Her head snapped up, a smile tugging at her lips. Jack’s smile was unabashed, wide and wild, and the first time Raven had seen it, he’d thought he could spend his whole life making her face light up like that. He’d thought he’d never tire of it. Now, almost ten years later, even a hint of that smile made his chest flutter and his stomach dip.

“We copied a bunch of files,” Jack went on, running her fingers over the muted yellow folder in her lap. “Evelyn spent all day talking to people in unhappy marriages. If one of them fell for her and couldn’t have her, maybe—”

“They killed her?”

Jack nodded.

“With belladonna from our friend’s garden?”

“I know!” Jack threw up her hands, almost knocking the file from her lap. “I can’t figure out how everything ties together, but if you’re certain Belle’s innocent—”

“I am,” he said, without missing a beat. “Belle spent half of middle school threatening people with the flowers in her garden. There’s no way she’d be stupid enough to kill someone that way. This is a setup. Someone must’ve heard her talking about those flowers and decided to frame her.”

Jack cocked her head. “I guess that’s possible. But Belle stopped talking about her garden once we got to high school. She said she needed time away from me, after what we’d almost done, but I still had classes with her. We saw each other at lunch. She never mentioned those flowers. I didn’t either, except…” Jack’s eyes went wide, her hands slapping over her mouth. “Oh my God, Raven. It was me.”

“What was you?”

“I mentioned Belle’s flowers in a letter to you. I started walking by her house after school, hoping she’d see me, and… I don’t know. Call out to me. Tell me she wanted me in her life. That never happened, but one afternoon I saw her sitting in her garden, and I wrote to you about it that night. I told you she loved those flowers more than she loved me.”

“That isn’t true,” Raven said, but his heart was thundering. His mouth was dry. “And if someone stole our letters, they did it years ago. It makes no sense that they’d wait until now to pick those flowers. None of this adds up.”

“Not yet.” Jack looked stricken, opening the file on her lap. “But while I was copying files from Evelyn’s office, Lily stole this file from the cabinet. I never would’ve known if I hadn’t seen her reading it in her bedroom while I was climbing down the side of your house this morning.” She huffed, shaking her head. “Say what you will about my penchant for breaking and entering. It does have its advantages.”