” JJ said.
Vic chopped the end off a carrot with more force than was strictly necessary. “And that’s a good thing?” She set down the knife and stepped over to JJ, putting her hands on either side of JJ’s face. “Babe. Going back there is just inviting the worst kind of energy into your life. You want to fix things with Emma, call her. Don’t go back there and stir up things that might hurt you. Hurt us.”
JJ leaned her forehead against Vic’s, breathing in the scent of her, of cloves and coriander. “All right. I won’t go,” she said.
Yet in the end, she had. She still couldn’t tell if it was for the reason Vic assumed—a search for closure—or out of fear of what Emma might discover. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there, only that she had to go.
Yellow wallpaper, white grip, red hand.
She hadn’t had a plan, or even the notion of one.
She had always thought of herself as the one in control. The one who knew what to do, who understood the world and how to survive it. Emma was too angry and foolish, Daphne too strange and disconnected, but Juliette was practical, savvy, worldly in a way no one guessed. She’d believed it up until she’d stood there panicking, with her mother’s body three feet away, and Emma was the one who spoke with perfect, frightening calm, laying out what they had to do.
Now she was turning that methodical bent to asking the questions JJ had been terrified of for fourteen years. JJ had gotten a Facebook message from Logan Ellis of all people, warning her that Emma was nosing around. The only reason no one had looked at Emma was they had no idea what Juliette had been up to, sneaking out with Logan. Now Emma knew.
And JJ still didn’t have a plan.
She was sitting in a dingy motel room, flipping her lighter open and shut, when her phone rang. The number was unfamiliar and so was the voice, when she answered, but the woman said her name like she knew her.
“JJ. It’s been a while,” the woman said.
“Daphne?” she said incredulously.
“You and I need to talk. It’s important.”
“This is Daphne, isn’t it?” JJ asked, brows drawing together.