Spells for Forgetting(79)

My information was typed out beside it—address, parents, association to Lily. The next page was what looked like a timeline, starting at eight-thirty a.m. the morning of June 6. The hours followed me from home to graduation to the pub, back home, to the beach, and then to the party. It ended at home again, where Jake had first questioned me. Beside the time at the pub, there was a handwritten note.

Argument with Lily—see Abbott Wittich statement



And there was more. An itemized list of things they’d found in my bedroom. Cross-referenced interviews confirming my statements. I flipped to the next page. Test results for the clothes I’d been wearing that night. I hadn’t even known they’d taken them or that the police had come to the house at all. But Nixie and I had spent days in Seattle. It was possible I’d come home and not even noticed they’d been there.

A feeling like a swarm of bees in my stomach surfaced, my skin flashing hot. This didn’t look like the profile of a victim’s friend. This looked like I was a suspect.





Forty-Seven


    AUGUST


Emery sat like the eye of a storm in the center of her bedroom floor with the contents of the file fanned out around her. She flipped the page of another interview, one finger dragging across the words as she read.

I stood in the doorway, watching her with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. We’d been at it for hours, sifting through every piece of paper in Jake’s records of the case, but there was one stack that Emery kept returning to. The one with her picture.

“I just don’t get it,” she said again. “Jake didn’t make any secret of the fact that he thought you killed Lily. If he thought it could have been me, why didn’t he tell me?”

I could see it getting under her skin. “He’s your uncle, Em.”

“I don’t even remember him asking me. I don’t think anyone ever did.”

“Maybe that’s why he wanted it to be me so badly.”

“What do you mean?” She finally looked up.

I stared at the picture. I remembered it, because Emery hated that picture of herself. I kind of did, too. She looked timid. Nervous. That wasn’t the Emery I knew.

“If I was the one who killed Lily, then you couldn’t be,” I said.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I wonder if my parents knew,” she said, almost to herself. “Wouldn’t be the only thing they hid from me.”

The letters were another matter. They sat on the kitchen table with the lid off the box, but I had no intention of reading them. I didn’t want to know what my mom had said about me or what I did. I didn’t want to hear in her own words how much I’d made her suffer.

I wondered now if there was a box of letters in the attic at my mom’s house. She’d never told me that she kept in touch with anyone on Saoirse.

When Emery caught me staring at them, she let the packet in her hands close. “One of them says you came back here after you left.” The look she gave me was apprehensive, like she was afraid to know. “Is that true?”

I stared into the coffee mug, watching the steam lift up into the air. “Yeah, I did.”

I watched as she picked at the staple in the corner of the packet. Deep down, I’d hoped that Emery would find me. That she’d just show up one day at our house in Prosper and make the decision for me. But she never did. It was torture being away from her and when I reached the point where I couldn’t stand it any longer, I’d just taken off. I managed to drive the whole way to Seattle without convincing myself to turn around.

“Why didn’t you come see me?” she said.

I let out a long breath, glancing over her head. “I did.”

Emery followed my gaze to the window behind her. “You came here?”

I nodded.

I’d made it to the island on the last ferry, and I followed the road, keeping to the trees. The house was dark when I came through the gate. Emery’s window was cracked open and as soon as I saw her through the glass, I knew I’d made a mistake. She was asleep, and I couldn’t see her face, but the palm of her open hand was lit by a beam of moonlight.

In my mind, I was going home. To Emery. But standing there with my own dark reflection, I realized that I wasn’t the same kid who used to climb through that window. And she wasn’t the same girl who agreed to leave Saoirse with me.

Emery watched me remember the moment. I didn’t want her to ask anything else. I didn’t want to tell her what that moment had been like. What it had taken to turn around and walk away.

“I decided it would be easier for you if I didn’t come back,” I said.

Her mouth twisted.

“Would you have wanted me to? After everything?”

She was quiet for a long moment before she answered. “Yes.”

I searched her eyes, not knowing what to say. I couldn’t go back and change what happened or the decisions either of us made. I’d always wondered if she’d hurt like I had after I left, and I’d even wondered if it would make me feel better knowing she did. Like it would somehow justify or legitimize all that pain. But it didn’t.

“Is it true that it calls you back? The island?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse and hollow. “My mom always said that if you leave, it will call you back.”