Spells for Forgetting(80)



“Yeah. It’s true.”

I’d felt it the moment we stepped onto the ferry and it had never left me. Not until I returned.

She stared off, the look in her eye growing far away.

“You look like shit, Em. You should get some rest.” I changed the subject.

She nearly laughed. “Thanks.”

“I mean it. When’s the last time you slept?”

She shrugged, her eyes moving over the type on the page again.

I surrendered, stepping over the pile on the floor and finding a seat on the edge of the bed to read over her shoulder. “What is that one?”

She set it down in front of me. “A log or something. It looks like stuff that was found with her. She was dressed for the party, so she must have been headed there.”

“Or to the beach,” I said. “She left a note for you to meet her, right?”

“Right. But she never showed.” Emery set her hands in her lap. “Let’s go through it again.”

“Okay.”

“After the graduation, Lily was with me at the pub. We fought, and then she went to see you at the orchard, but at some point later, she came by my house and left a note telling me to meet her at Halo Beach.” She looked over the papers again, picking one up. “As far as I can tell, the last person to see her was Etzel Adelman, who says she saw Lily at Leoda’s shop sometime after four.”

“She had to have gone home at some point if she was ready for the party.”

“If she did, her parents didn’t see her. They said the last time they saw her was before lunch. So, she had to have gone back home when they weren’t there.”

I looked at the log of what they found with Lily, line by line. It wasn’t the original; it was a copy. And with the exception of a line that had been whited out, the items were listed one by one. A dress, shoes, a bracelet, earrings, a watch, matches.

“Why would she have matches?” I thought aloud.

Emery gave me a knowing look. We’d smoked a lot of pot in the lighthouse our senior year. That was one of the reasons the alibi with Dutch had checked out.

“Maybe she was at the lighthouse then.”

“Maybe. But you didn’t see her there.”

“Maybe I got there after she left.”

Emery rifled through one of the stapled packets, her brow wrinkling. “When they analyzed the dress, Jake said they found wax on it. Like, spilled on the fabric. And this is the weirdest part.” She held another copied sheet in the air. “They found seaweed in her stomach when they did the autopsy.”

I winced. The thought of them cutting Lily open made my skin crawl.

“This report is also what tipped Jake off that Lily was sleeping with someone. In his mind, that was you because you weren’t at the orchard when the fire broke out. He knew that Lily and I got into a fight at the pub. Abbott saw us arguing. So, he put it all together, thinking you and Lily were sleeping together. That, and the history of violence and—”

“What history of violence?” I murmured.

Emery’s shoulders straightened. Her fingers stilled on the paper.

“What?” I asked, studying her.

Still, she didn’t look up.

“Christ, just tell me.”

“Your family.”

My hands tightened around the mug. So, Jake did know about my grandfather. Maybe everyone did. But no one had done a damn thing about it. “One drunk asshole isn’t exactly a history.”

She lowered the paper back onto the stack, setting one hand on top of it. “He wasn’t just talking about Henry. He was talking about Calvin.”

“My dad? What about him?”

“He said that before he left, Calvin was…hurting Eloise.”

I pinned my eyes to the floor, that feeling on my skin turning into a pointed, sharp pain.

“Is that true?” she asked gently.

My throat was suddenly tight. “If it is, my mom never said anything to me about it.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t.”

Maybe. I hadn’t told her about my grandfather for the same reason. She’d never seemed broken up about the fact that my dad had left, but she’d never seemed happy about it, either.

It didn’t matter if what Jake said about my dad was true. I wasn’t Calvin. And I wasn’t Henry.

“Then there are these loose ends, like Albertine calling the marshal’s office that afternoon,” I said, changing the subject.

“Yeah, but nothing ever came of it. Nothing was stolen from the house and I think the Seattle Police just chalked it up to an old blind lady hearing the wind rattle the windows or something.”

I was skeptical. “They don’t know Albertine.”

“No, they don’t.” Emery raised an eyebrow. “There’s no mention in any of this about Lily coming to see you at the orchard, so I don’t think Jake is the one who threatened you with the letter. If he had information like that, he would have already used it against you. I don’t think Dutch took it. So, who does that leave?”

“Your dad?” I said, carefully.

Emery didn’t look at me. “A few days ago, I would have said there was no way he would do this. Now, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything.”

I leaned down, picking up the photos of Lily. The first was a wide shot of her lying on the ground. It didn’t look real, the black-and-white contrast making her look like a stranger. I flipped to the next one—a close-up of her open hand. The one after that was her from the side, and in the corner, three small numbers were imprinted on the photograph—388. I went back to the one before it, finding the next number: 386. The one before that one was 385.

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