Chapter Twenty-Eight
TWENTY-EIGHT
Phoebe
We haven’t left the grocery store parking lot. Rain pelts our Honda, and we shelter in the backseat. Lounging longways, we face each other and prop ourselves up against the doors. Plastic bags of groceries hide our feet as we dig into them.
Hailey hands me a yellow marshmallow chick, then tears one in half for herself. “Most details about the Wolfes have been buried in old records at the Historical Society. Since Stella Fitzpatrick is the president, it’s been even harder to gain entry. I asked for permission to go through the archives, and she said no .”
Ugh, Stella . Claudia’s snooty best friend would be an annoying obstacle. “She can shove that no up her ass.”
Hailey smiles a little. “I did wish you were there to tell her off.”
“What was her reasoning for shutting you out?”
“She said I need special access, and to get that, I need to become certified in archival research. Which she said takes years . It seemed like bullshit. She doesn’t really like me or you. So Carter asked her for approval, and she denied him, too. I think she knew he was with me. We’ve been seen at the library together and mornings at Seaside Griddle on our laptops.”
I think about alternatives. Sneaking into the Historical Society at night and stealing books—it isn’t a safe or even realistic option. There are likely cameras galore, and the last thing we need is the sheriff taking special interest in us.
“What about Jake?” I ask. “Stella loves Jake, and his lineage is probably all over that place anyway. He could tell her he’s interested in his ancestry, like if any relatives fought in the American Revolution.”
“I had him help me next.”
My smile emerges. I’m proud of myself for coming up with an idea worthy enough to already be executed by my brilliant best friend.
Hailey picks apart her chick into tiny chunks. “Jake sweet-talked her into letting him through, but then, he pushed his luck and brought me up. To try to get me in there with him.”
I stiffen. “She revoked his access?”
“Yeah.” She eats a tiny piece and licks yellow sugar off her thumb. “A week later, I had Oliver try. He got Stella to let him in.”
My hopes rise.
“But she only gave him ten minutes. No photographs allowed, since it’d damage the paper, but he took a couple pics without flash. It was hard for him to figure out what to pull. I told him to look for the newspapers, but I only had a rough estimate about dates. He didn’t have that…that long.”
I swallow the marshmallow, and it goes down in a thick lump. Because Hailey suddenly goes sheet white. Swiftly, before I can even blink, she wrenches open the left-side door behind her and leans out into the thunderstorm. Vomiting on the cement.
“Hails!” I climb to my knees on the seat, groceries tumbling to the floor mats, and I reach out, gathering her platinum-blonde hair before it gets drenched.
With the door open, the wind roars, blowing rain into the Honda. She gags while I rub her back. We’re both getting wet, but I could be partially drowned right now and it wouldn’t steal my concern from her.
“It’s okay, Hails. You’re okay.”
After a long minute, she spits, then slides back onto the seat, and I reach out to shut the door for her. She groans while I squeeze the water out of her hair.
“Here, there’s a Snapple somewhere…” I search the grocery bags and hand her a peach tea.
She twists off the cap slowly, like her energy has been depleted. Her insomnia is one thing, but now she’s getting physically ill. My worry meter just smashed through the roof.
“You don’t look so hot,” I tell her. She’s still as pale as can be.
“I think I might be coming down with something.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and recaps the Snapple.
I release her hair, now just damp and not sopping wet. “Why don’t you go see a doctor?”
She ties her hair back with a black scrunchie, securing it in a low pony. “That involves having paperwork under Hailey Thornhall and submitting forms about familial history. Whatever I fill out, it’s permanent, and it involves more than just me.”
I understand what she’s saying.
Rocky and Trevor might not be biologically related in real life, but they’re her siblings in this town. She can’t exactly start making up a family history of lung disease without talking with her brothers.
We’ve never really made aliases that are this indelible.
“I can drive you to Rhode Island,” I say. “Take one of your fake IDs, so you don’t have to have any paperwork under Hailey Thornhall.”
“No, it’s okay.” She uncaps the Snapple, taking another sip. Rosy tint has returned to her cheeks. “I really think this is a twenty-four-hour bug, Phebs. I’ll be fine.”
“In twenty-four hours, if you’re not fine, though—we’re going to Providence. I won’t take no for an answer. I will throw you in the car.”
She has a lopsided smile. Her teary, sentimental eyes on me. “I love you for that.”
I shove the marshmallow chicks back in the grocery bag. I’m not one hundred percent sure if they caused Hailey’s sudden nausea, but I’m claiming they’re the culprit. I toss the bag back onto the floor mats.
“So what was Oliver able to pull about the Wolfes?” I reroute back to our earlier topic.
“Their family tree. At a certain point, it’s… morbid . It makes sense why no one in town likes to recount it whenever I ask. And I think, for a lot of people, it’s been lost through the years. It’s not online. It’s not easy to trace back. Only those who were here at the time likely know what really happened.”
I scoot closer to her as she opens her photos on her phone. Oliver took a pic of a yellowed newspaper. The typed font is faded, but it’s clear what this is.
“An obituary,” I say.
“He found four.”
Four deaths? How many newspapers did he sift through in ten minutes? “How did he have enough time to find four?”
“Because they all died within the same year.”
Chills slip down my spine.
“Emilia Wolfe’s late husband died first,” Hailey says, zooming in on his obit. “Heart attack in his sleep.” She reads out, “?‘William Wolfe leaves behind his devoted wife, Emilia, and three beloved children.’?” Her eyes shift to me. “Two sons and a daughter.”
It dawns on me. “The daughter—she’s the one who was married to Varrick?” He was Emilia’s son-in-law , only a Wolfe by marriage.
“Yeah.” Hailey swipes the photos. “Daphne.” The newspaper printed a headshot of Emilia’s daughter. Big teased hair and bangs, puffy sleeves on slender shoulders—it looks like an eighties prom photo. “She was only twenty-two when she died. But she wasn’t the second death.”
Hailey finds the right pic, then tries to zoom in. The paper is crinkled, more faded and torn. “After William Wolfe passed away, his firstborn son was next. Christian Wolfe,” Hailey says. “He died in a car crash.”
I have so many questions. “Was he in an accident with another car? Did he run off the road and hit a tree?”
“Those details aren’t in here.” She squints at the pic. “I’ve tried to see whether he was married, but I couldn’t find those records either. Not for him or for his younger brother.” Lowering the phone, she swipes to another pic of an obituary. “The second-born son, Brent Wolfe, took his life a week later by jumping off the harbor bridge.”
My stomach clenches. “And then Daphne?”
“Two months after that, she overdosed, leaving just Varrick and Emilia, who’ve lived in Stonehaven together for over two decades…until last November, when she passed away from chronic kidney disease.”
“And no one thought it was strange that this entire family just died one after the other?”
She has another glazed look. “I don’t think the residents of Victoria wanted this town to be known for a tragedy of this scale. It’s easier to bury it under the rug than memorialize it. To pretend it never really happened.” She clicks out of the picture. “Some families are cursed.” Her gaze shifts to me. “But information shouldn’t be this hard to find. I know it was 1986, not everything was logged into computers. Most records were still being handwritten and archived in places like the Historical Society, but I just keep thinking…”
“Someone is purposefully hiding what happened?”
She nods. “It feels like a cover-up.”
My brain whirls a mile a minute.
Even more when Hailey adds, “I find the timing to be peculiar.” She holds her bent knees to her chest.
Sitting cross-legged, I face her more. “You said this all happened in 1986?”
Hailey nods faster, her eyes widening like saucers.
Nausea builds in me now. “Hails…”
“I know,” she whispers. “That was around twenty-six years ago.” Her throat bobs. “I’ve matched up the dates with Carter’s intel. It’s the exact same time that the godmothers would’ve been in Victoria. They were here , Phebs, when the entire Wolfe family died.”
It’s not just that. My eyes sting. “Rocky is turning twenty-six soon.” He was born in ’86.
“We think he’s going to be twenty-six,” she reminds me. “But it’s too big of a coincidence. That they were here when this happened. And where was my brother?”
My heart swells, hearing Hailey still call Rocky her brother. I know that’d mean something to him, too.
I think about Addison and Elizabeth. “Could they have been involved in taking down the Wolfes? Maybe Varrick hired them like Jake hired us?”
Hailey leans toward the dashboard and switches on the heat. “It is the same exact job—minus the deaths. Varrick has already inherited Emilia’s entire fortune.”
Flashes of lightning brighten the darkness of the car. Thunder rumbles around us, and I watch Hailey’s eyes ping back and forth in thought.
“But they implied a con went poorly here,” Hailey says, “and that’s why we shouldn’t be in Victoria. So if the job was getting Varrick to inherit the Wolfe fortune, how did that go bad? It could be that Varrick isn’t involved at all, but their con somehow got the Wolfes killed by accident.”
“But can we trust that a con went bad? It’s another thing they told us, and we know they’ve been lying.”
She narrows her eyes at the windowpane. Rain drips down the glass. “Facts,” she says. “We know they lied about our origins, and we know they won’t tell us about their time in Connecticut.”
“I wish we could just ask them to give us the fucking truth,” I groan angrily. But asking them will get us lies or the colloquial it’s better if you don’t know .
Hailey grimaces. “It’s like…I see the answer, but I don’t. It’s right there…I know it’s there…but all I have are theories, and without evidence, they’ll never be fact, Phoebe. Facts are real. Beliefs aren’t, and we know how easy those are to warp.”
I can’t imagine what that feels like—knowing you have the capability to solve a riddle, but being forever one letter off because you’re lacking one necessary hint.
I could be given a thousand hints, and there’s a good chance I still wouldn’t solve the riddle. It’s not my forte, which is why I’m not beating myself up over it. On the contrary, Hailey would spend eternity in front of a sphinx, if she had to.
I admire her too damn much, but I hope our desires to figure this out aren’t putting an enormous pressure on her, too.
“Maybe you’re thinking too hard,” I say. “It could be one of those things that will naturally smack you in the face the moment you stop obsessing over it.”
She shakes her head wildly. “No, no. I don’t have all the information yet, Phebs. That’s the problem. Once I get the right piece to the puzzle, I will crack it.” She twists one of her stud earrings on her ear. “And what if…what if my brothers and I are all tied to this town, too? What if…”
“You’re from here?”
“It’s wishful thinking, okay? But maybe…just maybe…” She rubs at her reddened eyes.
I squeeze her kneecap. “It’s not that far-fetched to me, given the dates of everything. And it’d make sense why they wouldn’t want us in Victoria if they were trying to hide your origins here.”
“I’ve been thinking about genetics,” Hailey says quietly. “Eye color, hair, chin dimples.” She looks at mine, which I share with my brothers. “Food preferences.”
I scrunch my brows. “What food preference is genetic?”
“Cilantro,” she says, and her face goes pale again. She whips open the door a second time. We go for round two on the puke-a-whirl, and this time, we’re both soaked from the rainstorm when she shuts the door.
“Sorry, Phebs.” She downs the rest of her Snapple, still ashen. I wring out my hair, creating puddles on the floor mat.
“You puke one more time and I’m rushing you to the ER. We can make up a Thornhall backstory about your great-grandmother’s chronic toe fungus. I don’t care.”
“I’m fine,” she says determinedly.
I stare skeptically.
“ Really ,” she insists and picks up the conversation where we left it like it’s proof. “Cilantro. People who have a variation in their olfactory-receptor genes will more strongly detect the soapy-flavored aldehydes in the leaves.”
I pull off my drenched sweater. “Rocky thinks cilantro tastes like soap.” I freeze. “And so does Jake .”
We share an unblinking what if look.
“Could they be…?” I trail off.
“Secret brothers?” She sounds skeptical.
“And we just figured it out because of cilantro ,” I say in more disbelief.
“I’d give you an award,” Hailey tells me.
“We’d have to share it, since you’re the one who gave me your cilantro knowledge.” The mere thought of Jake and Rocky being somehow related is too far-fetched to even make sense in my brain. It’s a silly thought. Right?
And anyway, Rocky’s origins are so difficult to pinpoint. It almost feels like being blindfolded and throwing a dart at a list of a million and one names.
Hailey opens the air vents wider above her head. “Maybe we can—” A knock pounds on the rain-speckled window of our car, and we jump out of our skin.
“ Fuck ,” I curse.
Hailey flicks off the dim lights on the ceiling, and as darkness shrouds us, a face beyond the window comes into view. He’s crouched down to the height of the car door. And he must be holding an umbrella since he’s not wet.
“Get in the front seat,” I tell her, just as he bangs his fist again. We’re alone in a parking lot past ten p.m. in a sleepy little town. I’ve seen more than enough horror movies to know what happens next.
Hailey crawls into the front seat through the middle console, and I join her, plopping down in the passenger. Just as she starts the car, the man follows to her side window and knocks again.
“I-I think I recognize him,” Hailey tells me while the Honda rumbles to life.
I tighten my gaze at the window, but I barely distinguish his features in the dark.
“You okay in there?!” he shouts over a boom of thunder.
“We’re fine!” I yell back, not rolling down the window to welcome his arm in our car. No fucking way. Then I look to Hailey.
She mouths to me, Varrick Wolfe .
What the fuck?
“It’s late!” he shouts, jolting us again. “Two girls like yourselves shouldn’t be out alone on a night like this!”
“Thanks for the tip!” I mouth to Hailey, Drive . Then I yell back to him, “Have a good night, sir!!”
Hailey reverses and peels out of the parking lot.