My heart skips a beat. “Except?”
“Except,” she says, turning to me, and a thrill runs through me at the sudden light in her eyes. “There might be someone who does.”
* This was one of the first scenes I had in my head when ideas started flowing for this book—Juniper and the very grumpy man she’d somehow roped into helping her research how to move a dead body.
10
IN WHICH JUNIPER MAKES A PHONE CALL
“So you’re asking your mom’s ex if he knows your dad?” Aiden says skeptically.
He’s still sitting on the floor, but now he’s flipping through a yearbook that he retrieved moments ago. It’s apparently the only one he has, and it’s from three years ago. It seems unlikely to me that the girl from last night will be in there—or if she is, I’m not sure she’ll be recognizable—but that doesn’t stop me from looking at him every two seconds to see if he’s found anything. Every so often he holds up the book and points to a picture, and I shake my head or shrug. It’s really hard to tell.
“But she was definitely blonde,” I tell him, not for the first time.
He just nods and continues flipping. Half of his body is bathed in a swath of late-morning light coming from the window, making him glow. That light is deceptive; it promises warmth and sunshine, when I know for a fact that it’s in the thirties out there. I looked like a marshmallow this morning, all bundled up in my puffy coat and earmuffs as I hauled my stress-induced shopping haulback into the house.
In between page flips and frustrated sighs, Aiden has been staring pointedly at the fruits of those shopping labors—the pile of fall decorations I pushed off the couch and onto the floor. That’s where he directs his attention now in his most blatant display thus far; he stares at the mass of garland and pumpkins, then stares at me, and then stares at the decorations again.
“I’ll pick them up, okay?” I finally burst out, rolling my eyes. “Stop with the weird glaring. I’ll leave this room spotless. Happy?”
A spark of devilish amusement flares to life in his eyes, though there’s still a tightness in his lips that I know stems from the yearbook in his lap. “Temper, temper,” he says, tutting. “But yes, that would make me very happy.”
Ugh. So annoying.
“So your mother’s ex?” he prompts, his eyes back on the yearbook as he scans the pages.
“Well, yes, but it’s not quite like that. My half brother, Roland?” I say, and he nods. “It’s his dad. So it’s not just a random ex; it’s her son’s father. His name is Lance. He’s cool; I like him. He’s always been nice to me, and he’s a good dad to Roland.”
Aiden nods slowly, looking up at me. “You think he’ll know something?”
I shrug, playing with the hem of my sweatshirt—which, I notice for the first time, is on inside out. How did that happen? Hopefully Aiden missed that. “He might,” I say. “If anyone would, I think it would be him.”
“Well, call him, then,” Aiden says, nodding at my phone, which is next to me on the couch. “See what he says.”
I’m not sure this is the right direction, but I can’t stand the thought of doingnothing.Maybe my imagination is just running wild, but it’s not impossible that that girl was killed because she wanted to talk to me. Anduntil Aiden finds out who she is, I don’t know what else to do besides search for information about my parents, since that’s what she wanted to tell me about.
“Anything?” I ask him, pointing at the yearbook.
“No,” he says in a frustrated voice. “This is either too old, or I can’t pick her out. The photos are in black and white, and they’re small.”
“Keep looking,” I say, resisting the urge to yank the yearbook out of his hands and do it myself.
“That’s the plan,” he mutters. “Make the phone call.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Okay.” When I pick up the phone, though, I dial Roland’s number, not Lance’s. I was supposed to let him know I got moved in safely and everything, and I never did.
I debate for a second before turning the phone on speaker. Roland might say something embarrassing, but I don’t want to have to relay everything Lance says to Aiden, and I don’t feel like I have the current presence of mind to sort through a bunch of information on my own—especially since I probably won’t be able to look at my mother’s past with a completely unbiased lens.
Aiden scoots across the floor until he’s next to the couch, sitting at my feet like this is some weird kindergarten classroom and I’m about to read everyone a story. We both stare at my phone as we wait for Roland to pick up. And for a second it seems like he won’t; he waits until the last possible moment to answer.
“You did that on purpose,” I accuse when he picks up.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that I specifically made you wait a super long time,” he says, and I can hear the grin in his voice, the little punk. “You got moved in okay?”
“Yes,” I say, giving him a nasty look through the phone. He can’t see it, of course, but I like to think he can feel it.
“Good. When I didn’t hear from you, I figured your roommate had turned out to be a weirdo who murdered you in your sleep or something.”
