Girls of Brackenhill(72)

The greenhouse now was a ghost town. Pots half-filled with dirt crowded the benches, the skeletal remains of brittle sticks shooting up from the soil. The floor was covered in a film of grit, a few clay pots upturned or broken. Animals, maybe. Not Stuart; he’d been meticulous.

By the time Hannah arrived in June, Stuart would be ready to move his starter plants to the garden bed: tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers all started from seed, sometimes while there was still a smattering of snow on the ground. By August, the greenhouse would be largely unused, holding some heat-tolerant herbs but mostly waiting for his winter planting: turnips and swiss chard. All his starter plants had been labeled with Popsicle sticks in his jagged handwriting with half-uppercase, half-lowercase lettering.

At one time, Hannah loved learning about the plants: their growth patterns and needs, which vegetables were drought resistant, which fruits needed acidic soil (blueberry bushes, blackberries, rhubarb—which was actually a vegetable), and which vegetables needed to stay dry (broccoli, asparagus). It all seemed complicated and yet reliable. Blueberries needed acidic soil, full sun, good drainage. That never changed. If they needed that when she was eleven, they would need that when she was thirteen. Fifteen. To Hannah at the time, it had seemed solid to invest in plants. Their needs were predictable and well documented. People could change like quicksilver. Julia was proof.

Julia, on the other hand, could never be bothered. She didn’t understand the appeal. The greenhouse was hot and dirty, and Uncle Stuart’s taste in music was terrible, she said.

Out the back door, a path wound down the mountain and eventually led into town. There was a short unpaved driveway that intersected with Valley Road. The north-facing wall of the greenhouse was wood, not glass, with one small round window above the sink. Rink jumped up, his paws on the sink, to lap at water that had puddled on the counter. Hannah shooed him off and peered out the round window.

A mint-green truck was parked in the driveway. She’d forgotten Uncle Stuart’s old utility truck. Rarely used on the road. She’d only been in it once. He’d sometimes used it to transport flowers from the greenhouse to the courtyard. The path between them was wide, and at one point it had been well traveled. It was easier, he said, than making twenty trips on foot.

Hannah tugged on Rink’s leash and let the wooden door bang behind her. The truck had rust along the front grille and running board. She opened the driver’s-side door with a creak; the inside stank like hot vinyl and sweet antifreeze. She opened the glove box and pulled out the owner’s manual. The truck was a 1989 Dodge Ram. Hannah closed her eyes, her mind reeling.

1989 Dodge.

In front of the truck, she bent down and studied the passenger-side fender.

A dent. She followed it with her fingertip all the way down to the bumper. A streak of black. She scraped it with her fingernail, and it curled up easily. New. Paint transfer.

She studied the ground. Two oil stains: one large, one small, mere inches away from each other. In a few days or weeks, the two spills might have pooled together, forming one indistinguishable puddle.

She pulled out her phone and took a picture.

“Hannah!” Wyatt loped toward her, and Hannah stood. His gait was urgent, his hand motioning her toward him. Hannah stood rooted to the ground, her legs frozen. Her mouth went dry. She could tell by the look on his face that it was something big. They’d found Julia, perhaps.

“Alice thought you may have come out this way.” Wyatt stopped when he reached the driveway, the truck between them. He’d half jogged there and was breathless. “They ID’d the skeleton. We know who it is.”

She knew it before he said it.

“We were right. It’s Ellie Turnbull.”





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Now

“It’s all connected, isn’t it? Aunt Fae, Ellie, probably even Julia,” Hannah repeated, a broken record, a parrot.

“Maybe, yes. You have to be careful,” he said softly. “Can you please back off the amateur investigation now?”

“I’m fine.” Hannah’s response was rote; she’d been so used to saying this for so long she wondered what it even meant anymore. She was fine. Fine could mean any number of things: she was alive, at least. Was that fine? “How did it happen?”

“Blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. She was hit with something.”

“Was it Warren?”

“We don’t know. Would he have dragged her body up the hill behind the river? Or the mile and a half from town up this trail?” Wyatt indicated the trail behind her. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s true for everyone but—” She stopped. It seemed unimaginable to her that Aunt Fae would have killed Ellie. And if she’d killed Ellie, could she have also done something to Julia? Nothing about this felt real or true. The Aunt Fae she remembered would have never killed another person, much less her own niece.

“Fae and Stuart, yes.” Wyatt’s eyes were clouded, unreadable.

“Are they your only suspects?”

Wyatt paused, rocked back on his heels. “I shouldn’t talk about an open investigation, Hannah. You know this.”

“You can tell me if they are on your list and if there are others.”

He held her gaze before saying, “Yes. And yes.”

“So everyone in town thinks my aunt Fae is a murdering lunatic, and now the police do too.”