He shrugged. “You come here when something has really gotten to you, especially when it’s something from your past. Since you just saw Ray’s name on that fingerprint report, that made it a little easier to guess where you’d gone, but to be honest, with what’s going on with Lisette, I would have bet on you being here regardless.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m ready to go back to work.” She hated that her voice quavered.
“Let’s get it out in the open before you go back to work,” he said. “It’s just you, me, and Ray here. Say whatever it is you need to say and then we’ll go back.”
She wanted to punch him. “Why do I always have to say things?”
He smiled. “That’s how talking works. Seriously, it might help.”
“It’s not going to help.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Then just say things to hear yourself talk.”
In spite of the tension knotting her shoulder blades, Josie laughed. Then it turned into a strangled cry. She clamped a hand over her mouth. When she was certain she wasn’t going to sob, she took her hand away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’m so emotional. Everything is just getting to me.”
“It’s been a horrific week, Josie. Our city is damn near destroyed. You found a dead body. You got shot at. You almost died in the river with Vera Urban. Add Lisette’s news to that and it’s a lot to adjust to.”
“But Gram’s news doesn’t matter,” Josie said. “Even finding Ray’s stupid fingerprints on that receipt and his jacket on Beverly’s body doesn’t matter.”
Noah raised a brow. “How does it not matter?”
“None of that should affect me or my work.”
“But it is, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay for you to have a period of time where you need to mentally process big, difficult things like a normal person.”
“I’m not normal,” she muttered.
“Because of all the messed-up things that happened to you?” Noah asked.
“Not just that,” Josie said. “Because I should be hunting down Beverly Urban’s murderer right now and instead, I’m in the goddamn graveyard where my ex-husband is buried because when we were in high school he might have cheated on me and gotten Beverly pregnant. Who cares?” She threw her arms in the air and began pacing.
“You do,” Noah said. “So let’s go there. What if Ray was seeing Beverly behind your back? What if they were sleeping together, and he got her pregnant? How does that make you feel?”
Josie paused long enough to roll her eyes. “What? Did you take a crash course in psychology or something? Are you serious right now? How does it make me feel?”
When he didn’t respond, staring at her in a way that made it clear he expected an answer, she said, “It makes me feel like shit. It makes me feel sad and alone and like my whole life was a lie.”
“Your whole life?” he coaxed.
She shook her head as though that could clear it. “Noah, nothing about my life was what it seemed. My mother wasn’t really my mother. My dad wasn’t really my dad. He didn’t really kill himself. My grandmother wasn’t really my grandmother. My goddamn name wasn’t even Josie. Don’t you get it? The only thing that was real, that was true, that was consistent in my life was Ray. Since I was nine years old he was…” She searched for words, for the right metaphors. “My—my anchor. My—this is so stupid—”
“He was your constant,” Noah filled in.
“Yes,” Josie said, feeling a rush of relief that he understood. “He was the one person who knew everything that had happened to me and loved me anyway. Even my grandmother never knew all the things that Lila did to me. Ray was there through it all. He kept me sane, he kept me focused. He made me feel like I was worth something. I know that he turned out to be a drunk and a liar and a dishonorable person, but I’m talking about Ray the boy that I loved in school, not Ray the man I married. Ray was my foundation, Noah. If it was all a lie, if even back then he wasn’t who he pretended to be, what does that say about me?”
“Nothing,” Noah said. “It says nothing about you.”
Tears stung the backs of her eyes. She fought to hold them back. “You’re wrong,” she argued. “If the one person who loved me when I was at my worst didn’t really love me—if he was a liar, then what does that mean? How can I be—how can I be—” She couldn’t finish.
Noah stepped closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Josie,” he said. “You were a child.”
“But if everything I thought about the best parts of my childhood were a lie, what does that mean? If the foundation of my life—or the one thing left of it, Ray—was a lie, then what does that mean for me? Who the hell am I?”
“You’re Josie Quinn,” Noah said simply. “And that doesn’t depend on Ray or Lisette or your biological family or me or anyone. That foundation you’re talking about? It wasn’t Ray. Foundations are built, Josie. They’re built up over time. Ray helped you lay that foundation just like your grandmother did by being a positive, loving, stable force when everything around you was completely fucked up. The foundation you’re talking about—that’s all you.”
“How do you know that? How do you—how can you love me? You don’t even know who I am. I don’t even know who I am!”
He smiled again. One of his hands tilted her chin up toward him. “I know exactly who you are. Everyone who loves you knows who you are. You’re the woman who shot me, trying to save a teenage girl who desperately needed help.”
She looked away from him. “I wish you wouldn’t bring that up. I still feel guilty about that.”
“Don’t,” he said, cupping her cheek to bring her gaze back to him. “You’re the woman who is now best friends with Ray’s girlfriend—a woman you used to hate. You’re Harris’s Aunt JoJo. You’re the woman who saved a baby from drowning in a river, who jumped into a burning car to try to save a man because he was the only person who knew where two missing persons were. You’re the woman who solved my mother’s murder. You’re the woman who delivered a baby in the back of your car in a damn thunderstorm. You run toward the danger, Josie. Every time. You never hesitate. What does that make you? I know what it makes you to me, but only you can say what it makes you to yourself. My point is that nothing you find out about the past, no matter how terrible, can change any of that.”
She sank into his arms, pressing her face against his chest. Inhaling his familiar scent immediately sent her heart rate back down to a normal range. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “But I still wish I could know for sure about Ray and Beverly.”
Noah pressed a kiss into her scalp. After a few moments, he said, “You know, we could ask Misty for a DNA sample from Harris. Well, I guess if we’re going to start asking people for DNA samples then we could just go directly to Mrs. Quinn. You think she’d give us one to compare against the DNA profile of Beverly’s baby?”
“Probably,” Josie said. “But maybe I’m just being… I don’t know. I never would have believed that Ray slept with Beverly. Back then he was so good. He was still kind of innocent. We were deeply in love in the kind of crazy hormonal way that only teenagers can be. We had all these stupid plans. The summer before senior year we were going to take this road trip, drive to the beach and spend a week there. We had a list of places we were going to visit between here and there. It was so silly, and we were completely broke. But Ray wanted to make it happen for me, and he did. He spent that entire summer working construction. He was a day laborer for this general contractor. I barely saw him at all. He’d have to be on the job site at six in the morning and by the time he was finished, he’d be so tired. They were building that office building—oh my God.”