Chapter 50

Jess

Two days pass before I see Alice again.

She's still in the hospital, meant to be discharged today. I was released after just a day, a couple of stitches, a bag of blood, and a bandage later.

When I arrive at the hospital during visiting hours, Alice is playing Uno with a cheerful-looking goth girl. Maya is conspicuously absent.

When we brought Maya in for questioning, she'd immediately told us her manager and Theo were selling stolen goods from the sports store. It had been a slick operation until they decided to include guns.

The robbery was reported, and the manager had asked Maya to keep one of the guns until the heat died down. He'd threatened to make sure she was the one who took the fall if she didn't.

Maya came home one day just as Laura was stuffing the suitcase with the stolen items into her trunk. Terrified Laura would take everything to the police, she'd started texting her threatening messages.

It remains to be seen if the DA will press charges.

Alice tidies away the Uno cards as her friend leaves. The TV in the corner of her room is broadcasting the news. It flashes to a close-up of Shane at the press conference earlier this morning. I'm standing next to him, my arm in a white bandage, Galloway a few feet back. Shane is wearing a suit and tie, looking calm and confident as he answers questions.

I shed my parka and sit next to Alice.

"Maybe you'll have a cool scar." She holds her forearm up to mine. "We'll match. Sort of."

"Mine looks like an I," I say.

"Fir."

"Fried?"

She giggles. "Fire?"

"Friends."

We share a smile.

"How are you doing, Alice?"

"Dr. Pam changed my antidepressants. She thinks they were making me hallucinate."

There's a movement in the corner of the room. Pete. He's watching his daughter, his expression filled with love and sadness and longing. Alice follows my gaze and looks at me quizzically. She doesn't see him. I don't think she ever did. It was just her own brain trying to cope with the trauma of what had happened.

For the first time, Pete meets my eyes. And I finally understand why he never spoke to me. He didn't need anything from me. Pete knew he was dead. He knew the truth. He just wanted Alice to know it, too, so she could find closure. So she would know what really happened that night.

Pete gives me a small smile and lifts a hand. He walks toward the door. His body shimmers, becoming more translucent with every step. And then he is glowing light, glittering and twinkling as he slips from the door into the next world, moving into the space where dreams grow and memories dwell.

My heart physically hurts as I think of everything that awaits Alice. Her first boyfriend, the light in her eyes when she falls in love for the first time. Her graduation and then college, taking those first steps into the big, wide world as a new adult. Her wedding and then her first child, clasping her warm newborn to her beating heart. But all of it will be without her family to cheer her on.

Time. We never have enough of it with the people we love. Never. All we can do is appreciate the moments we do have. Live in those moments. Be present. Be grateful for every one of them.

"I wanted to tell you, I'm moving to Florida. With my grandma," she says.

"Christmas on the beach." I smile even though it makes me sad. "Nice." I take a deep breath. "Alice, your family ..."

This is the hard part. After this, Alice will never be able to cling to the idea that maybe things could go back to the way they were. "I thought about what you said about them being there at your house. I wondered if you meant it literally, not figuratively. We got sniffer dogs in and they ... they've picked up a scent in the shed out back, under the floorboards. We believe your family members are buried there. We'll be digging up the floor tomorrow."

Unsurprisingly, Melanie lawyered up the second we arrested her. More surprising, Jack is sticking by her. She's claimed she was trying to save Alice after finding her unconscious. That she was calling the police when I came in and had attacked me after finding me with my hands on Alice's neck.

But we're piecing everything together, running her DNA against the evidence we have, like the cigarette butt found at the scene. So far, the evidence shows they died that night. Melanie moved them to the trunk of her car, where she kept them for a few days. We had that brutal winter storm and the ground was frozen solid, so she couldn't bury them. Once we'd finished searching the Harpers' house, she took them there, pulled up the floorboards in the shed, and buried them.

Her very own telltale heart.

Alice's eyes are shiny with tears. "That's why she kept going back."

I nod.

"Dad loved it in his darkroom. I'm glad he was there."

I touch her hand. "I'm so sorry."

"She wanted me to kill myself. That's why she gave me the drugs." Her voice is ripe, swollen with remembering this terrible thing her aunt did to her.

"What made you spit them out?"

"My mom's painting of our family in the living room. I saw their faces, and I knew I couldn't just give in." Her eyes meet mine, glossy and red. "I had to survive. I had to be the one person in my family who didn't die. I owed them that."

"I'm glad you made that choice, Alice."

When I get home, I go straight to my bottle of Jack Daniel's. I pour two fingers in Isla's Snoopy cup.

"One little drink," I mutter, but for once, my mind isn't on the alcohol.

It's on the necklace in my pocket.

And the diary I found because of it.

I had finally gotten home after being released from the hospital yesterday morning when I remembered the necklace in Alice's palm. It was heart-shaped and held a family picture of the Harpers wearing matching Christmas pajamas. The musical note at the bottom was a slightly different shade of silver. When I held it up to inspect it in the kitchen light, I realized it had been welded on, a messy homemade job. And printed in tiny letters were three little numbers: 135.

That's when I knew. It wasn't a musical note. It was a key.

I spent yesterday and today visiting banks in town with safe-deposit boxes. This morning, on the way to visit Alice, I got lucky. I found one registered to Laura Harper. Inside was a leather-bound diary filled with tiny, looped writing.

I head out to my living room. Last night, Will stopped by with a Christmas tree—courtesy of my dad—and he and Shelby helped me decorate it. I sit in my reclining chair, the lights twinkling, and pull the diary onto my lap. I've waited until now to read it.

I scan the pages, flipping through to the night Laura and Mel killed Theo Moriarty.

Ice scatters down my neck as I read, as one more piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

... a flash of light illuminates the river thrashing violently to our right. Theo presses the gun to Melanie's head.

"Get the money out!" he shouts over the howling wind.

I reach into the empty space at the bottom of the tree. My fingers close around a handful of mud and twigs.

Everything moves in slow motion then. I throw the mud at Theo.

"Run!" I shout at Mel.

Theo flinches, his hands coming up to protect his eyes from the mud. I yank the gun out of my waistband and squeeze the trigger, hitting Theo in the chest. He looks down at the blood blossoming, then at me, stunned.

Blood bubbles out of his mouth. He staggers backward, tries to run. He only makes it to the road before collapsing onto his back. I stand over him, the gun still in my hand. Mel is saying something, but I can't hear what. There's a loud buzzing in my head. A ringing.

I think I'm in shock. I should call Pete. No, he's too drunk. I should call the police. But that doesn't seem like a good option, either.

And then Theo's eyes flutter. He tries to sit up. It startles something in me, jolts me into motion.

I shoot him in the head.

Melanie is screaming. "You fucking killed him!"

I stare at Theo. The top half of his head is missing, blackness mingling with the rain.

That ringing grows louder. Spots speckle my vision. I drop the gun and lurch backward, falling to my knees and vomiting violently. Rain streams down my face. I'm shaking.

And then we hear something. An engine. Headlights glimmer, a vehicle coming around the bend.

I freeze, realizing exactly what's going to happen and yet unable to stop it.

The truck slams into Theo. His body goes flying. The driver overcorrects, wheels squealing. It flips into the air, lands against the boulders with a sickening crunch, then slides down the muddy embankment toward the rising river.

Mel and I scramble over slippery rocks to the truck. A woman and a little girl are inside. The woman hangs half out of the driver's-side window. Her leg is mangled, shredded by the glass. I yank her arms, trying to pull her out.

"Mel, help!" I howl.

Mel climbs out of the back seat, her face sheet white as she looks at the little girl.

"She's dead," she says. "There's nothing we can do."

"No!" I'm sobbing now.

Mel shakes me. Hard. She tells me all we can do is help this woman. I move on autopilot, reach for the woman's arms as Mel lifts her leg. She shrieks in agony but eventually passes out, going limp and boneless as we carry her up to the road.

Mel pats her down, finds a wallet in her jacket pocket. She flips it open and hands it to me. Inside is a detective's badge and ID card.

Printed on the ID card is Detective Jessica Lambert .

The words slide down my skull. I feel sick, breathless with shock.

Not a deer. A body. A dead body. Isla's death wasn't my fault. Not the way I thought it was. One drink or none, on that darkened, storm-slicked corner, I never would have seen it.

Would I have?

So many things make sense now. The old man who'd claimed Boudica had flagged him down. The sound of women's voices. How I'd been pulled out of the car, carried up to the road, away from the rising river. Not Isla, as I'd thought. Laura and Mel.

And yet some things still don't fit.

My mind fizzes the way it does. It never stops, does it, Mac used to say ruefully.

Something is tugging at me. A question, maybe, or a knowledge. I stare at the empty coffee table, that slippery feeling pulling at me. And then, there it is.

If I hit Theo on the road, why did he have milfoil on his clothes?

There are no answers. Will I ever have all of them? Do I need all of them?

I've been carrying the weight of this for so long now, I never imagined what it might feel like to set it down. And yet here it is. Can I set it down?

I pick up my phone to call Mac, to tell him what I've learned. But the words I've whispered to myself for so long rise from my belly, up my throat like vomit.

You're worthless. A killer. They deserved better than you.

We think we'll find forgiveness, closure, somewhere out there. Maybe in another country or another job or another case. But it isn't out there. In the end, nothing can absolve us but ourselves. Because the past is with us, baked into our cells, stirred into our DNA, rising into the person who steps into each day.

I think of Shane looking for a girl he'll likely never find. Is it better to have hope, to feel it like a grain of sand rubbing against your gums, or closure? I know Isla is dead, but still I chase her ghost. That, I know, isn't closure.

I'm floored suddenly by that terrible mix of guilt and grief that sent me spiraling into alcoholism after she died. I know I'm supposed to move on, let go, explore the idea of a life without Isla, but maybe a part of me still isn't ready. Maybe I'm scared that if I move on, I won't see her anymore, and that will be too much like forgetting, like moving into a new life, one where Isla is a character in a book I read a long time ago.

And if I don't see her, then her face will fade, and then the sound of her voice, and then maybe one day I'll look at a picture of her or hear her voice in an old video and I'll be taken off guard. Surprised. By the freckle she had near her left dimple or the way she could move her right eyebrow, as if it were entirely separate from her, by the pitch of her voice and the cadence of her speech and the shout of her laughter and the way her skin felt when she leaned against me and whispered, I love you, Mommy .

And that is unacceptable; forgetting means she's really gone.

But reading this diary, it reframes things for me, like looking at one of those optical illusions, a bunny this way, a duck that way. What's philosophically interesting about those is what happens when the aspect changes, when we shift from seeing the bunny to the duck. The change isn't the image on the page or the photoreceptor cells within your retina. The change is in you.

So then, can I move on, find a new lens to look through?

Closure is a myth. Consigning someone you love to the past, never to be in the present again, it isn't voluntary. I don't want to do it. But maybe I can move to a different frame of mind, empowered by my memories rather than decimated by them. Because I find now that, though I'll never stop being sorry, I do want to stop punishing myself. Maybe that's enough.

I set the diary on the coffee table and cross to the window, stare outside at the falling snow. Across the street, the neighborhood children are building a snowman. One shrieks as another launches a fat snowball. Another child, an adolescent boy, stands a little ways away, watching. But there's something about him. Something nebulous, hazy. He isn't alive, I realize. A ghost.

There's a sound, and then Isla is standing in the living room with me. She's smiling, her front teeth still missing, her Hello Kitty headband slightly askew.

The past is never dead. It's not even past. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's only because of Isla that I know love never dies; it only changes form. That I learned being a mom is a privilege, that life is a gift and to take nothing for granted.

Because of Isla, I'm a better person. I can't regret that. Not ever. And whenever I feel like I've been singled out, like I'm being tortured, I remember that: I'm the luckiest woman alive because I got to have her.

"I'd do it all again," I tell her. I'm weeping now, sobs wrenching out of me, my heart suddenly both full and light, a whirl of cotton candy. "I'd go through all of it again, if it meant I got to have you. Every drop of pain, every memory that hurts, every time I see your face, it reminds me of the treasure I got to hold for eight years. I love you, Isla."

"I love you, too, Mommy."

She sets something on the coffee table, then reaches a hand out to mine, closing the distance between us. I expect to feel the iciness of her skin touch mine, and I do, but it isn't solid, it's like mist, cool and soft, the feeling seeping into me, as though she's stepped inside of me.

And then she's gone and all that's left is a familiar, heart-shaped worry stone sitting on top of the diary. I pluck it up, wiping my tear-streaked face.

And I realize what I want to tell Alice, the words I'd say to help her in this terrible future she faces. If you love someone enough to feel the pain of their passing, it is the love that lasts. That love outlives memories and faces and sounds. It outlives pain and heartbreak and anguish. That love is what will carry you through.

I balance the worry stone in the palm of one hand, my phone with Mac's number on the screen in the other. Outside, the sounds of children shrieking with laughter chime in my ears. I glance up. The ghost boy is looking in my direction with dark, sunken eyes, hollows beneath his cheekbones.

My dad was right. Solving more cases won't make me feel any better. But I can't turn my back on them, all the victims who have no voice to speak for them.

I set the worry stone on the diary, my phone next to it. I slide my arms into my parka, and I step outside, looking for the boy.

Is he looking for me? I don't know.

But I'm going to find out.