“Yes,” Josie said, feeling a rush of relief that he understood. “He was the one person who knew everything that had happened to me and loved me anyway. Even my grandmother never knew all the things that Lila did to me. Ray was there through it all. He kept me sane, he kept me focused. He made me feel like I was worth something. I know that he turned out to be a drunk and a liar and a dishonorable person, but I’m talking about Ray the boy that I loved in school, not Ray the man I married. Ray was my foundation, Noah. If it was all a lie, if even back then he wasn’t who he pretended to be, what does that say about me?”
“Nothing,” Noah said. “It says nothing about you.”
Tears stung the backs of her eyes. She fought to hold them back. “You’re wrong,” she argued. “If the one person who loved me when I was at my worst didn’t really love me—if he was a liar, then what does that mean? How can I be—how can I be—” She couldn’t finish.
Noah stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Josie,” he said. “You were a child.”
“But if everything I thought about the best parts of my childhood were a lie, what does that mean? If the foundation of my life—or the one thing left of it, Ray—was a lie, then what does that mean for me? Who the hell am I?”
“You’re Josie Quinn,” Noah said simply. “And that doesn’t depend on Ray or Lisette or your biological family or me or anyone. That foundation you’re talking about? It wasn’t Ray. Foundations are built, Josie. They’re built up over time. Ray helped you lay that foundation just like your grandmother did by being a positive, loving, stable force when everything around you was completely fucked up. The foundation you’re talking about—that’s all you.”
“How do you know that? How do you—how can you love me? You don’t even know who I am. I don’t even know who I am!”
He smiled again. One of his hands tilted her chin up toward him. “I know exactly who you are. Everyone who loves you knows who you are. You’re the woman who shot me, trying to save a teenage girl who desperately needed help.”
She looked away from him. “I wish you wouldn’t bring that up. I still feel guilty about that.”
“Don’t,” he said, cupping her cheek to bring her gaze back to him. “You’re the woman who is now best friends with Ray’s girlfriend—a woman you used to hate. You’re Harris’s Aunt JoJo. You’re the woman who saved a baby from drowning in a river, who jumped into a burning car to try to save a man because he was the only person who knew where two missing persons were. You’re the woman who solved my mother’s murder. You’re the woman who delivered a baby in the back of your car in a damn thunderstorm. You run toward the danger, Josie. Every time. You never hesitate. What does that make you? I know what it makes you to me, but only you can say what it makes you to yourself. My point is that nothing you find out about the past, no matter how terrible, can change any of that.”
She sank into his arms, pressing her face against his chest. Inhaling his familiar scent immediately sent her heart rate back down to a normal range. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “But I still wish I could know for sure about Ray and Beverly.”
Noah pressed a kiss into her scalp. After a few moments, he said, “You know, we could ask Misty for a DNA sample from Harris. Well, I guess if we’re going to start asking people for DNA samples then we could just go directly to Mrs. Quinn. You think she’d give us one to compare against the DNA profile of Beverly’s baby?”
“Probably,” Josie said. “But maybe I’m just being… I don’t know. I never would have believed that Ray slept with Beverly. Back then he was so good. He was still kind of innocent. We were deeply in love in the kind of crazy hormonal way that only teenagers can be. We had all these stupid plans. The summer before senior year we were going to take this road trip, drive to the beach and spend a week there. We had a list of places