He turned then and headed for the door. Lizzy watched him go, her response stuck in her throat. Had he not heard a word she just said?
THIRTY-ONE
August 17
Lizzy woke with a nagging headache and a knot in the pit of her stomach. Andrew had kissed her last night. And for one disastrous, weak-kneed moment, she had kissed him back. Until she remembered what was at stake. Her heart. Maybe his too. At least she’d put a stop to things before they went too far.
It would be weird between them now, because that’s what happened when you kissed someone you shouldn’t. Things got weird. And they stayed weird. Until you started inventing reasons to avoid each other.
But that wasn’t what she wanted. Andrew was the truest friend she’d ever had—the kind who knew all your secrets and stuck by you anyway—and for whatever time she had left in Salem Creek, she wanted him to remain a friend. They’d go their separate ways soon enough. The farm would sell, and that would be that. She’d have nothing tying her here, no reason to ever return.
The thought evoked a hollowed-out sensation she preferred not to name. Labeling a thing made it real.
“That you, little girl?”
“Yes, it’s me,” Lizzy answered, rounding the corner to find Evvie seated at the kitchen table. “Have you seen Rhanna? I wanted to ask her about some of the stuff in the attic.”
“Blew through here a little bit ago,” Evvie mumbled from behind her paper. “Made a pot of that devil’s brew y’all drink, then headed out to the shop. She’s been working her backside off out there for days.”
Lizzy filled a mug with coffee and joined Evvie at the table. “She’s painting again, did she tell you?”
Evvie glanced up, her face stony. “There’s another article.”
Lizzy sighed into her mug. “Of course there is. What does it say?”
Evvie’s brow creased as she scanned the article. “Let’s see. Here it is. A source familiar with the investigation told the Chronicle that lab results had proved inconclusive. Kerosene has been confirmed as the accelerant, but no fingerprints were found.”
“Which means no suspects.”
“There’s more.”
Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Do I want to know?”
“They’ve got a quote here from the organist at First Congregational—Miriam Summers. She says she’s not surprised bad things are happening at Moon Girl Farm since it’s bound to be haunted by the spirits of those poor dead girls. Actually used the word haunted. Can you imagine a newspaper printing nonsense like that?”
Sadly, Lizzy could imagine it. As fate would have it, Chief Summers’s wife had been in the coffee shop the day of Rhanna’s unfortunate outburst, and had heard it all firsthand. She’d been only too happy to fan the town’s outrage back then, and it seemed time had done nothing to soften her opinion. Except this time she was the one causing the outrage, and not Rhanna.
“I’ve been thinking, Evvie . . .”
Evvie’s eyes narrowed. “Thinking what?”
“That maybe I’m in over my head. I mean, who am I kidding, thinking I can do what the police couldn’t do eight years ago? Maybe it’s time to put my energy into getting this place on the market and forget the sleuthing. All I’m doing is pissing people off.”
“You scared?”
Lizzy stiffened. She wasn’t scared. But things were starting to get messy, and on more fronts than she’d counted on. “I’m not scared. It’s just . . .”
Evvie folded her paper and tossed it to the end of the table. “There’s no shame in being scared, little girl. Not with what’s been going on around here. But if you’re thinking of throwing in the towel because people are in a snit, that’s a whole nother kettle of crawdads.”
Lizzy would have smiled at Evvie’s colorful turn of phrase if she weren’t so distracted. “I’m not scared, Evvie. I’m just wondering what I’m really accomplishing. All I’ve managed to do so far is remind everyone why they don’t like us. But as far as the actual case goes, what do I know now that I didn’t know when I got here? That Heather Gilman was a wild child who broke curfew and drank with boys—like half the girls in Salem Creek. That she dumped her BFFs with no explanation, and one of her old friends thinks she might have been afraid to go home.”
“It’s more than the police managed to find out.”
“Maybe, but what does it prove? Mrs. Gilman said herself that she doesn’t believe her husband was capable of hurting their daughters. And let’s not forget that he has an ironclad alibi for the night they went missing. No wonder the police won’t reopen the case. If Fred Gilman is really in the clear, there’s nowhere else to look.”
“So that’s it? You’re going to quit? Just go back to New York?”
Lizzy’s face softened. She reached across the table and laid a hand over Evvie’s. “This was never supposed to be permanent, Evvie. You know that. At some point, I’m going to have to throw in the towel and go home.”
Evvie poked out her lower lip. “This is home.”
“It was—once upon a time. It’s where I grew up. But sometimes growing up means growing out of things.”
“You can’t grow out of your home, Lizzy. Home is in your blood. It’s not just where you live, it’s who you are.”
“New York is who I am now, Evvie.”
There was a beat of hesitation before Evvie spoke again, as if she were weighing her next words. “What about Andrew?”
Lizzy withdrew her hand and picked up her mug, carefully avoiding Evvie’s gaze. There was no way she could know about last night. And what if she did? It was a kiss. One innocent, ill-advised kiss. “What does Andrew have to do with anything?”
Evvie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I wonder.”
A ping
