Spells for Forgetting(82)

“It was lying in the leaves next to her.” Jake’s voice deepened. “At first I didn’t recognize it. I logged it and snapped a photo like I did everything else, thinking it was Lily’s. It wasn’t until the next morning when I saw the film that I remembered it was yours.”

“So, you hid it,” I whispered.

“I cut the negative and burned it. The necklace, I tossed into the sea up at Wilke’s Pointe. The Seattle Police never saw either of them.”

The edges of the words blurred, making them hard to understand. He’d gotten rid of the necklace so that no one would ever find it. So that no one would have reason to think that I was there when Lily died.

I breathed, trying to sift through the hazy memories of that day. “How did it get there?”

“Are you sure you didn’t see her that night?” he asked, but this time he looked me right in the eye. There was an unfamiliar tone to his words.

“Are you asking if I killed her?” I asked, hollowly.

Jake stared at me, unblinking. “I know you didn’t kill her. But I think it’s possible you know more about her death than you’ve told me.”

“I told you everything I knew. She left me a note and I went to meet her but—” I stopped short, the words stuck in my throat. “She was in my room.” The words trailed off.

“When?”

“That day. She came by to leave me the note that said to meet her at Halo Beach. Maybe she took the necklace then.”

Jake looked skeptical.

“She took things without asking all the time. Clothes, shoes…Maybe she borrowed the necklace for the party. I don’t know. But I wasn’t there, Jake. I wasn’t with her.”

He said nothing, reaching for the bottle of bourbon and refilling the small glass that sat beside it. There was no telling how many he’d had.

“Would you have hidden the evidence, even if you thought I did it?”

He brought the glass to his lips, taking a sip. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Everyone in the family, on the island, knew that I was the closest thing to a child Jake had. He’d always been a lonely creature, in love with a woman who either didn’t love him or couldn’t be with him. That didn’t stop him from looking after both August and Eloise like they were his own. Then he’d borne the brunt of the town’s anger after Lily and even more as we struggled in the aftermath of the fire. There were times I’d listen to him and my dad talk out on the porch and I’d heard him say more than once that maybe Saoirse was dying. That maybe it was the end.

And it would have been. Without the orchard.

If the town council altered the deed to the orchard, it wasn’t likely that Jake had been kept in the dark. With the responsibility of Saoirse’s welfare on his shoulders, it was also possible that Jake had made August’s departure his top priority.

“Where were you the other night when someone set fire to Eloise’s truck?” I asked softly.

He flinched, as if the implication hurt him.

“Did you do it?” I pushed.

“Do you think I did?”

“I don’t know,” I said, giving his own words back to him. “Maybe.”

Jake shot the bourbon down and refilled his glass. He swirled the amber liquid as he stared into it. “Thought you knew me better than that, kid.”

“So did I.”





Forty-Nine


    EMERY


I watched him through the window, my breath fogging on the glass.

August was asleep on the sofa with his face turned toward the fire. I’d told him not to go back to his house. Not when people were setting things on fire and leaving threats at his door. At this point, we were in this together.

But the sight of him there in the living room was almost too much for me to pull my mind around. August Salt. Here, in my house. After all this time.

I opened the door carefully and hung my jacket on the hook as quietly as I could, but by the time I was stepping out of my boots, August’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked a few times before they focused, as if he were trying to remember where he was.

“Did Eric call?”

He sat up slowly, rubbing his hands over his face, and I tried not to stare when the hem of his gray T-shirt lifted away from the waist of his jeans, uncovering the curve of his hip. His sleeve was cinched up his biceps, revealing the edge of a pointed shape inked into his skin. There was a time when I’d known every square inch of August’s skin and I was sure it hadn’t been there before.

“No.” His voice grated with sleep.

The will was the only piece of the puzzle we didn’t have. Until we saw what Henry Salt wrote in the original copy, we wouldn’t know exactly what transpired with the orchard.

August swung his legs from the sofa and I came around the arm, sitting beside him. It was warm where he’d been sleeping and I tucked my bare feet between the cushions. The room smelled like him.

“Did you find Jake?” he asked.

I stared into the fire, running my thumb over my bottom lip. “You were right about the log. Lily had something of mine with her when she died. A necklace. Jake got rid of it because he was afraid the Seattle Police would start taking a closer look at me.”

August stared past me, expressionless.