freaking out?” A cold wind blows through the cemetery, too cold for July. The willow shivers and my hair whips about. I tie it back in a knot, my mind trying to place the puzzle pieces. And now there are just so many.
“Marco found a picture in Ali’s journal. It’s of a woman with three scars marking her arm.”
“Like the girl?” Jake asks, his face distractingly close to mine. Still, I soldier on.
“Exactly like the girl. And Marco was telling me this story that seems—”
“We need to talk to Canaan,” Jake says. “He’s the best at reading the Throne Room’s intentions. I just . . . why weren’t these things delivered as clues? If we’re supposed to do something with what we know, why isn’t the Throne Room using the chest?”
It’s a good question. Why isn’t Canaan the one putting these pieces together?
“Maybe because we won’t always have the chest,” I tell him, the idea strange but sensible. “If Canaan’s reassigned and you stay with me . . .” But there’s the other possibility. That I’m the one having nightmares because they could both choose to leave and I’m supposed to piece this together myself. “You are staying with me?”
“I’m not leaving, Elle,” he says, tipping my chin to his and speaking soft words into my mouth. “I’ve told you that. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay.”
There’s something in his eyes that makes my stomach clench, makes it crave. It’s longing, I realize, and that scares me a little. There are things we can’t share just yet. Things we shouldn’t share. Until Jake, I never realized how easy it’d be to give up something that isn’t mine to part with.
I step back, Jake’s eyes falling to the necklace in my hand.
“What do you think about the necklace?” he asks, his voice thick.
I breathe away some of the tension and turn the wood flower in my hands.
“It’s beautiful, but there’s nothing to indicate it came from Mom’s grave.”
“Except the debris, of course,” Jake says, looking around.
“Yeah, there is that.”
“You could ask your dad,” he says.
“As if.” I blow a strand of hair from my face. “Although . . .”
“Although?”
“Dad’s not the only one who might able to tell me if this belonged to Mom.”
“Who then?”
“Miss Macy,” I say.
“Grandmother Tutu?”
I slide the necklace over my head. “She hates that nickname, by the way, but yeah. She’s the one who introduced Mom and Dad. She and Mom were BFFs back in the day.”
“Then let’s ask her,” Jake says.
“Don’t you have to work?”
“Took the day off,” he says, pulling a leaf from my hair. “My girlfriend needs me.”
But Miss Macy’s not home. We check the studio too, but it’s dark inside. A sign on the door says she’s sorry for the last-minute closure.
“That’s weird,” I say. “She never cancels class. Can I borrow your phone?”
But she’s not answering her cell either.
Jake calls Canaan, but the call rolls to voice mail.
“Okay, let’s just figure this out ourselves,” I say. “We can do that, right? We’re smart.”
Jake pulls the car into the drive-thru at Burgerville. “I’m much smarter after I’ve eaten.”
We pick up shakes and onion rings and drive out to Crooked Leg Bridge. The sky is clear and blue, Mount Bachelor rising in the distance, crowning a horizon of evergreens with a tipsy white dunce hat. We sit side by side on the bridge, our feet dangling, and I tell him about my nightmares. All of them. And because I can’t shake the thought that it’s related, I tell him about Olivia’s mom dying in that fire.
With all the pieces laid before us, a story begins to take shape.
“It’s Olivia,” Jake says. “It has to be.”
I gather a handful of pebbles and drop them one at a time off the bridge. I can’t see them fall, can’t see them hit the water, but the ripples they make—I can see those.
“I know you hate her, Elle, but think about it.”
“Is it possible to want to save someone and knock someone’s face in all at the same time?”
“You tell me,” Jake says. “Is it possible?”
“Seems so. What does that mean about Javan? If what I saw took place years ago, it’s possible he’s still in the pit, right? We don’t have to worry about him coming to Stratus?”
“Canaan’s fairly certain he’s in hell.”
The next question makes my hands sweaty. I dust the remaining pebbles from my hands and watch as the river below is freckled with ripples. Uncountable.
“And the woman, then, that Olivia spoke to at the hospital, that