Everything We Didn't Say(105)

As for the podcast, it’s irrelevant. The whole country knows the story now, the unsolved murder that ended in a blaze one wintery Iowa night. And it’s already forgotten. Our story is significant only to us.

“Happy birthday, old man.” I pull a Tupperware container out of the tote I’ve carried from the car. Popping it open, I reveal not the donuts I promised but a thick slice of carrot cake that Willa and I stayed up half the night baking—Jonathan’s favorite.

He smiles. “Did you do this? You didn’t have to do this.”

“It was awful,” I admit with a laugh. “You know me—I made Willa shred the carrots and do all the tricky parts. We decided this should be called ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cake.’ Pineapple, walnuts, raisins…”

“Are they golden raisins?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“And cream cheese frosting? Full fat, not that sugar-free crap?”

I nod. “Real butter, too.”

“You’re a good sister, June.”

I hand him a fork. I’m not sure when he started calling me June again, but in the beginning it felt wrong to correct the guy who had just cheated death, so I let it go. Now it’s spreading like a virus to everyone else. Even his boys have started to call me Auntie June instead of Aunt Juniper. I don’t mind.

“I was going to bring a candle but I forgot. We’ll have thirty-three candles at your real party, and you can give yourself a hernia trying to blow them all out, old man.”

“No matter how old I get, I’ll never catch you, big sister.”

I should needle him back, tease him about how he now sports even more gray hair and I’ve yet to find my first. But Jonathan earned those streaks when he was baptized by ice in the depths of Jericho Lake. Even now, some things are better left unsaid.

Of course, there isn’t much we don’t say these days. Secrets are lies and bad manners besides—though that was never a tidbit of wisdom that our family upheld. The night Law burned the barn to ashes and shot himself on the rise overlooking the Murphys’ old farm, he took pieces of all of us with him.

For weeks after he died, we said all the things there were to say. About what had happened and how we felt and who was to blame. Everyone. It seems we all have to bear our part of the burden of everything that happened in our family, our home, our town.

Yes, Lawrence pulled the trigger, but first Mom broke his heart.

Jonathan went rogue.

I abandoned everything for love.

But the circle is much wider than just us. The Tates were far from innocent, and the rest of Jericho, too. We all turned a blind eye when Cal and Beth were ostracized for being different and beat back detractors who suggested that maybe there were other ways to live and love, to flourish.

“How’s Mom?” Jonathan asks around a mouthful of cake.

“Okay.” There’s no point in lying to him. She moved off the farm and into a small apartment in Munroe. It’s not nearly as far as she’d hoped to fly, and yet so far away that she tells me she misses us every day—even though we see each other all the time. This is good for her, we’re told. A fresh start. A new beginning away from all the rumors and gossip, the memories that threaten to tear her apart.

I still wonder, sometimes, how much my mother knew—or if she suspected back then who had really pulled the trigger. But guilt and grief and love are sometimes impossible to untangle, and we all have regrets. Our mourning is a layered, complicated thing.

“And when do you leave?” Jonathan is trying to sound nonchalant, but there’s a catch in his voice.

“As soon as school gets out.”

“You’re sure we can’t change your mind? Mandy and I—and the boys—would love to have you here.”

I shake my head and give him a soft smile. “We won’t be gone forever. But Willa wants this. Denver will be a good place for us to start over—to be a real family.” I don’t tell him that Reb might come with us. We’ll see.

“And Sullivan?” Jonathan asks carefully.

“He agrees. Ashley, on the other hand, hasn’t exactly been accommodating.” But Sullivan has. He cried when I told him, and I knew he was remembering the night she was conceived. Just before the murders when the world was full of promise and we believed we would be together forever. We were so naive. But Sullivan will be a good dad to our girl, I know that. He cried when he met her, too, and for just a moment I could imagine our lives turning out very differently. Still, this is beautiful in its own broken way. We’re putting together the pieces like a mosaic. It will just be easier for us all if Willa and I disappear for a while. We have daddy issues, every one of us, but I’m determined to make Willa’s relationship with her father work.

“But you and Sullivan…?” Jonathan leaves the question hanging in the air between us. I’m not even sure what he’s asking, but I know the intent.

“I’m all grown up,” I tell him with more certainty than I feel. “And far more interested in what could be than what might have been.”

I heard that Sullivan moved into the suite above the Tate Family Farms offices for a couple of weeks after he learned the truth about Willa. About us. Honestly, I don’t know why he married Ashley—if it was love or something different altogether—and I don’t know what to wish for now. But I do know that I won’t be the reason a family splinters in two, so Willa and I will stay away for as long as it takes for them to figure out what they want. And if Sullivan wants us? I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge if we get there.