“That story’s probably not even true,” I said. “Just some made up bullshit to keep us all in line.”

“It’s true,” Jimmy Ray said. “I knew her. She was my age.” His voice was serious along with his face, lines etched around his mouth. “She had the baby and then she killed it. Killed herself, too. Drank a bottle of bleach. She thought she knew what she could handle, how much she could take. But she was wrong.”

Goose bumps prickled the back of my neck, and I crossed my arms, cupped my elbows against a sudden chill. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m nothing like Libby Lang. She was a kid. I’m a grown woman.”

“Pain don’t discriminate, Eve. It doesn’t know if you’re grown. Doesn’t care, either. It hits as hard either way. Libby wanted to know who her daddy was, but she would have been better off leaving well enough alone.” Jimmy Ray leaned forward, green eyes glittering in the dark purple shadows around his still healing nose. “Sometimes the answers are worse than the questions. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

“I have to,” I whispered. I didn’t know how to explain it to him, this man who’d never loved anyone, not really. How Junie might not be in the world anymore, but that didn’t make her any less present. She was entwined with every part of me. Every muscle, every drop of blood in my body, every breath I took, every thought and wish and memory. I couldn’t put all that away, keep going and forget about what had been done to her. Couldn’t be such a coward that I shied away from the truth, even if it was the killing kind.

“Okay, suit yourself,” Jimmy Ray said, wiping his hands of it, of me. He threw himself back on the pillows, watched as I stood and slipped on my shoes. “Am I gonna see you around here again?”

“No,” I said. Whichever way this went, from here on out, Jimmy Ray and I were over. I had a feeling I’d find my self-destruction somewhere else soon enough.

TWENTY-TWO

I made it as far as my car, slid in behind the wheel, before I ran out of energy. My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat, and my tongue lay thick and foreign in my mouth. I closed my eyes, forcing back the sting of tears, as the first rays of daylight peeked over the horizon. I couldn’t remember ever being this tired, this down-to-the-bone exhausted, not even in those early weeks after Junie was born. Maybe Jimmy Ray was right. Maybe it was time to let things lie, stop poking around like a dumb kid messing with a nest of rattlers. Junie might even forgive me for giving up. But I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself, that I’d never have a true peaceful moment until I saw this through to the end. I opened my eyes and started the car.

My first instinct was to confront Cal, step right into his face and ask him what in the hell was going on. But I remembered his expression that day by the river when I’d basically accused him of messing around with Izzy. If I made another misstep like that, leaped without evidence, I wasn’t sure we’d recover. And underneath that worry was a new one, a consideration I’d never really had before with Cal: He might look directly into my eyes and lie to me. I needed to figure this out before I confronted him, nail the facts down tight without any wiggle room.