She shrugs, but the movement is tight. “When I first came to town, I went to Grind and Brew. I was waiting for you, right? But someone followed me there. I didn’t think anything of it; I just figured we were going the same place and they were riding my tail. It was a couple sitting in that car, or at least two people. They were looking at me sort of surprised, and I thought it was because of my bad parking job.”
My first idiotic thought is that I remember that parking job, and itwasbad. But the thoughts keep flowing, and her words register. “You actually sawthem together?” I say, my eyes widening. “It was Sandy and Rocco?”
“The thing is,” she says, “I’m really not sure itwasthem. I didn’t know Rocco yet, and I hadn’t seen or heard of Sandy. I did think Rocco looked familiar when I first met him at the dance, but then you told me he was Lionel’s brother, and I figured that was why—because there’s a resemblance between them. All I remember about the people in the car is that they were wearing matching tops, some sort of bright pink color. It was hard to tell exactly what shade through the window, and I only saw them briefly.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, my brow wrinklingas I try to figure out what I’m missing. “But why would they have been following you? No one knew you were in town.”
“That’s not true,” she says as she shakes her head. “I posted on the town forum about a place to live. I set up the meeting with you through your sister in the comments on my original post. It’s a bit of a stretch, maybe, but we definitely talked about the move-in date and the color of my car and the place and time of our meeting at Grind and Brew.”
“Okay…” I say, trying to put everything together.
“But when I spoke to Gus,” she goes on, “he told me about the man he saw on Sandy’s phone. The contact picture of the guy was him and Sandy together, wearing matching pink hoodies. He didn’t describe exactly what color pink. But it reminded me of the photo Sandy’s mom showed us, of her in that fuchsia hoodie with the hood pulled up, the drawstrings tied so it scrunched around her face. You remember?”
“I remember,” I say after a second. “So…your reason for suspecting Rocco…is a pink sweatshirt?”
“I told you I can’t explain it,” she says, sounding frustrated. “Not fully. It’s just—I guess it’s intuition. Have you ever heard the theory that gut feelings are really just your subconscious brain noticing obscure details and making connections?”
“I have,” I admit.
“All I can—” But she breaks off, her eyes widening, her mouth forming a little circle. “Oh,” she breathes. “That’s it.That’swhat I’ve been missing.”
I blink. “Sorry?”
“In my book,” she says, turning to me excitedly. “It’s all been feeling very mechanical and neat and just too—too—something. But it’s the human element! That’s what I’ve been missing. The humanity.”
“I…don’t follow,” I say.
She sighs. “I need more right brain in a book that so far hasbeen very left brain,” she says. “I need intuition and instinct and feelings. Not just facts and observations and proof. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I say. “When you explain it like that, it does. But what does this have to do with Rocco and Sandra?”
“Oh,” she says, looking startled. “Sorry. I got distracted. But it goes back to the instinct thing.” She sighs again. “All I can really boil it down to is that Sandy did cross country, and Rocco is the coach. The whole cross country team wears shirts in that same fuchsia color. I saw that couple in that car the day I arrived in town, and barely any time later Sandy got in touch with me. A lot of the people in Autumn Grove didn’t know who I was or that I had moved here by the time Sandy was asking to meet with me. Plus…” She trails off, glancing over at me before looking back to the road. “Rocco knew my mom. He looks like his brother, and his brother as a child looked too much like me for there not to besomerelation. We all have the same eyes.”
I swallow as something sick and nauseating slithers into my gut. “Rocco keeps chickens,” I say, staring blankly out the window as my mind works furiously.
“He does,” Juniper says, in a way that tells me she’s already thought about that too. “And he wanted us to stay away from all of this. He was very insistent.”
I shake my head, pushing one hand through my hair. “But that doesn’t make sense. Rocco never hung around with them—your mom and her friends.”
“Aiden,” she says, her voice patient. “Who told us that? Who gave us that history?”
Crap. I’m an idiot. “Rocco,” I breathe as my stomach churns more violently still.
“Yes.”
All right. I understand what she means.There are no huge clues, no neon signs pointing to Rocco proclaiming him as the killer, but there are lots of little things—too many to be coincidence. He fits in a way no one else has so far.
“So how well do you know him?” she asks again.
“I mean,” I say, running my hand through my hair once more, “obviously not well enough to guarantee he’s not secretly a psychopath. I don’t know much about his past, and I’m not sure I could trust the things he has told me.”
We fall into silence, and I’m sure her mind is spinning the same way mine is. I jump when her phone begins to ring, vibrating and blaring loudly from the cupholder in the center console. I pick it up and press it wordlessly into her outstretched hand. After she looks at it, though, she puts it back in the cupholder.
“It’s Matilda,” she says. “I’ll call her back later.”
We’re quiet for the rest of the drive, and I’m so lost in my thoughts that when the car comes to a stop, it takes a full thirty seconds for me to realize we aren’t at home.
“What are we doing here?” I say, blinking up at the entrance to Forester’s.
