They all nod and eye me over. Then a few tear their attention off of me and glance at a man standing at the head of the circle. He’s tall with broad shoulders and a scruffy jawline. He’s around my mother’s age, give or take a few years, and he’s wearing slacks and a button-down shirt, which would seem a little odd since we’re in the woods, but about half the guys here are dressed like this. A few girls are wandering around dressed similarly to me in short skirts or tight dresses—it’s an unsaid dress code at these events.
“Clover, huh?” The man everyone is looking at speaks to me. “You’re about as old as my daughter.”
I keep on smiling, but my legs are unsteady. Does he know who I am? Does he know why I’m really here?
“What’s her name?” I ask. “Maybe I know her.”
“Don’t worry about that for now.” He steps toward me, and as the firelight casts across his face, I realize his dark eyes are ravenously drinking me as if I’m the most ideal prey he’s ever seen. He offers me his hand. “Come with me, Clover. Let’s take a little walk underneath the stars.”
I want to scream. I want to run. I want to wither into nothing where I become one with the dirt, where I’d die, and maybe there, I’d see Zoey again.
But instead, I place my hand in his.
It’s one of the worst decisions of my life, and in the end, I do wither, but I don’t die. No, my body still exists, but my soul remains buried with the rotting roots of the trees.
27
AVA
Sometimes when my mind is spiraling with anxiety, raveling into tangled knots, I visualize myself swimming. It’s not like I even like to swim. But the idea of being out in the middle of a lake where no one else exists—where nothing else exists—except for me, the sunlight, and a gentle breeze is tranquil. Although sometimes it backfires, and I find myself sinking under the water.
Right now, I’m sinking under it, no matter how hard I kick my legs. Through the surface, the sunlight begins to slip away, stealing any drop of tranquility.
“Ava.” Ellis’ voice pierces through the water like a ray of light.
I blink, my gaze snapping to him. He’s crouched in front of me, his eyes searching mine.
“Can you hear me?” he asks, his voice conveying caution.
I give an unsteady nod. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I was married to a murderer,” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes. “So it is my fault a little.”
“First of all, we don’t know for sure if Jason killed her. Just because she dated him doesn’t mean he ended her life. Secondly, you didn’t know Jason was dating her.” He brushes a strandof my hair out of my eyes, causing me to flinch. He quickly withdraws his hand. “You can’t blame yourself for this.”
“I can blame myself for not speaking up,” I say. “I should’ve put it together. Now that I think about it, the vase of daisies he had on his dresser… I should’ve known they were from her.” Plus, that time I was drugged at that party, and Clover was begging for my help… I thought the guy leaning over her and stroking her hair looked familiar, but I could never quite get it to connect.
Now I can.
It was Jason.
It was the one time I saw them together. I just didn’t realize it, mostly because I was drugged, but also because I was afraid.
“Ava, you were a victim who was scared into silence, so you can’t blame yourself for any of this. There are a ton of people in this world who have been tortured so brutally, both mentally and physically, that they keep silent about all the dark things that exist. Things that most people are too afraid to acknowledge exist because it would shatter their naive realities.”
His words drag me out of the water.
“You really believe that?” I wonder.
He nods without hesitation. “With all of my soul.”
I smash my lips together, summoning a deep breath. “So, how do we figure out if Jason murdered Clover?”
He pushes up and sits down beside me on the sofa. “Can you tell me how you connected him to being the guy she was dating?”
I grab the diary and tap the page with my finger. “She mentioned she told the guy she was dating about mine and her daisy friendship. She says right here that she gave this same guy a vase of daisies, and he put them on the dresser where they dried out, but he’s never thrown them away. When I was dating Jason, he had dried daisies in a vase on his dresser. They were old and wilted, but I think he somehow preserved them becausesome of the petals were still attached to the stems. I think there’s ways to do that.”
