Jack’s stomach tightened at the sight of it. She thought she would do anything to protect them. Then, remembering where such convictions led, she crept toward her bedroom, climbed over the windowsill and disappeared into the darkness.
6
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Lily crept away from Jack’s peeling green cottage, trying desperately to understand what she’d just witnessed. Jack, burning clothes in a fireplace. Suits and T-shirts and jeans. When Lily had learned that Raven’s clothes had been stolen, of course she’d assumed her mother was responsible for it, but now she realized her mother was innocent of that one small crime.
Jack, on the other hand, appeared to be guilty. But of what? Had she simply taken Raven’s clothes, or had she done something unspeakable while wearing them? Lily wanted to demand answers the second Jack arrived at her mother’s office, but she needed to play this carefully. Protect herself. Trick Jack into trusting her. That was the only way to get to the truth of what had happened the night her mother was murdered.
Lily knew some of it, of course she did. But she didn’t know the whole story. That she would have to earn. And so she jogged up to Jack, running a hand through her pale blond hair. “You came. I thought you might change your mind.”
Jack shook her head, looking apprehensive. There was a smudge of black on her thumb, from the ash in the fireplace, but she didn’t seem to notice it. She was shaky, which meant she was nervous.
Or she was hungry.
“I brought snacks,” Lily said, pulling a breakfast bar out of her pale pink purse. She’d watched Jack kneel beside the fire, feeding Raven’s clothes to the flames, but she’d also watched her hand over a freshly made sandwich to her little brothers. “In case we’re here a while.”
Jack nodded, her stomach growling loudly as if on cue. Lily giggled as she unlocked the door to her mother’s practice. She would keep things light, and she would keep offering snacks and encouragement, and she’d learn exactly why Jack had tossed Raven’s clothing into the fire.
The door clicked open, and Lily ushered Jack inside the little brick house that had been converted into an office. There was an immediate beeping as the security system blared out its siren song, but Lily silenced it by typing the code into the keypad by the door.
Zero-three-zero-four.
Lily’s birthday. For the second time that night, she felt a stirring in her chest. Something soft and unexpected, like a trickle inside a well that has been dried up for a very long time.
She didn’t flick on a light. Instead, she pulled up the flashlight on her phone, striding over to her mother’s desk. It was a white antique affair with roses painted up the legs, pink blossoms unfurling from thorny stems. Lily sat down in the matching chair. She was wearing gloves, but they were as pale as the roses stenciled onto the desk, disappearing under the sleeves of her sweater.
In the darkness they looked a lot like her hands.
“Want to check the filing cabinet?” Lily asked, tossing Jack her mother’s keys. Jack caught them easily. “We could be here all night.”
“What, exactly, are we looking for?” Jack flipped through the keys, looking for one that was small enough to unlock the cabinet.
“Look for anything suspicious.” Lily woke up the computer with a brush of her fingers. Within seconds she was poring over her mother’s inbox, sifting through a mix of appointment confirmations and messages from Raven’s dad. Both were incredibly dull. The confirmations were automated, and the more personal emails contained grocery lists or questions about dinner. Lamb or pork? The Italian place they’d visited a dozen times or the French bistro down the street? Lily sighed, her eyes glazing as she scrolled through the first hundred emails. “Maybe one of her clients got a little too close to her,” she suggested to Jack, who was flipping through files at her back. “I know it’s a long shot, but—”
“It’s not a long shot.”
Lily jumped as Jack dropped a file onto the desk. They’d been searching for only a few minutes, but already Jack had found something. The file was fat, overflowing with pages and the edges of photographs. But none of that held Lily’s attention. No, her eyes were glued to the name on the side of the file, the name she’d seen over and over again in her mother’s emails.
Stefan Holloway.
“My mom was counseling Raven’s dad? That doesn’t make sense.” Lily frowned as Jack sat on the edge of the desk, flipping open the file. “She’s not a grief counselor. She’s a marriage counselor who specializes in substance abuse.”
“Look at the dates of his sessions.”
Lily did, silently studying the first few pages. Her mother had kept meticulous notes. She was obnoxiously organized, and Lily had always resented that about her, but at this particular moment, she was grateful for it. “She was counseling him before Raven’s mom died.”
“Yes.”
“Because he was having marital problems, and he thought counseling could help.”
“Apparently.” Jack flipped forward a couple of pages, to the place where an old family photograph was hiding. Raven must’ve been three or four, and he was cheesing it up for the camera while his parents stood behind him. Laughing and holding hands.
“Why would your mother have this?” Jack demanded, plucking the photo from the file. She held it between her fingers, staring at Raven. “Do you think she took it from their house after she moved in?”
“I think she asked him to bring in mementos of a time when he and his first wife were happy,” Lily said. Sometimes, in an emergency, her mother had hosted sessions at their old apartment. If a client needed her in the middle of the night. If they couldn’t make it until the morning. The apartment had been tiny, with paper-thin walls, and even if Lily tried not to listen, she couldn’t help but pick up snippets of conversation. “A lot of the time, when couples are having problems, it helps to remember why they fell in love in the first place,” she explained to Jack. “If they bring in old love letters, and family photos like this, it can awaken something that’s sleeping inside them. As long as that something isn’t dead.”
She’d sounded like her mother just then. A shiver raced up her spine. She didn’t want to be sitting at this desk, spouting these old familiar words as if a ghost were speaking through her. Her mother was gone, and though it hadn’t happened the way she’d planned, the last thing Lily wanted was to resurrect her.
“Copy the file and put it back,” she instructed, striding over to the filing cabinet. If her mother kept a file on Raven’s dad, maybe there were other secrets in these drawers. Maybe there was a file on Lily herself.
But which name would her mother have used?
She slid open the second drawer, searching for a file labeled Lily Holloway. Ever since she’d moved onto the Holloway estate, Stefan had insisted she take on the family name. He’d even promised to adopt her in the weeks following the wedding. Then Raven got sent to boarding school, and Lily got shipped off to the wellness facility, and Stefan must’ve forgotten about his promise, because the adoption never happened.
The second drawer held no familiar names. Lily closed it quickly, crouching down to ease open the bottom drawer. Her mother’s maiden name had been Quinn, but Lily Quinn was not written on any of these files. On a whim, she opened the third drawer, quickly flipping through the Ks, even though she knew her mother wouldn’t have listed her under her father’s name.
Her biological father, who’d left her at three years old.
Lily was right. Her name wasn’t listed under the Ks, but his was. Andrew Kane, third file from the end. Had her mother been counseling her bio dad? It seemed impossible. Lily’s mother had gotten pregnant at sixteen, and by the time her parents were nineteen, they couldn’t look at each other. Lily had ruined their relationship. They’d been desperately in love, and then she’d come along, screaming and crying and demanding too much.
Her father had left because of her. Hadn’t her mother told her that, over and over again, until Lily
knew the story by heart? But maybe, unbeknownst to Lily, her parents had reconnected. Carefully, she slid the file under the waistband of her jeans, covering it with her oversize sweater. The copy machine was humming happily at her back, and in order to operate it, Jack would have to be turned away from the filing cabinet. It was unlikely she’d seen Lily’s delicate movements. Still, Lily riffled through the drawers for another minute, pulling out a handful of other files. Most of her mother’s clients had been couples, but a few men had come to see her on their own, just like Raven’s father had.
Lily focused on them. They were the ones most likely to have become unhealthily attached to her mother. Maybe she was grasping at straws, but if she couldn’t find a suspect in this office, that left only the three of them. Belle, who was already locked up in a detention center. Jack, who’d knelt beside a fireplace and fed Raven’s clothing to the flames. And Lily herself, with all her secrets.
She carried her stack of files over to the copier. “How’s it coming along?” she asked casually.
“Almost done. She was counseling him for a year,” Jack added, tapping Dr. Holloway’s file. “He started coming here the winter Raven was twelve, and only stopped the following November.”
“Because his first wife died. Then, a year later, my mom married him. Her own patient.” Lily set her stack of files on the copier, each containing a different man’s secrets. Fears. Desires. “What if another patient fell in love with her? Someone who realized he couldn’t have her the way he wanted, so he snuck into her house and…”
“Poisoned her?”
Lily nodded, not wanting to speak the words. “If we copy these files tonight, we can search through her sessions to see if anyone mentions having feelings for her. Or spending time together outside of the office.”
Jack placed a stack of pages in the copier’s feed tray. “Even if we find a guy who was obsessed with her, it won’t explain the belladonna in her tea. Whoever did this knew about our plan. They’re using that against us, because one of us didn’t get rid of the evidence.”
“I left it in a tree hollow in the orchard! I don’t know how it ended up in the kitchen, I swear.” Lily’s gaze dropped to her hands. “After Raven went away, you guys wouldn’t talk to me anymore. I think you wanted to forget everything that had happened, and maybe it was too painful to face what we’d almost done, but…” She looked up, and the tears in her eyes were real. There was a sharpness in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down. “You left me in the facility to rot.”
“I didn’t want to! Belle told me to leave you alone. She said what we almost did broke you, and we needed to take some time apart to heal.”
“She told you that?” Lily’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted you to come visit me. I wanted Raven to come home. And… that recipe was all I had left of you. The only proof that I’d had friends. I kept it because I knew we weren’t going to use it, just like I knew you weren’t coming back into my life.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve checked in on you. I shouldn’t have waited until your mother was—”
Jack broke off and Lily’s heart constricted. Just barely. Just for a second. “I want to forgive you, but I need you to help me figure out who killed her. Maybe one of her clients was stalking her. Maybe they broke onto the estate and found the recipe in the orchard. The wind could’ve blown it out of the tree hollow.”
“How likely is that?”
Lily shrugged. “The tree hollow wasn’t that deep, and it’s nearly impossible that someone searched all the trees in the orchard. The recipe must’ve fallen out. Then the killer must’ve planted it in the kitchen, hoping the police would find it.” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. “What if the killer comes back? I don’t know how I’m going to sleep—”
“I’ll come over,” Jack said, still feeding pages to the copier. Page after page, file after file, they made their way through the stacks. “After we’ve finished here, I’ll come back with you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to—” Jack began, but Lily cut her off.
“No, I mean… you don’t have to pretend you’re coming over for me. I know you want to see him, Jack.”
“He’s my oldest friend,” Jack said simply, not looking at her. “Of course I want to see him and hear about the past three years.”
“You two haven’t been talking?”
Jack stiffened, then shook her head. “You said Belle and I wanted to forget everything that happened? Everything we’d almost done? I think Raven wanted to forget too. First his mom was taken from him, and then he almost took his own—”
“He’s been in contact with Belle.”
Jack spun around, her breathing gone shallow. Lily could see it in the way her chest jerked up and down. “How do you know that?”
“Belle came to visit me once,” Lily said, pulling the last of the papers from the tray. She put half the copied files in her purse, handing the other half to Jack. “She wanted to destroy the Recipe for the Perfect Murder so we could finally move on.” Lily huffed, returning the original files to their drawers and locking the cabinet. “If I’d told her where I’d hidden the stupid thing, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Belle wanted the evidence,” Jack said, her voice a hollow whisper.
“Yes.”
“And she’s been in contact with Raven this entire time? If she knew he was coming home, she could’ve searched the grounds for the recipe. We were out in the orchard when you first hid it.”
“Belle’s not the killer.” Lily strode over to the desk, signing out of her mother’s email. Jack was still standing by the copier, a distant look in her eyes. Quickly, Lily searched the hard drive for the name Andrew Kane, and when she found a digital copy of her father’s file, she deleted it. Then she emptied the trash folder. As far as anyone knew, he’d never come into this building. Never sat in the chair across from Lily’s mother and spilled his darkest secrets.
He’d never be a suspect.
The night was dark as they slipped out of the office, but just barely. In about an hour, the sun would rise. “It’s almost morning,” Lily said, leading Jack across the parking lot, to the place where their bikes were waiting for them. Lily had moved into the wellness facility when she was fourteen, which meant she’d never learned to drive. She’d never gone on a date. And up until recently, her sleepovers had been incredibly tame. “You don’t have to come back with me… unless you want to sneak into Raven’s bedroom,” she added, because Jack had the look of someone who’d been trying to be tame for too long.
For all their differences, they had that in common.
“No, it’s okay,” Jack said, that old familiar blush taking over her face. Not just her cheeks, but her neck and ears, too. “I want to get home before my brothers wake up. Someone has to make sure they eat breakfast.”
Lily nodded, struggling to hide her relief. If Jack came back with her now, she wouldn’t be able to read through her father’s file. As it was, the two parted ways, promising to call each other the second they found a possible suspect. Lily’s bike had a basket, and once Jack was out of sight, she set her purse inside it, tucking the original file beside the copies.
She rode off as the sky lightened to gray.
7
The Boy in the Branches
Jack stood beneath Raven’s window, asking herself what she was doing. She’d meant what she’d said about going home. But three blocks from her house, she’d remembered that spring break had started, and she didn’t need to get her brothers up for school in the morning. They would sleep late, sprawled out across the living room floor.
No one would know if she made one quick stop.
And so she’d ridden her bike to Holloway Manor. She’d slipped through the loose bar in the back gate, like she had a hundred times before. The last time she’d climbed up to Raven’s bedroom, she’d been fourteen years old, but her hands remembered the places where the gray
stones stuck out just so. The ivy grew thicker at the back of the house. There was less chance of falling to her death, though it was a possibility.
His bedroom was on the third floor. By the time Jack reached his window, she was panting from the climb. Her chest ached. Her heart was a feral creature, screaming louder than her scratched palms, and she was grateful that he’d left the window cracked.
Some things didn’t change.
But most things did, and as she swung her leg over the sill, she wondered if Raven’s heart had hardened to her over the past three years. Or worse, if he’d forgotten her entirely. She tried to take calming breaths as she stepped into his bedroom, the darkness overwhelming. The moon didn’t touch this place. His curtains were too dark, his window too small, and for a moment, she thought he must be sleeping somewhere else, because the bed looked unlived in, just like it had the last time she’d snuck in here.
Two months after he’d gone away.
She approached the ebony bed frame with caution. It was almost six in the morning. He had to be under that black velvet comforter, curled into himself, like always. Lips parted slightly. Eyelashes fluttering. But Jack was nearing the edge of the bed now, and her eyes had started to adjust to the darkness. No one was sleeping there. Had everyone lied to her about Raven’s return? Was this whole thing a trap?
Just as she thought it, an arm slid around her waist, a voice whispering in her ear: “Still breaking and entering, I see.”
Jack bristled. “Well, if you’d bothered to send me an invitation, I wouldn’t have needed to break in. I could’ve used the front door.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” His breath was warm on her cheek. He was standing so close, she could feel his heartbeat pressing against her back, soft and insistent, and she spun around, crushing him to her.
Lies Like Poison Page 5