Chapter 16

I drop to my knees in a second, my legs suddenly losing all feeling.

Vera Bitter killed your parents.

Vera Bitter killed your parents.

Vera Bitter killed your parents.

Vera Bitter killed your parents.

Vera. Bitter. Killed. Your. Parents.

The words echo in my head, my temples throbbing. It’s not possible. It’s not…no. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

Vera wouldn’t. Vera didn’t.

She couldn’t.

They’re lying. This person, this letter writer, is lying. Just like they lied about the bodies in the garden. Like they’ve lied about everything.

Snap out of it, Bridget.

Vera didn’t have secrets. She was a sad, lonely old woman who had given up on everything and everyone. Who pushed people away so she wouldn’t get hurt again. Who closed herself off to the world. That’s it.

This is clearly an attempt to make me question everything, make me scared, make me leave.

I can’t catch my breath. Tears prick my eyes as I try to reason with myself, try to calm myself down. It’s okay. You’re okay.

They’re lying.

They have to be lying.

She loved Mom. I watched her cry at the funeral. I saw with my own eyes the way she buckled in on herself, the way Edna had to hold her up and how Uncle Marcus had helped carry her away from the cemetery. No one could fake that. No one could make their eyes that empty.

But…if anyone could, it would be Vera. It’s like I said last night, if Vera wanted to do something, she’d find a way.

I’m still out of it, my chest constricting with fear and confusion, when I notice the man walking toward me. It takes several seconds for my brain to begin working again and piece together what’s happening.

The brown socks.

Dark blue jeans.

Green shirt.

Dark eyes.

Dark hair.

He’s staring at me, down on his knees so we’re eye level. He’s saying something, but I can’t hear him. I’m underwater. The paper in my hands is gone, and I see him staring down at it. My knees are warm, and I feel him take hold of me, feel myself being lifted from under my arms. When I look down, there’s a smear of blood on the wooden porch. My knee must’ve been sliced open when I landed.

Weirdly, I can’t even feel it.

“Bridget!” His shout brings me back to reality, and I get the feeling it’s not the first time he’s screamed at me.

I blink, tears cascading down my cheeks, and open my mouth. He’s holding my face in both hands and somehow, we’re in the kitchen. I’m sitting on the edge of the table, and he’s in front of me, pleading with me.

“It can’t be true…” I whisper. A hand goes to my chest, clutching my heart as I try to focus.

He’s bending down in front of me now, pulling up the leg of my pajama pants. “You’re bleeding,” he says softly, standing back up to meet my eyes again. “I’m going to get something to clean you up. I’ll be right back, okay?”

I’m nearly positive I’ve nodded, but he stands there anyway, watching me closely. “Okay?” he repeats.

“Yes.”

With that, he disappears from the room but returns in what feels like mere seconds. Or hours. I can’t make my heart—my eyes, my head—focus, my thoughts swirling with the revelations, and the entire room seems to be spinning.

It hurts.

It all just hurts.

I’m so sick of the way it hurts.

He bends down again, rubbing my knee with a wet piece of gauze. It stings slightly, but I can hardly feel it. Every part of my body is numb except for the inside, which hurts enough for all of it.

He’s pressing a bandage on my knee when my eyes finally find their focus. When he stands, he tucks my hair behind my ears on either side. His eyes search mine like he’s looking for the answers to a quiz he’s about to take. “Are you okay?”

“How could I be?” I choke out. It’s the only thing I can manage to say.

His face cracks, wrinkles forming, and he leans his head to the side. “B, you know it isn’t true. Vera would’ve never hurt your mom. She loved her. No matter your opinions of her, you have to believe—you have to know—she loved her. Besides, the accident was just that: an accident. You were in the car. You know that no one caused it. Vera couldn’t have done it. It’s impossible.”

He grabs the letter from where it rests next to me on the table and folds it in half, tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’m not sure what this person is doing. I don’t know what their endgame is here, but we’ve already proven that they’re liars. There were no bodies in the flower garden, and aside from the gun in the closet—which Mom already explained—it’s nothing. They’ve proven nothing, done nothing other than to scare and upset us, which is clearly what they want. I say you just stop opening the letters. Forget about them. Someone just wants to shake you up or scare you off, and you can’t let them. I won’t let them.”

“I can’t stop. I have to know. I have to, Cole.” I can tell from the way he’s looking at me, he doesn’t understand. I’m not even sure I understand myself. “I know it would be easier to just stop reading them, but what if they are telling the truth? We need to know. I ordered a camera,” I add. “So we’ll see who’s leaving them. It should be here later today.”

“Okay, great.” He nods, petting the side of my head. “Great. So that will give us peace of mind, at least. We’ll figure out who’s doing this—my money is on Zach—and then we can move on. I talked to Mom earlier, and she said Jenn and Zach have already hired an attorney to fight us over the house, but her attorney assured her there’s nothing to worry about. The will is legal. On top of that, apparently Vera put some sort of clause in there that states if anyone contests it and loses, they lose whatever they were entitled to in the will in the first place, which means Jenn and Zach would be stupid to try. Our attorney doesn’t seem to think they will.”

I nod. I hadn’t really thought about Aunt Jenn actually trying to fight us over this, though it makes sense that she would. I understand where she’s coming from, but I’m not sure that the house is worth what she was given as an inheritance, assuming she, Zach, and Jonah received all of Vera’s estate. She could buy a dozen houses just like this one if she wanted and still have plenty left over.

Suddenly, something deep within my mind ignites. “Wait.” I put a hand on his arm, brought all the way back to the present by something he just said. “The flower garden.”

He gives me a dubious look. “Huh?”

“You said we didn’t find anything in the flower garden, and you were right.” I jump down off the table, ignoring the pain in my knee. “Oh my god!”

“Are we just stating facts now, or do you want to elaborate?” he asks, chasing after me as I dart through the house and upstairs. My leg hurts worse now, my feeling coming back, but it’s easy to drown it out when I’ve found the missing puzzle piece.

Upstairs, I shut my door and lock it before he reaches me, quickly changing into my clothes and shoes for the day.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he calls through the door. “Should I be worried? Did you hit your head?”

A few moments later, I swing the door back open, standing in front of him in jeans, a T-shirt, and my sneakers. With a deep breath in, I say, “We were looking in the wrong place.”

Then, I zip past him again, and he chases me back down the stairs and rushes to slip on his shoes by the door before following me out of the house.

“The wrong place? What does that even mean? The wrong place?” he calls, out of breath as he tries to keep up with me.

“We checked the flower garden.”

“Right. Like the letter said.”

I spin around, shaking my head and biting back a growing grin on my lips because I’m almost positive I’ve figured it out. What we missed. It was right in front of our faces the whole time, and I overlooked it. “No. The letter said garden, not flower garden.”

He narrows his eyes, staring up toward the sky. “What? I didn’t realize there was another option.”

I point toward the woods. “Just before you reach the woods over there, there used to be a vegetable garden. I remember seeing pictures in the photo albums in Vera’s room of my mom and Aunt Jenn picking vegetables with the gardener. I asked her about it before, and she told me at one point, she and my grandfather had all of their vegetables grown on their land. When he died, she let the garden go with him. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it until now. That has to be what the letter was talking about, and we just assumed they meant the flower garden.”

I spin back around, hurrying forward to the shed to grab our shovels. I pass his to him and then head toward the patch of land where I’m sure the old garden used to be based on the pictures I saw.

“Okay, but the garden is gone now,” Cole says. “So for someone to have known about it, it would have to be someone who was around back then. An old employee. Or your aunt or cousins.”

I nod, setting to work. “Or someone else who saw the pictures I did. It was here. Come on, help me dig.” My hands burn with fresh blisters from yesterday’s digging, which only makes this all so much harder. Each stab of the shovel into the ground is a tear to the soft flesh of my palms, a white-hot scorching of blistered, raw skin.

He looks unsure, and I realize only then that he’s still dressed in nice clothes for his work calls, and the shoes he slipped on moments ago are clearly not meant for hard labor.

Stopping to blow air on my burning palms, I say, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Or if you’re busy. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

He pulls his lips into his mouth, looking away, but eventually he sighs and joins me on my hunt.

The ground is softer here, or maybe I’m just less tired or more determined, but the whole process seems to move faster despite the pain I’m in. Fewer roots, perhaps. Eventually, we each have waist-deep holes dug and are working on expanding them, moving toward each other. My entire body seems to ache, as if I’ve been run over by a truck, muscles sore and bruised from the work I’m putting in.

When Cole stabs his shovel in the ground, and we’re met with a dull thud, we freeze. My palms scream from the sudden relief. He looks up at me, a cautious smile on his full lips.

“Do you see something?” I ask, my body going icy.

He swallows, his dark eyes filled with terror as his gaze falls down. Then, he bends. I scramble out of the hole I’ve dug and make my way over to him, watching as he uses his hands to carefully unearth something there.

Soon, it’s clear what it is that we’re staring at, and it’s as if my entire body has been plunged into icy water.

“It’s a hand,” I say, my eyes trailing over the white bones of the fingers he’s uncovered.

He grabs fistfuls of mud, throwing them back. He plucks a worm from between his fingers, tossing it aside before he pulls the final bit of dirt back. His shoulders go tense. “It’s a body,” he says softly as the bone of the arm comes into view. His eyes find mine again. “Whoever wrote that letter, they were telling the truth.”

Which means they could be telling the truth about all of the rest of it, too.