All Good People Here(91)

Billy chuckled.

“Anyway, I should probably get going. I’m picking up dinner for me and my uncle.” She paused. “You could stop by sometime if you’d like. I know the two of you were friends a long time ago.” It seemed a shame to waste that friendship, especially now when Billy had no one else in the world and Luke was fading from it.

But when she said it, something dark flashed in Billy’s eyes. “Maybe,” he said with a tight smile. “Anyway, thanks for coming by, Margot.” She searched his face, but any sign of that darkness had vanished, leaving Margot to wonder if she’d even really seen it in the first place.

They retraced their steps through the house, the old floorboards creaking beneath their feet, and as they passed through the hallway of photos, a candid of January caught Margot’s eye. In it, January looked five or six, perhaps only months from her death. She was perched on the tire swing Margot recognized from the Jacobs backyard, her eyes squinched with laughter, her little mouth wide. But what caught Margot’s attention was something in her hand: squeezed between her fingers and the rope was a scrap of fabric—light blue with white snowflakes.

Margot’s mind flashed to that memory from so long ago, when she’d been scared and crouched against a tree. January had sidled up to her and pressed a snowflake into her hand, the edges of the light-blue fabric jagged as if it had been ripped. When I’m scared, January had said, I squeeze this and it makes me brave. As Margot looked at the photo, she balled her hand into a fist, her fingertips grazing the half-moon scars on her palm.

Billy, who’d reached the front door, turned to face her.

“What is this?” she asked, pointing to the photo.

He squinted. “Oh, the thing in her hand? That’s her baby blanket. Or, what was left of it. I used to give it to her whenever she got scared and told her if she squeezed it, it would make her brave. I think I told her it had some magic that made it powerful.” He chuckled, his gaze softening with the memory. “It was our thing, just between the two of us.”

Margot smiled, but something, some memory, was pushing at the edge of her mind. And then Jace’s words hit her: I remember how peaceful she looked, he’d said of January, dead, at the bottom of the basement stairs. Like she was just sleeping. And there was a little scrap of her baby blanket in her hand.

“Just like the night she died,” Margot said, the words slipping thoughtlessly from her mouth.

The moment they did, she realized her mistake.

January had died from blunt force trauma to the head; it would’ve been impossible for her to have held on to her baby blanket through whatever had killed her—which meant that someone had put it into her hand after she died, before Jace and Krissy had found her.

Margot froze, her heart pounding.

A suspicion bloomed inside her, coalescing into something hard and solid. Her mind raced as all the pieces of January’s murder began clicking into place. She was the only little girl who hadn’t been sexually abused. She was the only one who’d been killed in her own home. Margot had assumed all of this meant that Elliott Wallace had simply evolved as a murderer, but what if January had been one of the girls he’d stalked but never killed? Someone had tucked her baby blanket into her hand after she’d died, before Jace had found her—that wasn’t some perverted act of a pedophile, but an act of love.

Margot thought about that dark look that had just passed over Billy’s face at her mention of Luke. It had been so fleeting she thought perhaps she’d fabricated it, but she hadn’t. That look, she realized now, had been one of hatred. Billy loathed her uncle. And Margot had a good guess why—he knew about Luke’s affair with Krissy, knew Luke was the father of the twins.

Had she been wrong about everything? Had she, as so many people had accused her, been so convinced January’s case was connected to Natalie’s and Polly’s that she’d overlooked the stark differences between them?

Could it have been Billy, not Elliott Wallace, who’d killed January all those years ago? But—why?

Though the why didn’t matter right now. She’d just revealed she knew something she wasn’t supposed to. Had Billy heard? Did he understand?

Her brain raced with thoughts of self-preservation. Put on an act. Don’t let him see what you suspect. Get out. She forced a smile onto her face as she turned from the photo to Billy, who was standing by the open doorway, hand on the knob.

“Cute,” Margot said, taking a step forward.

But Billy was looking at her with a strange look on his face. “What’d you just say?”

Margot took another step toward the open door, only a couple of feet away. She’d walk calmly through it, and once she got out of his sight, she’d run straight to the police station. “Oh, I just said she looks cute.” Margot smiled, but her voice was tight. “Thanks again for the coffee.”

But just before she reached the door, Billy closed it and sighed. “That’s not what you said.”

Margot mustered a confused little laugh. “Uh. I’m sorry, but I really should get going.”

He shook his head, not quite meeting her eye. His face had fallen. Margot stared at his enormous shoulders, his thick forearms—muscles hardened from decades of work on a farm. She willed him to just open the door. “I think you know what you said. And I…” He hesitated, running one hand through his hair, the other still firm on the doorknob. “And I think you know what it means. I can see that you do.”