The Familiar Dark(60)

“And she went along with it?”

Cal nodded. “Yeah. But I could tell it wasn’t going to hold. I talked to her a few times around town, and she hinted about wanting to tell Junie. I knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep it a secret forever. She didn’t have it in her. I think she liked the idea of having something she could use to hurt Junie with. You know how teenage girls can be, petty and jealous. She’d talked a few times about how she thought her dad liked Junie more than her. Someday when she was feeling slighted it was going to come bursting out of her, a way to take Junie down a peg.”

“Because Junie idolized you,” I said, voice flat. “Thought you were her perfect Uncle Cal.”

Cal breathed in a watery sob. “All Izzy had to do was keep her mouth shut. That’s all she had to do.”

“And she wasn’t going to, so you decided to kill her.”

“No,” Cal said, fierce. “No. I only wanted to talk to her. I texted her on a burner phone. Asked her to meet me at the park.”

“When it was snowing. And no one else was around.”

“Yeah, but only because I didn’t want anyone to see us together, not for a conversation this serious. I had no idea Junie was even there. We met behind that tunnel, and I didn’t even see Junie. Izzy must have told her to wait somewhere else in the park.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I thought I could convince her, but she said Junie deserved to know. I don’t even think she cared that much. She liked having a secret, knowing something no one else did and holding it over my head.”

“She was twelve, Cal. She wasn’t some criminal mastermind out to ruin your life.”

“I know that,” he said. “I know that now. But in the moment I was pissed and panicking and she wouldn’t listen to me. She never listened! I swear to God, I didn’t even know what I’d done until I saw the blood.” He looked down at his hand. “There was blood all over my arm, and I thought, What the fuck? I didn’t even know where it had come from at first.”

“Bullshit,” I said, flat. “For someone who went there with no plans to hurt anyone, that knife sure came in handy.”

“I always have my knife,” he said. “Every second person who lives around here has the same thing in their back pocket. I didn’t plan on using it. I swear, Evie, I didn’t. I took it out to scare her, that’s it. I thought that would be enough. But she was going to ruin me. She was going to open her mouth and fuck it all up. I’d risked everything—my job, my relationship with you and Junie, my freedom—and she didn’t even care. All I could think about was stopping her.”

“What about what you did to Junie?” I asked, and the world went still. The sun lowered in the sky, and a shadow skimmed across our faces.

Cal lowered his head into his hands, spoke through his fingers. “I had no idea she was there. None at all. Izzy never said a word about bringing Junie along. I was standing there, watching Izzy bleed out, wondering what the hell had happened, and I heard a noise behind me. I reacted, turned with that knife in my hand. That’s all it was. Some animal instinct. I didn’t even realize it was Junie until it was too late, until I’d already . . .” He breathed in deep, his lungs stuttering on a sob. “I never would have hurt her intentionally, Eve. Never. Not Junie.” He raised his head and looked at me through tear-bright eyes. “I stayed with her. Until the end. I held her hand and told her it would be okay.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, my own tears threatening. “Because it doesn’t. Not even a little bit.” Almost as bad as knowing the truth was the realization of how badly I wanted to believe him. I didn’t doubt for a second that on any other day, in any other circumstance, he would have laid down his life for Junie. And I could picture it playing out exactly as he’d said: the split-second reaction, that hair-trigger instinct our mama had ingrained in us whenever we smelled danger. Kill or be killed. By the time he understood what he’d done, it was already over. Whether he’d realized that it was Junie or not, he was only doing what he’d been taught. And now, so was I.

“I’ll turn myself in,” Cal said. “Right now. If that’s what you want.”

“That’s not what I want,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay, then how do I make it right?”

“There’s no making it right. You can’t rewind time, Cal. You can’t bring them back.” I raised my right hand, the one he hadn’t seen yet, the one that was holding a gun, and laid it across my knees. “There’s only making it even.”

It gave me a certain dark satisfaction to watch his eyes go wide, see his cheeks pale. He started to push up from the ground, and I raised the gun, steady and sure. “Don’t,” I told him. He didn’t, dropped back down to sitting. He knew about me and guns. How good I was. Hell, I’d learned at his knee.

“What are you doing, Evie?” he asked.

“I think you know.” I thumbed the safety off and watched his gaze follow the movement. “Even if what you did to Junie was an accident, all this time, you let me wonder what happened. You let me think Junie was keeping secrets from me about Izzy. You let me drive myself crazy about the explosion at Matt’s trailer, when it was you who’d lit the match. You let me feel guilty for accusing you of being Izzy’s older guy when you’d actually done something so much worse. I told you, I told everyone at that press conference, what I’d do when I found the person who killed her. You had fair warning.”