Chapter 76
“My. Will you look at that.” Constance was leaning forward, face close to the computer screen.
Tessa whirled toward her. “What?”
“One last moment.” Constance’s fingers tapped across her keyboard, and her silver mouse clicked once. Then again. “Let me confirm.”
Tessa imagined the bang of a gavel. A cosmic jury verdict. If the answer is there, and you don’t know it, the truth still exists.
And what was impossibly gut-wrenching: at this moment in the recesses of the Philadelphia library, if she was about to hear who she’d—who had died, she’d also understand exactly who was behind all the threats. She’d know the name of the victim’s family.
Her victim’s family.
In which case she did owe them. And Emily, too. Not just money, but owed them for years of shirked responsibility and manipulated delusional thinking and covering up the death of their loved one. Tessa hadn’t been driving. But that was no consolation.
“Ms. Calloway? Tessa?”
Tessa had fallen so deep into the past that she startled at Constance’s voice. “Did you—”
“Nothing.” Constance swiveled her chair to face Tessa. “No deaths reported. Must be sparsely populated.”
“Not at all?” Tessa tried to figure out what this could mean. No meant no. None meant none. “No deaths at all?”
“Not a one. So, good for you. You can write about whatever you want. No one will think it’s based on reality.”
Part of her said to leave well enough alone. Jury goes home. End of story. End of guilt and end of danger and end of fear. Could that be?
No one had died that entire week in that entire county. The Rubik’s cube of her memories clicked, adjusted, created a new picture. A new picture of her own life.
It had been a deer?
It had been a deer ?
“Not even in an unexplained accident?” She had to ask. Had to push. Had to know, now that she was so close. If she was going to do this, it had to be no-holds-barred. “Or someone who was never identified?”
Constance looked at her from over her glasses. “Forgive me, do you want someone to be dead? These are the official statistics.”
“No. Definitely not. Okay. Terrific.” She tried to laugh, the self-deprecating author. “This is a treat, having someone do research for me. Usually I do my own. But is there another place to look?”
“One moment…” Constance was mouse-clicking so quickly Tessa could not follow her trail.
Tessa’s reality—her memories—felt in motion, rearranging themselves.
“All right. Here.” Constance gestured to the screen.
“Local paper has no obits for August. In the July obits, it says a Sally-Anne LaJeunesse fell off a ladder in her apple orchard, then someone drowned at a hotel. Then nothing until September, when a Porter Harmon had a heart attack at the fish plant.”
“So that means no one died there. In August.”
Constance pursed her lips. “Well, not exactly. I can only show you what exists, so it simply means there’s no official record of it. And you know how unreliable newspapers can be. And official records are only complete if everyone follows the reporting rules.”
“So there still may be—”
“Well, Ms. Calloway, you know how people are about following rules.”
“True.” How well she knew.
Tessa looked at the stacks of cello-covered library-bound books on the floor beside her.
Stories authors had spun, tales that were created to sound true, but that, in reality, were fully imagined.
This story changed my life, people would say about a favorite book.
Stories could matter, and they could have influence, but they were still only stories. But truth was truth.
But if no one in Blytheton had died that day, or even that week… If what Constance found was true, her mother’s acquiescence, or her fear, had sentenced them all to twenty years of sorrow. Tessa had not failed her mother. By accepting a lie, her mother had failed her .
If the records were complete.
“Anything else?” Constance had stood. “I’m looking forward to your next book.”
“Thanks, Constance.” Would there even be a next book? “You’ve been so helpful.”
“I’m a librarian,” she replied.
“Lucky for me.” Tessa smiled her gratitude, but as she hurried back to the hotel, she hoped it had been lucky. At least she had evidence. Of… something.
But there was no way Tessa could know what was actually true—and what she only wished was true.