Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’m steps behind the detective, but he’s already talking to Marilee by the time I rush into the salon.
“Oh, she’s right here, actually,” Marilee says, and Jackson turns to me with a nod of acknowledgment.
“We can speak in my office,” I blurt, louder than I intended. A bride and her friends pause at a rack of dresses to look me up and down. Jackson cocks an eyebrow, while Marilee stares at the badge on his belt, no doubt remembering the message she passed to me from the police just days ago.
“That would be great,” Jackson finally says, moving aside so I can lead him to the back.
Questions cluster as I walk. Why is he here? Why didn’t he call first, request I come to the station? His steps behind me are soft and unhurried, but is there something urgent about this visit?
I open the door to my office. The space is small enough when it’s just me in here, but as soon as Jackson joins me, the walls close in, the boxes stacked against them threatening to crush us. I push in my chair as far as it will go, trying to make more space, but we’re still barely three feet apart.
“Nice,” Jackson says, chuckling at the wall behind my desk, where there are printouts of baby chicks wearing cupcake liners as skirts. “I saw that online once. This one is not having it.” He points to the chick I always think of as Grumps, his ornery face puffing out above the skirt. “This one, though.” His finger moves to my favorite, the chick who looks proud, like she’s modeling the new spring collection of baking cups. “She’s the star.”
“Yep,” I say, suspicious of his warmth. He must be trying to get my guard down, or maybe he’s savoring the moment before he shares some unnerving update. Maybe Other Rosie did more to ensure I took the fall. Maybe she planted something of mine at the scene, made sure the evidence was so stacked against me, the cops would have no choice but—
“The results on the hair came back. It’s not a match.”
I blink at him, silent. My insomnia must have gummed up my brain, because I have to replay his words before I process what they mean.
“I’m not a suspect anymore?”
“I didn’t say that. I just wanted to let you know and follow up with—”
“But you don’t think I’m guilty. Otherwise, you would have called me to the station, right? And something else is—” I focus on his expression. “You’re looking at me differently.”
It’s too forward. Too much. But it’s also the truth. His eyes are the gentlest I’ve seen them—aimed at me, but not sharpened.
And that’s how it finally clicks, the reason I’ve had that vague, intermittent feeling I know him.
“You’re Winnie’s brother, aren’t you?”
It helps that I just saw Piper, whose presence sparked thoughts of the girl, but now that I’ve made the connection, it’s more than Jackson’s eyes that remind me of her. It’s the straight slope of his nose, his thick brows. And god, his last name. Of course—Winnie Dean .
Jackson’s face opens with surprise. “You know my sister?”
“I was a senior when she was a freshman, but I hung out with her that year.”
I gave her rides home when it was raining. Chatted with her at school dances. It wasn’t charity; I genuinely liked her. She was funny, baked the best cookies, and made impeccable playlists.
“ You’re the senior? Wow. Okay.” Jackson shakes his head as if dazed. “I was in college when Winnie started high school, but whenever we talked, she always brought you up. I’m pretty sure she referred to you exclusively as ‘the senior who thinks I’m cool.’?”
I laugh. “She was a sweet kid. How’s she doing?”
“Really good. She’s in Boston, training to be a vet tech.” He searches my face before he continues. “You know, I’ve always been glad she had ‘the senior’ during that time. She became a new person after meeting you. More comfortable in her own skin. So: thanks for that.”
“You don’t have to thank me. She was my friend.”
He rocks on his heels, returning his gaze to the wall. Then he clears his throat, as if uncomfortable with the turn our conversation has taken. Still, maybe it will help; maybe my connection to Winnie, his gratitude that I took her under my wing, will sweep away any remaining suspicions he has of me.
“So whose hair is it?” I ask. “Now that you know for sure it’s not mine.”
“We’re working on that.”
“But this corroborates your theory, right? That someone was trying to look like me?” Nina’s voice zips through my head: Why would anyone want to be you?
“We’re investigating all possibilities,” Jackson says, back to evasive, professional. “But in the meantime, it would be helpful if you could give me the names of everyone who knew you were corresponding with Mr. Thorne.”
“Nobody. Just DonorConnect. My friend knew we’d exchanged a couple messages, but that’s it.”
Jackson pulls a notebook and pen from his pocket, opens to a blank page. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Nina Burke. But it’s not her. Her hair isn’t pink, for one thing, and—”
Jackson raises his pen like a finger to stop me. “It appears the hair was colored with the kind of dye that washes out easily. Likely with a single shampoo.”
I frown at that. “So you think this person was just… dyeing her hair every time she saw Morgan?”
“It’s possible.”
The effort that would take. It only reiterates Other Rosie’s commitment to fooling Morgan. To being me. I shake my head at the absurdity.
“Okay, well, one: Nina doesn’t have time for that, or for living a double life. She’s an ER nurse who mostly works nights. Not to mention she’s happily married. And two: she’d have absolutely no motive to infiltrate Morgan’s life and pretend to be me. She was the one who wanted me to stop talking to Morgan.”
Jackson arches a brow, intrigued instead of deterred. “And why is that?”
I press my lips together. This is the second time in twenty-four hours I’ve had to argue against Nina being behind this, but Jackson and Blair don’t know how long she’s loved me. Or how well. At her wedding, she dubbed me her Sister of Honor, “because you’ve always been family.” When Brad left me crumpled on my bedroom floor in my wedding dress, Nina smoothed my hair, swept my tears off my cheeks, without even asking why I had the dress in the first place.
“She thought it was weird,” I tell Jackson, “for me to start a relationship with the husband of my heart donor. She didn’t want me to get invested in such a complicated situation because she knows I get… attached to people.” I hear my mistake right away, even before Jackson glances up from his notepad. “I tend to throw myself into relationships headfirst. Or, heartfirst, I guess. I kind of leave my head behind.” I laugh, but the sound is awkward, rattling like a cough in my throat.
“What does that mean, exactly? To leave your head behind. You do things without thinking, or”—Jackson twirls his pen in thought—“you do things without remembering?”
An ache pulses in my forehead, like the edge of a hangover. “I just mean: love isn’t logical.”
“And you were in love with Mr. Thorne?”
“No, I’m saying Nina knows how it was for me with men in the past, so she—”
“And how was it? With men in the past.”
Even though he interrupted me, his tone is not forceful or unkind. He sounds almost casual, like someone on a date inviting me to share my romantic history.
“I just… go all in with the person,” I tell him. “And I usually end up hurt.”
Jackson’s pen races. “Is that what you’d say your list was? Going all in?”
I frown until I register the reference: my Notes app filled with details about Morgan.
“No, I— I hadn’t done that before.”
“I see you had a harassment prevention order filed against you.” His eyes rise from the page. Latch onto my face. “Can you tell me about that?”
Shame rushes through me, hot and prickly. Rich Silverstein assured me the order wouldn’t appear on my criminal record, but I should have expected a cop to find it with minimal effort. How much has Jackson seen? The transcript of voicemails and texts? The photos of blood on Brad’s steps? Does he know that, even when Brad wouldn’t speak to me, I told him in an email I’d love him forever?
“It— That was— It was a bad time for me, a-and—” I stammer, then stop. I’ve already shared too much. Ever since Jackson entered the store, I’ve handled this completely wrong. “I don’t think I should discuss that without my lawyer present.”
Jackson nods, unsurprised, then taps his notepad. “This friend of yours. Nina Burke. That’s Burke with an e ?”
“Yes,” I answer, before realizing why he asked. He’s going to question her about me. Because even though his sister liked me, even though my hair and phone number don’t match what they’ve connected to Morgan, there’s a court order in my past, a list of facts in my apps, that keep him from crossing me off his list. I set my hand on my desk, weary and woozy, and I wonder who else he’ll talk to. If Brad’s contact info is somewhere in his notebook.
The ache in my head knocks harder. Exhaustion presses on me, my eyelids like iron.
“One last thing,” Jackson says. “Did you know that Mr. Thorne was working on a book about a woman who had a heart transplant?”
I wince like he’s pressed on a bruise, and I see him catch that this isn’t news to me. Still, I don’t understand how it’s relevant. Unless he thinks it could somehow be motive? That I’m so unstable I’d murder a man for using me as research?
“I didn’t find out until yesterday,” I say, “when Blair Hawkins showed me some of Morgan’s emails.”
Jackson stops writing in his notebook to look at me. “You’ve been engaging with Mr. Thorne’s friends?”
He says engaging like it’s on par with stalking.
“No. Just Blair. And she approached me. She thought I was the Rosie from Morgan’s emails, and I explained the situation. We’re trying to figure out who that woman is. Because we both think she killed him.”
Jackson’s stare pierces through me, pensive and persistent, until he slaps his notepad shut.
“Thanks for your help,” he says. “That’s it for now.”
The abruptness unmoors me for a second. “Uh, okay,” I say as he opens my office door. I scurry behind him, conscious of the eyes that follow us to the front of the store—Marilee’s among them. I’m not sure how I’ll explain why the police keep contacting me.
“Will you update me?” I ask, trailing him outside, straight into sunshine I have to squint against. “If you find a match to the hair?”
He opens the door to his cruiser, then sets one hand on his hip, the other on the roof. “I’ll be in touch as needed. But, Rosie,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s done that: ditched the “Ms. Lachlan” without my prompting. “I’d advise you to watch out for yourself. It’s appearing more and more likely that someone went to great lengths to pretend to be you.”
It feels like whiplash, the jolt from his scrutinizing questions to something more like concern. His warning even echoes Blair’s from last night.
“So you think she’s a threat,” I say. “The woman Morgan dated. Which means you agree she could have killed him, right?”
Jackson resumes his stare, and in this light, it’s hard to tell if it’s just the sun that has him narrowing his eyes again.
“I don’t know what happened to Mr. Thorne,” he says. “But I’m doing everything I can to find out.”
He taps the hood of his car in goodbye, and just like earlier, I become aware of someone’s gaze. This time, I catch the culprit. Two culprits, actually. Piper and Edith have exited Sweet Bean and are standing on the sidewalk, taking stock of the scene: me speaking with a detective; him squinting at me, emphasizing his effort to catch Morgan’s killer.
As Jackson settles into his cruiser, Piper pitches her lips toward Edith’s ear. “Oh my god, see?” she says, not bothering to lower her voice. “Even the cops think she’s involved.”
I miss Edith’s response beneath the rumble of Jackson’s engine, but as Piper steers her into the parking lot, Edith peers back at me over her shoulder, same as she did when entering Sweet Bean—only now, she doesn’t look at me like I’ve betrayed her.
She looks at me like I’m dangerous.