They all go silent. Joey wonders if her heartbeat is audible to them because it is a concert inside her own head.
“Okay, you’re right. That is weird as hell,” says Elena.
Joey folds and unfolds the corner of the sticky note, relieved to have the words out but not sure what will happen next.
“Matching notes,” Sophie says carefully. She reaches into her bag and sets the journal on the table between them. She runs her fingers over the pink sticky note on the top.Read me.There’s a small silence, then she sits up suddenly, grabbing onto the table and almost tipping their drinks over. “Remember, under the deck, next tobloodspell, the heart with the letters inside?” She glances at Joey, who knows what is coming. She feels it like a pressure drop before a storm. She claws around the bottle in front of her like it’s a rip cord.
Sophie says, “Quinn plus River.”
Joey tries with everything she has to remain stoic.
“Are we thinking River could have…?” Elena makes a stabbing motion with her hand. “With the antler thing?”
Sophie runs a finger over the rim of her glass. “He cared about her though. Why would he hurt her?”
“Hmm,” says Elena.
“And who would keep a murder weapon in their house for fifteen years with the blood still on it? Pretty risky.” An ice cube slides between Sophie’s teeth. She crunches down.
Joey does not feel capable of participating in this conversation. It’s all she can do not to stand up and run out of here.
Oblivious, Elena takes a pensive sip. “Maybe it wasn’t risky. Maybe it was confident. All River had to do was ask his cop daddy to cover up a murder for him.”
Joey hides her face in her hands to mask her immediate reaction. She doesn’t want to think about this. She can’t think about this. Then she fills her lungs and straightens her back. “We are going to ask him,” she says. “I told him to meet us here.”
“Wait, what?” says Elena. “Tonight?”
Joey checks the time on her phone. “Now,” she says. Her mind is scrambled. She doesn’t know what to believe. It strikes her as strange that, instead of Tom, who she was so sure about twenty-four hours ago, everything is now pointing toward River. She knows he wasn’t out that night. He was withher. But maybe after she left his house, he could have gone out… But what about the trees? They whispered about Tom Winter, and Joey wassureit was him. Could she have misheard? ConfusedDadwith some other word? It is possible. It’s all possible, she realizes.
She understands with clarity now, as the bar hums around her and two of her oldest friends sit across the table from her, that justice for Quinn is all that matters. Not her happiness, not her allegiances, not even her own beating heart. She cannot choose River over Quinn. Not again.
Elena sits up suddenly. She looks past their heads toward the frontof the bar. “He’s here,” she says through clenched teeth. And Joey feels the floor drop out beneath her.
He approaches the table, and Joey avoids his eyes, trying to focus on her breath.
“You started without me, I see,” he says. She can’t bear to hear his deep, unassuming voice. There’s an awkward silence during which, under normal circumstances, Elena and Sophie would say a few polite how-are-yous and you-look-wells. But it quickly becomes obvious that these are not normal circumstances.
“How about I get the next round?” he says. She still can’t meet his eye, and she feels his touch on her back, but she wiggles away. There’s a moment of confusion, hurt, even, but then he slides his wallet out of his pocket and makes his way to the bar.
When he comes back with more drinks, Joey’s throat is dry, and she takes a swig of beer. Then another, and then a third. Then she sputters a cough because it’s gone down the wrong pipe. She knows the moment she opens her mouth, her whole life will change.
“What’s going on?” River asks with a self-conscious smile.
“Why was that antler at your house?” she asks quickly, letting the words spill out before she can stop them.
He laughs, as though she just told a joke that he doesn’t quite get. He looks from Joey to Elena and Sophie, who are both watching him carefully.
His smile disappears, and it begins to dawn on him that this is not, in fact, a friendly gathering. This is an ambush. “Joey, come on. I told you, I never saw it before yesterday.”
She is quick with her response. “Whose blood was on it?”
He’s silent, and Joey notices that Sophie and Elena are also quiet. Everything hinges on what he says next. Only, he says nothing, just stares back at her, the disbelief and hurt written there as if on paper.
Her hand shakes as she fumbles with her phone. “This was Quinn’s,”she says, and she pushes it toward him. The image of the sweatshirt is already pulled up on the screen. She trails her finger along it, stopping when she gets to the bloodstain that covers the front of it. She pinches and expands it until it fills the screen. River glances from the image to Joey and back again. Against her better judgment, she lets her eyes connect with his, and there’s something there. A plea, maybe. Or fear. Or maybe just plain confusion. She looks away and jabs at the screen. Her esophagus is pulsing. She is forced to swallow before she speaks. “Was it you?”
It takes him a second to register her question, but once he does, his reaction is instant. His hands fly to his hairline and peel through his hair. Still, he says nothing.
Joey can feel Sophie and Elena like a forest of support around her, propelling her, encouraging her to keep going and find the truth, no matter what. “Did you do this to her?” Joey keeps her voice devoid of emotion. Robotic. It’s all she can manage.
