Chapter Twenty-Seven

Now

FEBRUARY 12

TESSA’S WHOLE BODY SEIZED WITH an icy heat. Her scream seemed to ricochet off the trees, to come from the trees. Her elbows and knees ached from the fall, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Her vision blurred as she tried to lift herself from the ground, to turn around, to face it.

He was here. He’d followed her. He’d gotten her. He—

“Tessa, Jesus Christ!”

It was Lilly.

Crouching beside her, looking worried, scared.

She grabbed Lilly’s knee, coming to a seated position in the dirt, her eyes darting to the woods past Lilly’s shoulder.

“Lilly, we have to get out of here. Patrick, he followed me. He lied about Kit. He has her shirt. Lil, we have to run. We have to go. Where is he?”

“Holy shit,” she said, her face stunned, staring at Tessa like she was an alien. There were tears streaking her face.

“Lilly, we gotta go,” Tessa repeated, scrambling up now, ignoring the pain in her limbs. Her arms shook as she tried to pull Lilly to standing.

“Tessa. No one was following you except me.”

“What? No. I was at Patrick’s house. Come on. We have to go. I went there to ask him some questions. Did you know he was back? Let’s get out of here. Then I’ll tell you everything. It was her shirt, Lilly—” Tessa’s voice broke into a half sob. “It was her shirt,” she said again, sniffling. “The strawberry one.”

She turned around in a circle, listening for the sound of his footsteps still.

“Sis,” Lilly whispered, pulling her into a hug.

Even though Lilly was younger, she’d been taller than Tessa for over a year now. Tessa inhaled her little sister’s perfume—not light and floral like the scents Kit wore, but muskier and grassier and smoky, the kind of stuff they sold at Lupine. She could feel Lilly’s heart jackhammering, and pulled back, still dizzy and out of breath and scared.

“It’s not safe here,” she said.

Lilly shook her head. “It’s just me, Tess.” Her voice wobbled. “No one else.”

Tessa began to let herself breathe normally, to see clearly. Lilly was right—there was no one else. Patrick hadn’t come after her. No one had. “How did you get here, then? How—”

“I heard Patrick had come back, and I guess I wanted to see for myself. But instead of finding him, I found you.”

Lilly looked down at her muddy Keds. “This has to stop, Tess.” Her voice got quiet. “Boyd got let out on bail. Did you know that?”

Tessa went cold. She hadn’t known. Why hadn’t he told her? And how was that possible? The Taylors had so little.

“I—how?”

Lilly averted her eyes. “I guess his dad got a bond. They pay down a small part up front. Apparently Innis had to sell that old lawn tractor and some of his collectors’ items just to get half the down payment. Who knows where the rest came from.”

Tessa shook her head. She knew about those collectors’ items, Boyd’s dad’s prized possessions, all lined up in the garage. Mostly old junk he’d collected. “He’s planning to plead guilty anyway. Involuntary manslaughter. Don’t you think that’s messed up?”

“Yes.” Lilly paused. “But whatever happened, you have to face this, Tessa: we can’t undo what happened that night. As much as it hurts, we have to . . . we have to say goodbye.”

“No.” The word rushed out in a harsh, ragged whisper. “You sound just like Mel, you know.”

“What does Mel have to do with this?”

“She was at Kolbry’s party last night. Did you know that?”

Lilly looked shocked, tears drying to sticky streaks on her face. “No, I—how do you know that?”

Tessa sighed. “Where do you think I was last night? I went to Kolbry’s to try and find out what happened to Kit at his Halloween party—to find out if she’d gotten pills from him, to find out what she was hiding. And instead, all I got was an earful of Mel saying the same thing, telling me to butt out, warning me to back off. I’m tired of everyone telling me to stop!”

“You talked to Mel, then?”

“Yeah, I did. Why?”

Lilly shook her head, but she still looked scared. “I just . . . I don’t get it. Any of it. Why she was at Kolbry’s. Was she with Dusty?”

Tessa looked at her sister. “No.”

“I’m worried about her.”

“About Mel?”

Lilly nodded, looking like she was going to cry again.

“You should be worried for me, for us. Someone is out there, a killer, someone who wants to finish what they started.”

She stopped talking when she saw how hard Lilly was trying to keep her face from shattering into tears.

Because Lilly, of all of them, had always known how to use the waterworks to her advantage. As the baby of the family, she could constantly find ways to burst into tears at just the right moment to get Tessa in trouble for something. For years when they were little, Lilly used to have this trick of planting her Legos and dolls in Tessa’s or Kit’s room, then begging to be let in to collect them. Once inside, she’d hug a bedpost or desk leg and absolutely refuse to leave, like some sort of koala or desperate stalker. And if Tessa or Kit tried to kick her out, she’d scream and sob, and it was the older sisters who would end up grounded or forced to play with her as their punishment.

So seeing her like this, trying to be brave, to hold it together . . . it stopped Tessa. It woke her up.

This entire week, Tessa hadn’t paused her pursuit of answers long enough to even consider what Lilly was really feeling—what her grief looked like. In fact, she realized now, she had oddly assumed that Lilly simply wasn’t grieving. That she was doing what normal people did—coping. Moving on.

But of course, grief was a sly thing. It morphed like smoke. It hid in the cracks.

Tessa stood there gaping. A fog had lifted, and she suddenly saw the moment for what it was: two relatively normal-looking teenaged sisters standing in the arboretum on a chilly February afternoon—one with long, reddish hair, wearing skinny jeans and a trendy striped T-shirt under her winter coat; the other with stringy light hair, in a stained old plaid top and ragged black jeans—arguing and getting angry and resenting each other like sisters do . . . because you don’t choose to love your family. You’re stuck with them. And sisters are the hardest—they are mirrors of you; they are competition, opponents in everything from pancake servings to endless Monopoly games to who gets to ride in the front to who gets the most phone calls from boys. They’re a reflection of your best and worst self, and yet strangers always on the brink of going their separate ways and leaving you, or being left by you—a shadow in the doorway, falling across the carpet. A hug that lasts the length it takes to snap a photo, before it turns into a shove.

They have the power to undo you. And, maybe, to save you. That’s a terrifying kind of love, Tessa realized.

“Come on,” she said to Lilly, feeling as overwhelmed and exhausted as her sister looked. “Let’s get home.”