Everything We Didn't Say(43)
All of Juniper’s questions about the night the Murphys were killed—and now, about Jonathan’s fall through the ice—deserved to be heard. She wasn’t going to be silenced this time.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Juniper said. And then she walked away. She didn’t feel bad about leaving her parents, but it hurt to go without getting the chance to say goodbye to Mandy. Instead, Juniper texted her:
Had to go. I’m so sorry. Back soon.
She hoped it was enough.
* * *
Juniper wasn’t supposed to pick up Willa until after supper, but she found herself pulling into Jericho when the late afternoon light was just starting to bleed away on the horizon. It was snowing again, big, fat flakes that were postcard perfect but deceptively dangerous because they stuck to the road almost immediately. Her rental was the safest place for her, but Juniper didn’t want to go there alone. She thought about popping in on Cora, or maybe seeing if Barry wanted to grab a bite to eat, but she dismissed both of those options without much thought. Juniper drove right through town and out the other side, not even sure where she was going until she found herself turning down County Road 21.
The old Murphy place was still picturesque in a run-down, forgotten way. A few renters had circled in and out of the farmhouse, but they never lasted long. Sober Midwesterners weren’t prone to superstition, but there was something about the ramshackle acreage that conjured spirits. Juniper suspected she was one of the only people in Jericho who would call it what it really was: haunted.
Her tracks would show in the inch of snow on the curving driveway, but all at once Juniper didn’t care. She needed to be here. Flicking on her blinker even though the road was abandoned, she crunched gravel and ice beneath her tires and pulled up beside the old coop where Beth had once sold dahlias the color of sunrise and pale, speckled eggs. Now the stones were sagging, the windows empty-eyed and jagged with smashed glass. The door that Cal had painted turquoise was gone completely.
She found she didn’t dare to disturb the isolation of the farmstead further. She put her car in park beside the dilapidated roadside stand and crossed her arms over her chest, shivering in spite of the heat that blasted out of the vents. She studied the Murphys’ buildings, the sloping property that had once been a jewel in the county. Sadly, the rest of the buildings hadn’t fared much better than the coop. The front porch of the farmhouse was slanting, and a few spindles had decayed and fallen loose. Sticks and bits of hay peeked out of birds’ nests that had been built under the eaves, and she would have put money on the fact that other wildlife had taken up residence beneath the steps.
It took some effort for Juniper to drag her gaze to the barn, but when she managed it, she found that it wasn’t nearly as horrifying as she feared it would be. It was just a barn, faded red and tilted slightly as if it couldn’t help but hunch beneath the terrible weight of all it had seen. How sad it seemed. How quickly the world fell apart when there was no one around to shore it up.
She wasn’t sure what she expected, but nothing happened as she sat in the driveway. She didn’t cry or fall to pieces or remember everything in a flash of conviction. Instead, she thought of moments here. The day she rode her bike over to buy a jar of her mom’s favorite jam. Cal had tucked the little mason jar in a brown paper bag and threw in a bar of soap, too.
“It’s a new scent we’re trying,” he told her. “Blueberry-rhubarb, just like the jam.”
Her mother had smelled tart and sweet for weeks. Juniper couldn’t get enough of her and tucked herself beneath her mother’s arm every chance she got.
Or the time she and Jonathan spent the night when their parents took a trip to Des Moines. If Juniper remembered correctly, there was a symphony orchestra traveling through and the tickets had been a Christmas present. But that was of little consequence, because Juniper and Jonathan were ten and nine, respectively, and sleepovers were few and far between. June had been pulled taut between excitement and dread in the week leading up to the big overnight, but when Reb dropped them off the morning they left, it became clear that there was absolutely nothing for her to be scared of.
“Cal’s setting up the tent in the backyard!” Beth told them with a grin. “We’ll make Dutch oven pizza over the fire for supper, and I bought everything for s’mores…” Her eyes twinkled as the possibilities unfurled like the whisper of pixie dust.
Their stay had been the stuff of children’s books and folktales. They played hide-and-seek with Cal in the hayloft, found a nest of kittens, took turns riding the pony. When the cicadas began to sing, Beth lifted the lid off her black Dutch oven to reveal a brown, bubbling pizza wrapped in parchment paper like a present. It had seemed like bright magic to June, the sort of whimsy a good fairy might conjure. Later, fingers gooey with melted marshmallow, she fell asleep leaning back-to-back with Jonathan, and when she woke, she was tucked in a sleeping bag with the stars alight above her.
Had that happened? Juniper was sure that it had.
But it was hard to imagine that there had ever been happiness here. Laughter that echoed down to the shallow creek, and glossy bouquets held together with twine in the sparkling windows of the roadside stand.
Before she knew what she was doing, she wrenched open the car door and stepped out into the snow. It was falling hard and fast and was already accumulating in the grooves left by her tires, smoothing out the tracks. This was a totally unexpected storm that would likely end in the morning with water dripping like rain from tree branches and snowdrops blossoming through the white crust of ice. The kind of storm that could leave her stranded in this cursed place, calling for help because her wheels could no longer gain purchase on the slippery drive.