Like paint. Dried paint.
Only it wasn't paint.
It was blood.
ChapterThirty-Two
I stared at the bloodied rock in shock.
Among the pretty sea glass and smooth stones, the rock looked even uglier. There were hairs stuck in the dried blood. Several glossy black hairs, chin-length. No one else had hair like that. Only one person, one girl. Leah Cho.
Horror filled me. I couldn't bring myself to touch it. Couldn't bear the thought of feeling its weight, the texture of dried blood beneath my fingertips.
How long had it been sitting in her bedroom, bleeding quietly into the air, while I made dinner and interrogated teenage girls and dug through my friends' trash cans?
Images unspooled in my mind: the bluff at night, the black outline of rock against water, the dull thud of something heavy connecting with a human skull. Leah's head wound, in the coroner's description. An impact with something hard. Blunt force trauma.
Was this rock the object Leah's skull had struck that night when she fell?
My skin prickled with sweat even though the window was cracked. My pulse whooshed too loudly in my ears. Why did Mia have this? Why was it here, among her things? What did this mean?
I half-turned toward Mia on the bed. The rock sat on the sill, low in my peripheral vision, an obscene centerpiece.
Did she know what I had found? Could she see the terrible knowledge in my eyes?
"What is this?"
The question hung in the air between us, loaded with unspoken accusations. I stared at my daughter, searching her face for something—guilt, fear, recognition, shame—anything that might tell me what I needed to know.
Mia sat up on her bed. Her brow furrowed with concern. "What's going on?"
"This rock." I pointed to the windowsill. "Where did it come from?"
Mia's gaze followed my gesture. Her eyes widened with alarm as they registered what had changed in the landscape she knew as well as I did. Her body went very still. "I don't know what that is. I didn't put that there."
"Mia. Please don't lie to me. Not now. Not about this."
" I didn't… that's not… what is it?"
Mia looked from me to the rock and back again, her lips parting but no sound emerging.
I fought to keep my voice steady. Speaking the words aloud tasted like ashes on my tongue. "I need you to tell me the truth. Did you... Is there something you still aren’t telling me?"
"No!" The word burst from her with such force that Apollo startled. "No, Mom, I promise I didn't try to hurt her. I would never."
"Then why is this here? How did it get here?"
"I don't know!" Mia's eyes filled with tears. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. Apollo leapt onto the bed and curled up next to her. She dug her fingers into his fur and clung to him. "That rock… that's what killed Leah?"
I crossed the room and squatted in front of her. "I don't know for certain, not until the police test the blood on it. I think so. When she fell, her head must have hit this rock somewhere on the bluff."
Mia shrank back, horrified. She looked so young, sovulnerable. All I wanted to do was pull her into my arms and hold her, rock her all night long like when she was a baby, and I could keep her safe.
"I don't know how it got there. I didn't put it there. I—I've never seen it before." A tiny hitch in her throat. The slightest hesitation. Her gaze darted to the rock and then away.
Everything seemed distant, unreal. My thoughts skittered through my head, slippery and hard to grasp. My eyes stung.
Was I seeing things? Or was she lying to my face? Or was I projecting? Reading guilt into grief? She was traumatized and terrified. Of course, she'd hesitate. Of course, she'd stare at the thing that might send her to prison.
