Hannah didn’t, and she didn’t care. “Talk to me about Fae.”
Jinny paused, her nails clicking on the tabletop. “To be honest, my dear, we drifted apart the past few years. There isn’t much I can tell you that you don’t already know.”
“Why?”
“Some of it was her life. Caretaking is so stressful. Hard on everyone. Some of it was me. Before Stuart got sick—again—I’d wanted her to be more social. Come down from the hill, visit with friends. I know they see me as a kook, but I’m harmless. They might even think I’m the village idiot.” Jinny fluffed her black hair with her fingertips; a ringlet caught on a bracelet, and she wiggled it free. “I’m not. I know that. But I know how they all see me. Everyone likes me, though. Your aunt, however . . .” Jinny cocked her head, twisted her bright-coral lips. “Not so much. I knew better; I tried to tell people—especially those bingo biddies down at the Rockwell firehouse—Fae was a good person who had a tough life. Friendship is good for the soul. You can’t make a life out of plants and one man.”
“What about Alice?”
“Oh. Well, Alice.” Jinny rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, there was Alice.”
“You don’t like Alice?”
“I don’t know her!” Jinny threw her hands up, her rings and bracelets clattering. “I invited them both to the firehouse. They had poker, bingo, spaghetti dinners, what have you. Poker was my thing. Anyway, they always said no. Alice practically lived there. She loved your aunt; I’ll give her that. They were strange birds of a feather, together. And the three of them up there, secluded on that hill? People in town thought it was straight-up weird. And that’s coming from me!”
“How did Aunt Fae meet Alice?”
“No one knows. She showed up one day—‘from the agency,’ she said. Before you knew it, they’re inseparable, and I’m nothing to Fae. She hardly came to see me anymore, never called. She had Alice; that’s it.”
“Why do you think she became so reclusive?”
“She never stopped flogging herself for Ruby. And then Julia.” Jinny sighed, her eyes teary. And likely Ellie? thought Hannah. Jinny continued, “Even if people in town could understand—and I do think they could, at least the Ruby part. Accidents happen!—Fae would never let herself be forgiven. But people see it differently. If she didn’t kill anyone, then why hide? Why seclude yourself if you’re not guilty?”
“So when she needed you the most, you abandoned her?” Hannah asked, and it came out sharper than she intended. It was a barbed question, and Jinny flinched.
“No. No. You can’t make people need you. Your aunt sequestered herself. That life sentence was her own making. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, Hannah.”
This Hannah knew to be true. She thought of Wes, Trina, even Julia toward the end of that summer. Scattered, lashing out, impatient, mean. All the things she’d never been before. Even to Aunt Fae; especially to Aunt Fae. Oh, like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
Hannah had only heard that part of the fight, Aunt Fae’s voice too quiet, too circumspect, to be heard from the library, where she spent so much of her time. Julia’s had been clear as a bell, loud and angry. What had it been about? She’d forgotten it entirely in the years since. It had seemed fleeting, inconsequential.
“Did you blame her for Julia?” Hannah asked.
Jinny’s eyes slid sideways, and she adjusted her earring. A tell. “No. Of course not.”
A lie.
“I don’t believe you.” Hannah felt her face flush. Why would Jinny lie to her? Who was there to protect? Everyone was dead.
“Well, I don’t know why. I’ve no reason to lie to you. I don’t believe your aunt had anything to do with Julia’s disappearance. And the only thing I think she had to do with Ruby’s death was folding laundry while her child played in a room with an unsecured window.”
Hannah had been asking the wrong question. “What about Ellie?”
“I don’t know who killed Ellie.”
“You have a theory. A suspicion.”
“I don’t. Even if I did, I wouldn’t share it. I have no proof of anything.” Jinny was starting to look like a trapped animal, eyes darting one way, then the other.
“I heard that Fae said Ellie was there. The day Ruby died,” Hannah pressed, leaning closer. She could smell Jinny’s perfume, cloying and organic.
“Fae said a lot of things. That didn’t make them true.”
“But she was there, wasn’t she?” Hannah reached out, gripped Jinny’s skinny wrist.
Jinny nodded.
“Did Ellie kill Ruby? On purpose?”
“I don’t know!” Jinny said finally. She stood up abruptly and scurried to the back room through a beaded partition. She reemerged with a yellowed envelope, folded in half and resealed with masking tape, careful and precise.
“What’s this?” Hannah asked as Jinny handed it to her.
“It’s a letter. The night before Fae died, she came to see me. She hadn’t come to town in months. She wanted me to have this; she said she was preparing for Uncle Stuart’s death and needed someone to guard her secrets.”
“What secrets?” Hannah pressed, and Jinny’s face crumpled.
“I don’t know! She asked me not to read it, just keep it. She said I could read it when she was gone.”
“Gone where?” Hannah’s voice was sharp.
“She meant dead.” Jinny’s chin wobbled, and she took a breath. “She wasn’t going to kill herself. I think she thought that without Stuart . . . she had no one to protect her.”
“From who?”
“I didn’t know! I was so thrown by her being in my shop. By how she looked—skinny and pale and her hair long and gray. I was consumed with my own guilt that I let her wither away up on that mountain.”
“Why wouldn’t you give this to police?” Hannah asked.
“Why would I? I don’t know what’s in it. I promised to protect my friend.” Jinny straightened her spine; her jaw jutted outward. “I wouldn’t let myself read it.”
“Did Fae kill Ellie because Ellie killed Ruby?”
“Hannah, hand to God, I have no idea. You have to believe that,” Jinny pleaded. Tears fell down her cheeks.
“You don’t believe in God,” Hannah said before she stood up.
She left Jinny at the table, crying.
On the street, she looked one way, then the other. She unfolded the envelope. It was addressed to Fae Webster at Brackenhill. No postage. No return address. The blue ink on the front was young and bubbly but faded.
In the distance, a shining black truck rumbled toward her. Wyatt. Hannah didn’t want to see him, talk to him. She didn’t want to relate what Jinny had told her or think about Jinny hiding Fae’s secrets for seventeen years. She tucked the envelope into her back jeans pocket and ducked into an alleyway a few buildings down. Hannah watched Wyatt as he parked the truck in front of the diner.
She expected him to enter. Sit down, have a cup of coffee. She didn’t expect him to furtively glance up and down the street and, when he was certain no one saw him, open the door to Jinny’s shop and disappear inside.