Everything We Didn't Say(102)

“I wondered if you’d come.”

The voice was much closer than Juniper anticipated. She couldn’t stop the yelp that escaped her lips. Law’s workbench was just beyond the door, and the scrape of his feet on sawdust-covered concrete betrayed his position.

“I guess it’s kind of dark, isn’t it?” Almost before the question was out of his mouth, Law had flicked on the lights over his workbench. The line of bare bulbs wasn’t nearly as bright as the full fluorescents that lit up the barn like daylight, but Juniper had to throw up her hand to shield her eyes anyway.

“What have you done?” Juniper asked. She meant the stench of gasoline, the wide, wet lines of it that she could see crisscrossing the floor like modern art. But Law didn’t take it that way.

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” He coughed out a harsh laugh. “Not even a hello for your old man?”

Juniper swallowed. “Hi, Dad.”

“I’m not your dad.”

She had nursed hurt about her biological father for years, but wasn’t Lawrence the only father she had ever known? “You were all I had,” she said.

Law’s face was lined from years of farm work and disappointment, the wrinkles deep as the rows he would disc every spring. It was a hard face, but one she had known since the day she was born, and when it crumpled, she took a step to comfort him. It surprised her as much as it did him.

He stopped her with a raised hand. “Neither of you kids were ever mine.”

“That’s not true—”

“Calvin Murphy was Jonathan’s father.”

The final bolt slid home, and suddenly Juniper knew. She knew everything as if her whole world had finally snapped into Technicolor focus. Juniper knew that over thirty-four years ago Rebecca Connor had married for convenience. That she had found solace in the arms a neighbor—someone handsome, someone closer to her age—for a time. Maybe it was just sex. Maybe it was more. Did it matter? Juniper understood that unhappy years had gone by, until Rebecca’s daughter was finally leaving home, and the possibility of leaving herself was suddenly a hope she dared to hold in the palm of her hand.

And Juniper knew that over three decades ago, Lawrence Baker had married for love. That he had no idea about his wife’s indiscretion, and that his life with her was so much more than he ever dreamed for himself. It was home and family and forever. Juniper could only imagine how devastating it must have been for Law to hear that his wife was leaving. That his son was not his son. That none of it was real.

“Dad,” Juniper’s whisper was anguished, but Law cut her off before she could say another word.

“Don’t call me that.”

“But—”

“When she told me she was leaving, when she told me why, I didn’t know what else to do.”

Juniper didn’t want to hear any more. She could picture every moment, from the confession and the broken cello to the hot sizzle of bone glue oozing across the kitchen floor like a festering wound. How did he walk to the Murphys’ on a broken foot? The pain would have been unimaginable. But nothing compared to the searing agony of his wife’s betrayal. Juniper could never forgive him for pulling the trigger, but for just a moment she understood.

The perfect murder was a crime of passion. Lawrence did what he believed he had to do. Then he walked home, Reb drove him to the hospital, and the world kept spinning.

“Dad.” She insisted on calling him it, perverse as it sounded in the echoing barn. “Let’s talk about this, okay? I know we can work this out if—”

Law waved his hand to shush her. “It doesn’t matter. I’m taking care of it. It’s a blessing, you know? Every day I wondered if you’d remember. If you’d open your eyes one morning and know that it was me.” He smiled softly. “I knew that it was you.”

All at once it was there. Every second downloaded as if Law had pushed a button to make it so. Peering through the cracks in the darkness, nineteen-year-old June had known somewhere deep down that it was Law. His height, his breadth. The lumbering sway of his walk. Crouched against the splintering boards she could smell the reek of the still-damp bone glue that must have coated his clothes, but beneath all that it was him. It had always been him. In her mind’s eye she could see the outline of his leather work gloves curling around the door. That’s why his fingerprints weren’t on the gun. The gloves must have been so easy to dispose of.

And then: “You went back to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind.” Juniper was guessing out loud. She wondered how Jonathan had gotten a hold of the necklace—once, when everything had settled down, she’d confessed that she’d lost it that night. But they never spoke about it again. If Law had returned and found it on the dirt floor… “You were protecting me. You didn’t want the cops to find any evidence of me in the barn and think that I had anything to do with it.”

For just a moment the faintest hint of a smile crossed Law’s thin lips. There was an entire universe contained in that quick curve: the way he used to throw her high and catch her in his unshakable arms, the summer he taught her to ride a bike, each Baker family meal. All his sure instructions about changing a tire, opening a bank account, fixing a leaky faucet. And every awkward hug and dry, papery kiss on her forehead. He had loved her, in his way.