Spells for Forgetting(44)

“Seaweed?”

I nodded. The oddities in the report were what had caught the attention of the news outlets. There was no reasonable explanation for how she’d gotten there and too many unusual details.

“When we found out that Lily was in a relationship—”

“A relationship? What are you talking about?”

I paused, remembering. When we’d questioned Emery about that, she’d been insistent that it wasn’t true. “The report concluded that Lily was pregnant, Em.”

Emery stilled, her lips parting. “What? That has to be a mistake.”

“It wasn’t.”

“She was my best friend, Jake. I would know if she was sleeping with someone. Lily had never even had sex. With anyone. We talked about it.”

“Then she lied. We found contraception in her bedroom and her parents confirmed that they’d also suspected she was seeing someone before she died.”

Emery paled.

“Look.” I lowered my voice. “I don’t see why all of this matters now.”

I could see the moment she started to piece it together. Her eyes cleared, focusing. “You think she was sleeping with August?”

I hesitated, resisting the urge to reach for the mug again. “I do.”

“How do you know it wasn’t someone else? Someone off island?” She was defensive now. We hadn’t had this fight in a long time. It was exactly what I’d wanted to avoid.

“Honestly, that’s what we thought at first. Earlier that day, Albertine had called and said she thought someone was in the house. A break-in, maybe. I went up and checked it out myself, but I didn’t find anything. We chalked it up to some wind, but then when we found Lily, I did wonder if maybe we missed something. But there was nothing stolen. Nothing out of place. No other reports of that nature.”

Emery didn’t look convinced.

“We started going through the ferry tickets over the months leading up to her death, but found almost no repeating passengers. If someone was coming to visit her, there was no paper trail of that.”

“Maybe she was going to the city then. Hopping the ferry to go see a guy or something.”

“No trace of that in the tickets, either. The manifests are kept for years, Em.”

She was breathing harder now, her hands gripped to the arms of the chair. We’d agreed, all of us, not to tell her any of this. But Hannah was gone now, and I didn’t see what difference it made as long as it helped Emery see reason. She’d always been blind when it came to August, and I understood why. I’d been the same way before what happened.

“There were no signs of struggle at the scene or on the body. Whoever was there, she knew them. She wasn’t scared, didn’t fight.”

“Everyone knows everyone on this island,” she said.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized she was trying to convince herself, not me. “Then who? Give me one person you think may have killed her.” I waited. “August is the only one who wasn’t at the orchard close to the time that Lily died.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth. “You’re wrong.” She spoke against her fingers. “You have to be wrong.”

“I think that Lily and August had something going on. It happens. But maybe Lily was going to come clean. Maybe it was getting too hard to hide. Or maybe she wouldn’t let him break it off. Could have been anything. The only reason he wasn’t charged with her murder is because there was no physical evidence tying August to the scene where we found Lily. And he had an alibi, even if it was a flimsy one.”

Emery closed her eyes, taking a measured breath.

“If he didn’t do it, then why did he and Eloise run?” I asked.

“They didn’t run. They were run off. No one gave him a chance, Jake. Everyone thought he killed Lily. How could they stay?”

My voice lowered. “There’s also the matter of the family history.”

“What family history?”

“Henry. And Calvin.”

“What does this have to do with August’s father and grandfather?”

I waited, trying to think of how to say it. “They were violent men, Emery. Both of them.”

Her face turned to stone and I met her eyes. She knew. Of course she knew. We all did.

“It’s the kind of thing that’s in the blood. It was no secret that Henry had a temper on him, but you were too young to remember Calvin.”

That was a thread I didn’t want to pull. There was a freight train of darkness behind it.

Emery sank back into the chair and a heavy silence filled the small office. “You didn’t know August,” she said, finally.

But I did. I’d loved that boy like he was my own.

My brow furrowed as I watched her. This wasn’t just closure. There was something else. “What’s going on, Emery?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I just…him being back is stirring everything up, I guess.”

Emery had never been a good liar, but she’d gotten better at it. The first time I caught her and her friends on the beach drinking stolen beer from the pub, it had taken her all of three minutes to burst into tears. But now, she looked me in the eye, unflinching.

She was hiding something, but she wasn’t going to trust me with it. Not yet.