Chapter 51
By the time I pull into my driveway, my dress is damp with tears. My legs ache from standing graveside for hours, refusing to move, refusing to let myself accept that Ivory is gone. The air in the neighborhood feels heavier than the cemetery, like it’s suffocating me with Ivory’s ghost.
Ever since I gave Stew’s evidence and my trail cam footage to the BBPD, all of Hemlock Drive treats me differently.
Almost reverential. And maybe a little scared of me too.
I was exonerated of the embezzlement crimes, but Ivory still died at my hand, and that’s all anyone remembers.
Although it was ruled self-defense, there are always doubters out there. Some of them even live on my street.
Two doors down from me, Zala pauses while raking her leaves, staring at me the way someone might look at a car crash.
She quickly pretends she wasn’t. Helping her corral the leaves into piles to mulch is Ali, who lifts a hand in silent greeting.
Fred has been staying out of the spotlight for the time being, and I can’t decide if he’s acting suspicious or wary.
But Wren’s house remains dark and empty ever since she was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and solicitation to commit felony assault. She’ll never drive again.
Marshall didn’t get off easy when he was charged with solicitation of a violent crime.
When he finishes his sentence he’ll still be young enough to sleaze his way into a new girl’s heart, but at least he won’t have the big bank account and fancy car to help him.
As for Gillian, she’ll be doing life behind bars.
I even made sure to let my friends on the inside know all about her in case they wanted to tell her I said hi.
On a positive note, everyone in Doomwood Falls now knows Gillian killed Janet Vick once her mugshot hit the Doomwood Falls Daily.
But they still believe Ivory faked her own abduction and Fred was cleared of all charges.
It doesn’t matter what I tell them, that there had to be someone else involved because Ivory would not have zip tied herself.
It doesn’t matter that all the evidence points to Ivory being a victim.
Some people look straight through the truth, as if it were made of glass.
I shut my car door too hard, and the sound startles a flock of sparrows from the telephone line. The silence afterward is fragile, like everything around me is one breath away from shattering.
When I turn toward my house, I spot Freida in her driveway, shoving suitcases into the trunk of her hatchback. She keeps glancing around like she’s afraid someone’s watching. Everyone has been a little jumpy since Janet’s murder.
“Freida!” I call after her on my way across the street. The autumn weather is kindly warm, but I can’t shake the nonstop chill. I meet her at the trunk of her car. “Going on a trip?”
She slams the trunk shut. Her face is streaked with dried mascara, but she forces a smile that looks more like a frown. “Yeah. My mom is gone and I just need to start over. There’s too much trauma here.”
My heart contracts painfully with empathy. “Did you say goodbye to Luca?”
Freida shakes her head. “No, can you tell your brother for me? And please tell him I’m sorry. I just can’t be a girlfriend right now. Not with everything that’s happened.”
“I understand.” I really do. I don’t know how long it will be until I can be a friend to anyone after losing Ivory so tragically.
There is something I need to ask her before she’s gone, but I’m terrified to speak the words. More terrified to hear what she’ll say.
“Can I ask you something?” I venture tentatively, hoping I don’t regret this.
“Sure.” She opens her driver’s side door, tapping her fingers impatiently on the hood of the car.
Freida isn’t giving me much time to word it properly, so I just shove the question from my mouth: “Do you blame me for what happened to your mom? What I mean is, do you hate me?”
A tear slides down her cheek, and Freida clasps my hand. “No, you were her best friend and tried to help her, even after you found out she had been plotting against you. I know it wasn’t your fault.”
“I appreciate that. I just wish I could have done everything differently.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure my mom wished that too. You know, I hope I find a friend like you and my mom were. Someone who will keep my heart’s secrets like you guys did.” She looks at the ground like she’s avoiding me.
Something in the way she says it—soft, careful, almost rehearsed—pricks the back of my neck.
Freida steps toward me, arms open for a hug.
I force myself to move into her embrace, but my whole body goes rigid.
Her grip tightens, just a second too long, and something cool and hard brushes the side of my neck—metal.
I pull back, startled. And that’s when I see it.
The necklace. Two small gold lilies glinting against Freida’s collarbone. My lungs seize.
That’s Ivory’s necklace. Except it can’t be, because I placed it on her in the casket. I saw it resting against Ivory’s skin when they closed the lid. I carried her to the grave with that necklace inside the box.
Before Freida releases me, she whispers something in my ear that has the effect of an ice bath.
“What do you mean?” I ask, but she’s already slid into her car.
Wiping her cheeks one last time, she tries to hide the emotion on her face but she can’t hide it from her voice. “Goodbye, Shari.”
She shuts the door. The engine roars to life. My eyes dart from her face to the necklace again, exactly like mine. Except—
My hand flies to my neck. It’s bare.
“No,” I whisper. “How did she—?”
Then her car peels away from the curb. I don’t wait around to watch her drive off before I bolt into my house so fast I nearly slip on the welcome mat. Once upstairs, I run straight into my bedroom where I had last put my necklace. My nightstand drawer jerks open under my shaking hand.
The little velvet box where I keep my necklace is empty and in its place sits a photograph.
I pick it up with trembling fingers. With our arms linked, it’s a picture of me and Ivory at the fair last spring after a near-death experience on the Salt and Pepper Shaker carnival ride.
She’s smiling, wide and bright, and I’m laughing beside her because every conversation with her had laughter.
On the back of the photo, in black ink, are the handwritten words:
If my heart’s a secret, you’re the keeper.
I’ve heard that phrase before. No, not heard it but read it.
It’s what Ivory and I had engraved on our matching necklaces.
My pulse spikes, because I read it somewhere else too.
The text I received supposedly from Ivory—rather, her phone—after she disappeared, claiming she was fine. Apparently she wasn’t.
The room tilts. I almost collapse. It was Freida who abducted Ivory, not Fred, and I know now why.
After all the details about Gillian came out, I had assumed she had sent the text and taken part in the abduction, but Ivory never admitted to it.
I couldn’t understand why Ivory didn’t blame Gillian for her abduction, when she confessed to everything else.
Ivory had no reason to protect her. But for Freida, whose words echo in perfect alignment with the text, Ivory would do anything to protect.
Even if it meant taking the identity of her kidnapper daughter to the grave so Freida wouldn’t pay the price for her crime.
It wasn’t Marshall or Fred or Gillian who staged Ivory’s disappearance or abducted and tortured her. It was Freida, and a fragment of her funeral speech explains why.
I always had to protect her from herself… from how deeply she loved… from the ways she trusted too easily.
Freida’s last words suddenly make sense. “I did it to protect you too,” she had whispered in my ear.
I didn’t understand it at the funeral, but now I do.
Freida was trying to protect both of us—me from Ivory, and both of us from Gillian.
She had known what her mother was plotting and didn’t want my life ruined over Ramsey’s mysterious death, or her mother thrown in jail over a man who never loved her.
So she zip tied her mother in the garden shed to give her an alibi for Janet’s murder.
There was no way she could ever be connected to that homicide, despite Gillian’s threat.
Freida did what she had to in order to protect her mother, and Ivory kept that secret to protect her daughter.
If my heart’s a secret, you’re the keeper.
Freida’s probably already halfway to the state line, and I’ll let her keep going. No one will ever know the truth but me.