“Belle thought I murdered Evelyn. She accused me at the detention center. She knows that we kissed the night before you left for school and…” Jack swallowed, fingers tightening on the hem of her shirt. She always grabbed on to something when she felt like she was falling. Raven knew this, and he wanted to reach out his arms and catch her, but he couldn’t do it.

Not unless she let him.

“Belle thought I murdered your stepmom and framed her so that I could have you all to myself. But I’d never do that, Raven.”

“I know that. I know you—”

“You don’t,” she snapped, and she sounded angry. Defensive. “You make guesses, and you’re trying to be a good person, but that’s not the same as knowing me. There are things I’ve done… things I am that you couldn’t understand.”

“That’s fine. That’s fair,” he said quickly, ignoring the storm in his chest. The crackle of thunder. The sizzle of lightning. “I’m not trying to tell you I understand. But I want you to talk to me. I want you to know that you can if that’s something you want. It’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to protect yourself. But don’t keep something from me because you think I can’t handle it.”

Jack took a slow, deep breath, and he wondered if torrential rains were raging inside her, too. If she was drowning in them. “The week before you left for boarding school, I stretched a vine across the attic stairs and tripped the man my mother was seeing. He’d been sneaking up to the boys’ room, hurting them when no one was around, so I hurt him back. I did what I had to do.”

Raven stared at her, unblinking. “What else?” he managed, his voice cracking. A moment ago, he’d been in the midst of a storm, but now the winds had died down completely, leaving him to pick through the rubble.

“The detective found a note in the kitchen the night your stepmother was killed. ‘One petal of belladonna. One petal of poppy. Drop into a teacup and stir three times.’ ” Jack looked up, her lip trembling. “Belle called it the Recipe for the Perfect Murder. She wrote it three years ago.”

“What?” It was the only word Raven could muster. The only sentence his lips could manage to form.

“We were planning to kill your stepmom,” Jack said softly. “Belle came up with the plan a month before you left town. It was supposed to happen the night before the Apple Blossom Festival, because half the girls in town would be wearing flower garlands.”