My guess was that she was remarried—no longer a Breyas. According to Great Aunt Lane, she’d never wanted to be one in the first place.
And Dad. I wish he were still alive, so I could ask him about Jack. Did he know more than I thought he did? Was he covering for his son? I wondered. Did Mom know more too? Is that why she took off?
I willed myself to focus on the only thing that mattered right now—the story. I scanned the words … my experience in the field that day. Was it too bland? Too matter-of-fact? I wondered.
Either way, 2,000 words seemed like a good start. You have to start somewhere, honey. Mom’s words were back, haunting me as I drifted downstairs to the kitchen.
The wind had picked up outside; it whistled through the trees, rattling the windows in the kitchen and the chimes outside.
A storm is coming. Real and metaphorical.
Am I ready for it?
I heard the crunch of tires on gravel, and for a split second, I wondered if Adrianna was back. Or Chrissy, I silently hoped.
But it was Nash Winslow again.
I opened the door, forcing a smile, before he had a chance to knock.
This time, Chrissy wasn’t here to hide, so I welcomed him inside. “It’s nasty out there.”
“Sure is.” He ducked his head to fit through the arch in the hallway.
The police file was sitting on the kitchen table, next to the shoe box.
“I’m guessing this is what you came for,” I waved over at the file.
“Yeah. Was it helpful?” he asked, taking off his hat and knocking water off of the brim. His hair was close-cropped, unlike his father’s, but the same, familiar deep brown. His father was way too old for me back in the day, just a silly childish crush. But I couldn’t help thinking the son was closer to my age now … I wonder if he’s married, I thought. My eyes traveled down to his hand—no wedding ring, I noted.
I cleared my throat. “The file was helpful. But here’s the thing … what if Chrissy was in the field that day? What if she saw the body, but she wasn’t the one responsible for the murder?”
Nash’s eyebrows, like two fuzzy caterpillars, curled up quizzically. “How do you mean?”
“What if someone else was there? Someone she was protecting?” I tapped the file on the table, making sure the papers were straight. He took it from my hands when I offered it, the rough pads of his fingers lingering over mine for a beat too long.
“I guess it could have been a possibility … if she hadn’t confessed. But, that’s just it, she did confess. Chrissy had motive and means, and she certainly had opportunity. Worst of all, she admitted to it. And she’s done her time … so the only one who benefits from this change in her story now is her. She gets the attention she wants, from the press and from you. But it’s bogus. All of it. I said the same thing to Katie Juliott.”
I thought about Jenny’s mother, kind but sick. “It was hard for me to make out anything useful after my talk with Katie. For a little while, she actually thought I was Jenny.”
Nash didn’t look surprised, only sad. “My folks were friends with the Juliotts. She was in denial for so long. Spent half that year sedated. My dad tried to tell her … tried to explain who did it and why. But she didn’t believe that Chrissy would do that. She didn’t think she had it in her for murder.”
“Then who did she think did it, if not Chrissy?” I asked, curious.
Nash flipped his fingers through the pages of the file, thoughtful. “She didn’t know. My father looked into everyone … your family. Hers. John Bishop. He was playing football at a camp in Seymour that night, his alibi air-tight. And we tracked down every grifter, everybody in town with a record … nothing else panned out.”
“When you said your father looked into my family, did he ever suspect my brother?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant.
“I don’t think so. Your brother was staying with a family member.”
I nodded, solemnly. “He was. He left for my aunt’s house the night before she was found … But the thing is—if you remove Chrissy’s confession, all you have is circumstantial evidence. Don’t you agree?” I asked.
Nash made a sound, something caught between a laugh and a groan. “But that’s just it, Natalie. She did confess. There’s no mystery here. Just a sad old woman … trying to redeem herself.”
“I don’t know, Nash. There’s something not right about all this.”
“Those muddy shoes and the matching print in the field were pretty damning too. You can’t forget about those,” Nash reminded me.
His words hit home. Even if Chrissy’s alternative story made sense of the shoes, the most obvious conclusion still implicated her guilt…
Trying to change the past at this point was fruitless.
Am I willing to write a version of the story that I can’t prove, one way or the other? No, I decided. No, I’m not.
But Chrissy’s confession tucked in the back of the file … a child’s messy writing … even her confession struck me as odd.
I killed Jenny because I was jealous of her and John. I stabbed her with a kitchen knife and burned her. I threw the knife in the creek.
It was too neat; too easy. It made no mention of the strangulation or how the burns on her hands and face were inflicted.
And that knife was never recovered.
Thinking about that confession, it almost read as someone who felt forced to write it. Like she was hiding something, another piece of the story…and she was trying to be as vague as possible to implicate herself and get it over with it.
That would make sense if she was protecting someone else.
I stood up from the table, feeling restless. I wanted him to leave; wanted to climb in bed and sleep until
