What Lies in the Woods(56)

“That, and a profile that matched. He was cagey in interviews. They found blood in his truck, but there was a lab screw-up and it got contaminated,” Ethan said.

“There were other suspects.”

He grimaced. “Not good ones.”

“I was looking at this message board, and they were saying that this other guy, Franklin Church—”

Ethan shook his head. “Church didn’t have the smarts or discipline for these murders. He was on his way to being a spree killer when he was arrested; he wouldn’t have gone a full year between killings. I’ve looked into all of this, Naomi. It was Stahl. He might not have attacked you, but he was a killer.”

“I don’t know why I always assumed that there was better proof,” I said. “I told myself they had something that wasn’t admissible in court, some technicality. But it was all just a big guess? I put a man in prison because of coincidence and gut instinct?”

“You really didn’t know any of this?”

“I couldn’t,” I told him. There were just things that needed to be true for the world to hold together. So you didn’t look too closely. But now I had, and I could see the cracks running through the foundation of everything I’d believed. “I ruined this man’s life. Destroyed his family’s lives,” I said.

I held the letter out. Ethan took it gingerly, brushing away flakes of dried mud. He stared at it, not moving, his eyes tracking slowly over the near-illegible words.

“It’s from Stahl’s son,” I said. “If he blames us for his dad dying, he’d be furious, wouldn’t he? He’d want revenge. He could have come after Liv, and—”

“Whoa,” Ethan said, looking up sharply. “Naomi. First off, you didn’t kill Alan Stahl, cancer did. And second, there’s no threat in this letter. Nothing to suggest wanting to do you harm.”

“Wouldn’t you want to hurt the person who ruined your life?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I turned away.

“Naomi, wait.”

“I’ve got to take off,” I said, a bitter taste in my mouth. “I’ve got a wedding to shoot tomorrow.”

“What about Persephone?”

“I’ll be back Monday. I just— I have to go,” I said. I had to run. If I could outpace this, I wouldn’t have to feel it. This wretched, heartsick pulse running from the pit of my stomach to the base of my skull.

I’d wanted to find answers. Instead, I’d been undoing them.

I wanted Ethan to stop me. But he said nothing, and I walked away, my guilt between my teeth like old leather.

I threw my things into the back of the car and took off. I meant to drive straight out of town, but near the trailhead I slowed. Pulled over. I sat in the car, my gut twisted in a knot, my thoughts filled with the faces of dead girls.

Everything that had been certain in my life was shifting. Olivia was just one more in a litany of names, women who’d never known justice. I got out of the car and walked slowly toward the trail. The sounds of the forest folded over me.

I thought I was walking toward the pond, but I turned away from the trail. Some part of me was searching for Liv, and she wasn’t there. Not really. She never had been.

The shadows of the Grotto welcomed me in. I knelt in the black dirt beside Persephone’s bones and lifted the bruised and rotting petals from her eyes. I brushed smooth the dirt around her skull and straightened the charms around her, and the ghosts of girls long gone whispered in the hollow space around me.

“I like it here,” Liv said to me in my memory. It was August, hot and dry. Her skin was tanned, mine red and rough with my ever-present sunburn. “It’s quiet. Easier to think.” She nestled coreopsis blooms into Persephone’s eyes, adjusting them just so. The scent of cut stems was sharp and green.

“I like it, too,” I said, for the sake of agreeing. Grabbing at every little connection I could claim.

“You should tell Cassidy what happened,” Liv said quietly, rearranging the stones beside Persephone’s clavicle into some arcane order.

“Nothing happened.” I pulled up a weed struggling to grow in the thin seam of light that infiltrated the Grotto. Its roots ripped free reluctantly. “Oscar’s a jerk. Whatever.”

“If Cody hadn’t been there—”

“But he was. And it’s fine.” Even in the forest, I couldn’t stop smelling gasoline. Hearing the crunch of a burst bottle under my heel. “Let it go.”

“If something happened to me, you wouldn’t let it go,” Liv had said. She brushed the back of my hand, then laced her fingers with mine. Her dark hair blended with the shadows, her lips a perfect red.

“Never,” I promised her.

In the present, alone, I ran my fingertip along the arched brow of bone. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to whatever ghosts would listen. “All I’ve done is make things worse. I don’t know what to do.”

I waited—for an answer, for courage, for something I couldn’t name. But there was only the endless tangle of uncertainty and the thorns it had left under my skin already.

And then a harsh, inorganic buzzing in my pocket. I pulled my phone out, surprised I had signal enough for a call to come through. The screen showed a single bar of signal and the Chester PD on the caller ID.