26 Elena
Elena
They wait as Joey puts in a couple of hours at the coffee shop.
Gael stands and announces that he’s going to go explore, even though she tells him flat out that there’s not much to explore.
“Cool camera,” Sophie says as he pulls the second strap over his head.
“Thanks. My art teacher gave it to me. It’s an SLR.
Super old, like from 2015, but it still works great.
Want to see?” He shows Sophie while Elena slips a few dollars in his pocket for lunch.
In another minute, he makes the two of them smoosh together at the table and snaps a photo.
Elena’s head pounds with the sudden movement.
Then, he’s out the door. Elena tries to imagine what this town looks like through his young unjaded eyes, but she can’t.
Sophie is agitated and keeps hugging her bag to her chest. It’s an annoying tick. Elena wants to tell her that no one wants to steal her diaper bag that she’s disguising as a purse, but she holds back the urge to open her mouth about it. It’s this hangover. It’s making her snippy.
There’s a sound behind her. Elena turns to find Joey hovering.
“All done?” Elena asks. Joey nods and glances back at the counter. There are only two other people in the whole place, but Joey’s aproned peon sloshes milk into a pitcher, looking like he’d rather put a dagger into Joey’s back than watch her socialize.
“He seems nice,” Elena says.
Joey is distracted. “No,” she says. “I mean, yes, he is. But no, I… Sorry, it’s the weirdest thing.
Remember that little painting that was hanging on the wall over there?
I’m not sure where it is.” They all turn to look as if to assess for themselves, and Elena does remember a very amateur bit of artistry from back in the day, a modest, book-sized painting of the old general store.
They spent so many afternoons here. Elena is surprised that she remembers, but the wall there does look strange without it, like it’s been stripped and exposed against its will.
She untwists the lid on a Perrier and sips.
The carbonation is gone, and it tastes all wrong.
“Ask your guy over there.” She nods to the grump behind the espresso machine. “He is probably just doing some redecorating.”
Joey waves a hand through the air as if dismissing the missing painting and, with it, the fact that she should probably still be working. She takes a seat and rummages through her backpack.
“Joey, I’ve been thinking,” says Sophie quietly. “I know we said it was dangerous, but I think we should go to the police and tell them about the sweatshirt.”
Joey doesn’t answer. She just tosses a file enclosing a stack of papers onto the table. It lands with a slap, and both Elena and Sophie jump. Elena almost knocks over her Perrier but rights it before it can spill.
“What is this?” says Sophie, lifting the front flap of the folder.
Joey puts a finger to her lips to hush them. “At first, I thought we needed the police too,” she whispers. “But now I don’t think it’s such a good idea.” Then she nods at the file, indicating that they should open it and find out what she means.
Sophie sifts through it with the care of a rare book archivist. Elena looks over her arm, and when she sees what it is, she feels an immediate, visceral jolt of danger. “How did you get this?”
Sophie has caught on now, and she is flipping back and forth between two of the pages. “Are you supposed to have this?” she whispers.
Joey doesn’t seem nervous at all. Maybe it’s because she owns this place, and it’s given her false confidence. Or maybe she is just done giving a shit about what anyone in this town thinks. That, at least, Elena can relate to.
“Look,” says Joey, all business. “There are no pictures of Quinn’s body or clothes in the file.” Thank god, Elena thinks. “But there are notes from the coroner.” Joey finds the right page and points her finger at some hand-scrawled notes.
Elena reads. There is a reference to a “sharp force injury to the right posterior skull—likely fatal” and a mention of a broken humerus and clavicle.
A few “contusions on the upper back,” but that’s it.
It’s only one paragraph. Quinn had a broken collarbone and shattered shoulder.
The impact from her fall was on her right side and back. And, of course, her head.
“No mention of the wounds on her front abdomen,” Elena says, realization dawning.
“Seven stab wounds on a victim and no one even writes about it in the police report?” Her hand is shaking, she realizes.
She isn’t sure if it’s the hangover or the image that’s implanted in her brain, resurfacing.
Quinn lying there. Dead and alone. She squeezes her drink and feels the plastic flex beneath her grip.
Sophie pushes the Trivial Pursuit box to the side as if that will help her get a better look. “Maybe they didn’t know what they were looking at?”
Elena has never admired Sophie’s relentless optimism or her insistence on believing the best in people. From Elena’s experience, most people are shit. She shoves the pages back inside the folder and presses it closed. “Who were the police officers that worked on this case?” she asks Joey.
“Jim Hunstad and Bill Berg. River’s dad and Marissa’s dad.”
Sophie’s fingers pick mindlessly at the damp top of a Saran-wrapped muffin. It’s making Elena feel sick. “This is sort of unrelated,” Sophie says. “But you said Jim Hunstad, and it made me think of something.”
Elena notices Joey fidgeting. The lean muscles in her arms tighten as she reaches behind her and works at her apron string.
“River and Quinn were dating back then,” continues Sophie. “Is it too far-fetched to think she gave River the book? To hide it for her?”
“I don’t know,” says Joey. “It doesn’t make sense that she would hide the book from us.”
“It’s a good theory,” says Elena. “What are the chances River still lives in town? We could check.”
Joey finally unties her apron and then wraps the strings around her hands until they go white. “He does, but Quinn wouldn’t give it to him. He didn’t even know about the magic.”
Elena is fed up with Joey shooting down their ideas.
“It’s not like whoever has it can use the magic anyway.
Only the four of us—three of us—can. Quinn would have known that.
To anyone else it looks like a bunch of empty pages inside an old book.
But we should still look. A summoning spell might help bring us something substantial, like you said, Joey, remember?
Worth a try anyway because you’re right…
” She motions to the file on the table in front of them. “We cannot go to the police.”
Before anyone can respond, there is a squeal of tires on pavement.
A rusty white truck bumps onto the curb right in front of the coffee shop.
It grazes the side door of a car that’s parked right next to it, but the impact doesn’t stop the truck’s momentum.
It keeps going. In fact, it looks like it’s going to smash right into the window right in front of where they’re sitting.
They all jump to their feet at the same time just as the truck finally jerks to a stop. Joey scoops up the paperwork and clutches it to her chest. A man tumbles out of the truck. Straw hair covers one eye. The other is shot straight through with red veins.
Tom Winter. Elena didn’t realize how familiar his face would be.
It’s been more than fifteen years since she’s seen him in person.
He spots the three of them inside the window, and his eyes meet hers.
She takes an involuntary step back. She’s seen that look before.
When she was fifteen, Elena’s mother shoved her into a closet and rage-screamed fifty-three Hail Marys through the slatted door.
When Elena was seventeen, her mother bound her to a chair with a shoelace before pelting her in the face, hard, with the Bible.
“You don’t earn God’s love by being a slut! ”
It comes from the soul, that kind of fury, and she would recognize it anywhere.
Tom flings open the door, nearly taking it off its hinges, and marches toward Elena.
He leans in until his red-spidered nose is touching hers.
“Whatdidyoufuckingdo.” His words blend together, consonants slurred.
His breath is rank. Elena grits her teeth, her hand tight on the chair.
She does not lean back. She doesn’t give an inch, even as his sweaty forehead touches hers.
Adrenaline lights up the muscles in her limbs, and she shoves him away with a forearm.
He grabs her, his watery gaze unsettlingly direct.
In another second, he’s being pulled back.
The grumpy guy from behind the counter is there, grabbing Tom’s arm, pushing his body between them.
Tom growls, keeping his eyes locked onto Elena’s.
He spits as he talks. “A woman came to my house. From the movie. Somehow, she heard about Quinn. Asking all these questions, wanted to use Quinn as inspir—” he fumbles over the word—“inspiration for her character in the goddamn movie. I asked her how she found out about Quinn, and get this, she told me it was you who told her, Elena.” He breaks off as a new emotion ripples through his anger.
“Said you told her what happened to Quinn wasn’t an accident.
Said you thought it was murder. Now why would you say that?
” He tries to wriggle free, gasping. “Tell me why, goddammit! Why would you drag my little girl into this?”
Elena’s thoughts are yanked back to the warning Cal Pierce gave her this morning.
He was right. She shouldn’t have trusted any of them.
And as for Nicola Bianco, who she has no doubt is the “actress” Tom’s referring to, that was lightning quick.
What did she do, wake up this morning, fresh-faced, and think, Gee, I’ll go track down the dad of the deceased teenager Elena told me about twelve hours ago?
It’s true that Elena shouldn’t have polished up Quinn’s death like it was in-person clickbait, but what a weird thing for Nicola to do. Like, what the actual fuck?
There are a few patrons in the coffee shop now, and each of them—every single one—is glaring at her. She can feel their gazes like shards of glass in her back.
“Leave her alone.” It’s Joey who says it, and Elena wants to tell her it’s fine, she can handle it, because she doesn’t need Joey to stand up for her, not after she did this to herself. She can blame Nicola all she wants, but this was her. What is wrong with you, Elena? she thinks.
But Tom Winter is not done. He turns to Joey now, inches from her face, spitting rage.
“And you. I saw your car leaving my house. Yeah, that’s right.
I saw you. The knife you left on the counter…
What was that, a warning? And her sweatshirt.
Her beautiful sweatshirt. What the hell did you do to it?
” It’s a statement, not a question. “I told that lady cop. I told her you broke in, that you messed with my baby’s stuff.
You’ll go to prison for breaking into my house.
You’ll go to hell. What is wrong with you?
You were supposed to be her friends. It’s not right.
It’s not right what you did.” With each word, his passion deflates slowly, giving way to sorrow.
Finally, exhaustion seems to strong-arm his anger altogether, and he begins to shake.
“Why, goddammit? Why did you touch her stuff?”
Elena sees him crumble, noticing how slender he is, how his bones look like they would crack under the slightest pressure, and how he stands with a stoop, as if in constant pain.
She watches him as he loses control of himself and slides to the floor.
She is horrified that she has caused this, that she wrecked a man still consumed by grief.
He is angry, but this does not seem like a man who killed his own daughter.
She becomes aware that everyone in the coffee shop is still staring at her—at Joey and Sophie too—but mostly her. And she knows why. She has been home for two days and already she’s kicked a hornet’s nest. At her feet, Tom Winter brings skeletal fingers up to his face and sobs.