Sophie doesn’t move. She just watches him, waiting for him to finish.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, does it? I know the clothes in your closet aren’t yours. They’re… They belong to someone else.”
“Oh,” she says, not sure what she thought he was going to say but not expecting this. “Whose are they?”
He closes his eyes again. “Barbara’s.”
She screws up her face. “What? Why do you have Barbara’s clothes?”
He buries his face in his hands. “I understand if you’re mad at me.”
She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be mad about. She did not imagine the conversation going this way, and she’s honestly relieved. She’d thought they were about to cross into dark territory, and thankfully, they did not. But then it dawns on her. “Wait, are you dating Barbara?”
He winces but, hearing the lightness in her tone, uncovers his face. His sheepish expression is all she needs to know. Calm floods her now. It’s such an innocent explanation that she inwardly berates herself for letting her mind spiral.
“Why did you think I’d be mad about that?”
“I don’t know. You’re always saying how proud you are that I’m a rock star single dad who played two roles for you. I got the impression I was some superhero to you, like you liked me better alone. I didn’t want to dive headfirst off that pedestal. And also…” He cracks his knuckles. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be upset on a different level, because it’s Barbara.”
“Why would that bother me?”
“Well.” He leans back and scratches at his hair as if he’s not sure how to put it. “I know how hard it was when Quinn died. I didn’t want to stir up any undue pain for you by telling you I was seeing her mother.”
Sophie reaches out to take one of his hands. “That’s crazy. I would never, ever begrudge you for choosing to be happy. I’m thrilled for you, got it?”
His eyes are wet. It’s strange having a conversation that includes both her dad and Quinn, but she’s grateful they’re not discussing something else, something she feared but couldn’t quite name. “Didyou put off asking Barbara out all these years because you thought I’d disapprove?”
He shakes his head. “No, no. Barbara and I connected a few years ago, after she sold the coffee shop and we got a little pickleball group together.”
“A few years ago?”
He grimaces. “You were busy with your own stuff. Talia, your wedding. I didn’t want to piss on your fireworks. Besides, it took me a while to come around. I didn’t recognize her intentions until…” He coughs. “Well, anyway, she told me she liked me, and I, well I think she’s a great woman. Not sure what exactly she sees in me…” He makes the kind of ridiculous, screwed-up face that would make Leah giggle, and Sophie knows it’s his way to diffuse the awkwardness.
“Me neither,” she says, making him laugh brightly.
Just like that, his anxiety has evaporated, and he turns his attention to the journal on the table between them. “Still no clue about this, though,” he says. “Maybe Barbara brought it over once and forgot to take it home with her. I know she misses Quinn something fierce, and it wouldn’t be unlike her to keep a little token of Quinn’s with her. Why don’t you ask her? You can tell her you know about us. I’m sure she’ll be ecstatic I finally fessed up.”
Sophie helps him with the chili and manages to keep down a few bites. Part of her is, of course, relieved that he doesn’t know where the journal came from. And part of her still wonders about it. It makes sense that Barbara could have left it in the closet. But then, is Barbara the one writing in it overnight? That would be so strange, but maybe there’s a good reason. Or is it actually infused with some kind of magic?
Finding out either way feels crucial. She’ll bring it to the spell circle tomorrow, just in case, and then she needs to ask Barbara.
31Joey
Joey yanks her hair into a tight ponytail. The night sky is swollen with clouds, exaggerating the darkness. She clicks on her headlamp and runs beneath the streetlights to start, then dips onto a darkened trail where she can see nothing outside a five-foot radius. Her legs burn with the effort as the terrain begins to slope upward, and she pushes harder, over rocks and branches and winding through trees and along the arterial path.
The run is working. Only a few brave thoughts dare enter her mind. Her body is practically ablaze. Endless stamina comes from somewhere down deep. Her lungs press against her ribs, taking up all the space inside her that exists. The darkness around her is a thrill.
Thirty minutes later she is at a lookout point. She stretches her hands above her head and drinks in the sky. It’s so close, she feels like she could reach out and grab clouds. They pillow and overlap above her, deeper in the night’s shadow the higher up they get. She tugs an electrolyte shot out of her waistband and chugs it. It’s sticky sweet. There’s an energy bar in there too, and she unwraps it and sits on a rock. Its jagged points stab her in the pelvic bones.
This is when the thoughts come. She has to let them. She has no choice now. And they go right for the soft spots, as she knew they would. First up is River and the heart-hammering idea that he could have been lying to her for their entire adult lives. He’s careful and warm and sometimes obstinate, but she didn’t think—she hadno idea—he could be a liar. Until she found the antler in his closet, labeled with her name on it and that word again,bloodspell, just like underneath the deck, just like Quinn’s journal. How could River not have known such a haunting thing existed in his house? She feels a roll of nausea deep within her. She’s just realized that the antler she found would have been an effective way to stab someone, say, in the abdomen several times. It was sharp enough and was covered in what looked like old dried blood. She takes a sip of water and spits it into the dirt.
But it couldn’t be River. Joey spoke with lots of people in the year after Quinn died, and of them all, River’s was the only alibi that she knew for certain to be rock-solid. She hadn’t had to ask him where he was the night Quinn was killed because she knew exactly where he was.
From four in the afternoon until eleven that night, he was with her.
He was with Joey.
She no longer wants to sit, so she heaves herself up and makes her way to the edge. The mountains are powerful shadows pressed against the dark sky. She has a view of the town from here too. It’s illuminated by yellow streetlights. She traces the streets she knows by closing one eye and trailing a finger through the air. Immediately, she finds Aspect Coffee and the inn. The Hollywood dirt they poured along Front Street looks odd from up here. It makes the town look plasticky, Disney-ish, and surreal. She keeps tracing. There’s the house where she grew up, and the house she lives in now. There’s Quinn’s and Sophie’s and Elena’s. On the other side is River’s. It’s all there, her whole life, her entire thirty-two years in miniature. With her finger, she traces Elk Horn Road out of town to the approximate location of Tom Winter’s. Shecan’t see the house, but she wonders if Tom is there, passed out on the lumpy floor mattress or praying before his Quinn shrine. She thinks again of the sweatshirt. Should they have taken it to the police? Maybe they could have found out whose blood it was. But then Elena’s voice is in her head, dismissing this idea. It was the cops who decided not to mention the seven stab wounds in the police report. Another wave of nausea. Another sip of water. Are they digging into some kind of police cover-up?
