Everything We Didn't Say(29)
Every face in the photo was familiar, even though Juniper couldn’t name them all if she tried. Her time at Jericho High was a forgotten history, as meaningless and inconsequential as what she had for breakfast yesterday. But that wasn’t entirely true. Some of it mattered. And try as she might to forget, little things came rushing back. Inside jokes, teachers she had loved—and hated. Her first kiss with Edward Cohen behind the bleachers at a varsity football game. He tasted of cinnamon breath mints and, underneath that, hot buttered popcorn.
Juniper traced her fingers around the frame of the photograph. Those kids had no idea what was coming. She felt sorry for them.
A quick flip through the rest of the newspaper confirmed what she already knew to be true: there was no mention at all of the storm that was brewing in Jericho.
The Jericho Chronicle came out every Wednesday, and there were only four editions between the graduation cover story and a headline that looked entirely different. Juniper already knew what she would find. Years ago she had scoured the photograph for evidence, pressing her nose to the paper so that she could get a closer look and coming away with black smudges against her skin. She never found what she was looking for. And although she doubted she would now, she pulled out the Fourth of July special extended edition and made herself look again.
JERICHO ROCKED BY DOUBLE HOMICIDE
“Rocked” didn’t seem like quite the right word. Stunned, devastated, leveled. In many ways, destroyed. Jericho was never the same after the Murphys were murdered. It brought something dark and wicked home to roost: the gruesome, oily threat of menace; that unspeakable things could happen here, too—even in quaint little Jericho.
Though the heading was shocking, the photograph beneath was rather harmless. It was a shot of the Murphys’ acreage the morning after, yellow police tape strung across the gravel drive and a scattering of official vehicles parked haphazardly in the grass. Cal would have hated that. Tires raking up his lawn, gouging long, ugly hash marks across the careful expanse of green. Afterward, the place sat empty for years, and with no one to tend the grass, those heavy trucks left bare patches like scars.
The article itself was pallid, devoid of any real information except for the line that made Juniper’s lungs feel crushed every time she read it: Suspect in custody. They should have just written the truth: Jonathan Baker in custody. Everyone knew it.
Juniper glanced at her watch. Nearly three o’clock. The members of the Heritage Society would be filtering through the front doors soon, and she would have to go pick up Willa from school. This was neither the time nor the place for a more careful inspection, so after glancing toward the records room to make sure that Barry was still occupied, Juniper took the entire stack of magazines from June, July, and August and rolled them up. They made a fat cylinder that slid perfectly beside the laptop in her backpack. Everything about her petty theft was wrong, from the fact that she was essentially stealing from her dear friend to the atrocious way she had handled old documents, but Juniper didn’t care. The newspaper was an incomplete history anyway. Riddled with holes and white lies. She knew the true biography of Jericho. At least, some of it.
Juniper helped a few patrons find the books they were looking for and sent Cora a “thinking about you” text while Barry welcomed the Heritage Society. They were a boisterous group of gray-haired men and women who shook Juniper’s hand warmly and held her gaze as if to say, We know who you are and none of that matters to us. Juniper’s pulse quickened when one of the older gentlemen pulled her into a hug and whispered, “Glad you’re home, Ms. Baker. You belong here.”
Although she didn’t necessarily agree—not only did Juniper feel like an outsider, she wanted to be one—his words struck a raw nerve. The desire to belong was a weed that grew no matter how hard she tried to dig it up. Just when she thought she had it rooted out completely, a resolute sprout unfurled.
“Thank you,” she told him, gripping his wrinkled hands in both her own. What she didn’t say was that she suspected he was one of the only people in all of Jericho who was glad she was here.
When they were all settled in the records room and the library was quiet once again, Juniper unwittingly proved her point by looking up India’s blog on one of the library’s desktop computers.
Jericho Unscripted was sleeker and far more professional-looking than Juniper had expected it to be. She’d had visions of a pastel color palette and amateurish clip art, but India had obviously had help. The site was all silver and black, with a gorgeous photo of five women linking arms on the home page. Their backs were turned to the camera and the image was a little smoky, as if India had wanted to give the impression of inclusivity. These women could be anyone, but certainly not everyone, because they were all slim and perfectly coiffed and lovely.
“Good grief, they take themselves seriously,” Juniper muttered. She wished she could share her derision with someone, perhaps Cora or Jonathan, but it helped to say the words out loud. She knew she was being petty, maybe even jealous, but she was too unnerved to care.
Juniper planned to scroll through old blog posts to get a bit of a feeling for the types of things that India liked to write about, but she didn’t make it past the most recent entry. The title alone made her heart somersault.
LOCAL MURDER SUSPECT IN CRITICAL CONDITION
Good God, who did India think she was?
Juniper scanned the article quickly, her gaze alighting on phrases that made her simmer.