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“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t think for a second that I’d believe you’re a murderer.”
“Why did she draw us here?” he asked. “We just wanted to get married and move on, both of us. Why are we here?”
“I don’t know.”
There was another moment of quiet, and then Eddie sat up in a swift motion, his legs swinging over the side of the bed. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.
I blinked. “Hear what?”
“I heard something.”
I hadn’t heard anything, but I rolled off the bed and stood as Eddie strode to the bedroom door in his old tee and boxer shorts. I recalled the things I’d heard—or thought I’d heard—in this house. Had Eddie heard them, too?
In my short nightie—it was cotton, but it was lacy, because when I packed, I thought I’d be on my honeymoon—I followed him into the main room. Darkness had started to fall away, and the furniture in the living room was just visible, the hump of the sofa and the dark squares of pictures on the walls. Nothing moved, and except for the ever-present ticking of the clock on the wall, there was no sound.
I followed Eddie’s back as he walked slowly toward the front door, listening between steps. “Out here,” he whispered.
Maybe it was Kal again, or maybe it was one of the other cops who was supposed to keep an eye on us at night. Were they still out there, sitting in their cruiser, or had Quentin and Beam reassigned them? Were Eddie and I still a threat?
Eddie stood at the front door. He put his hand on it, as if he could sense vibrations, and suddenly I had a bad feeling. Don’t open the door, I thought. I wanted to grab him, to tell him that opening the door was a bad idea.
“They’re gone,” Eddie whispered, letting out a breath. Then he unlocked the door and swung it open.
Outside was an empty porch and gray sky. The warm, damp air of a summer dawn. A breeze rustled the trees. There was no other sound in the silence.
Eddie stepped onto the porch and looked around. “Someone was here,” he said, and this time he sounded confident, completely sure. He walked barefoot down the steps to the front walk, looking left and right. “Maybe they went around back,” he said, holding up a palm briefly in my direction. “April, stay there.”
I crossed my arms over my breasts, hugging myself as he strode off through the grass around the side of the house. I could barely breathe. Far off in the sky, a starling called. I edged my feet forward, letting my toes touch the threshold of the front doorway, feeling the warm air on my bare legs. It was a beautiful morning for someone who hadn’t almost been murdered a few hours ago.
Then I saw it.
“Eddie, here,” I said, keeping my voice calm so I didn’t alarm him. “Come back and look at this.”
He reappeared instantly from the other side of the house, because he’d done a swift circle through the backyard. “What?” he asked.
I pointed.
Rose had a black mailbox affixed to the brick wall next to the front door. The corner of the mailbox was propped up by something that had been shoved inside. It could have been a flyer, or it could have been the mail, but I had the feeling it wasn’t either of those. I could see an edge of bright pink lettering, a familiar typeface I’d seen many times before.
Eddie walked back up the steps, lifted the lid of the mailbox, and pulled it out.
He unrolled it, and Alicia Silverstone’s face looked up at us. Someone had left us a copy of Seventeen magazine.
—
In Rose’s kitchen, Eddie and I turned on the overhead light and opened the magazine. It wasn’t much of a mystery how the magazine had arrived—it had to have come from the Snell sisters. Rose sure as hell didn’t have a subscription to Seventeen, and neither had Robbie.
“Why the subterfuge, do you think?” Eddie asked, opening the pages. “If there are cops watching Rose’s place, they’d see her putting the magazine in the mailbox.”
I flipped past a Benetton ad, a thick card with a perfume sample on it. “I don’t think there are cops watching the house. The Snell girls work in mysterious ways.”
“What are you doing?” Rose came into the kitchen, wearing her neck-to-feet housecoat and an irritated look. “It’s early.” She caught sight of the magazine. “Why are you reading that?”
“It was left in the mailbox,” I said.
Rose huffed. “Beatrice Snell.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “She’s probably in trouble with her parents and her phone privileges are cut off. Or she thinks someone is listening to her phone calls. What did she put in it?”
The magazine flipped open to the middle, where the subscription card was. Taped to the subscription card was a small envelope. Eddie detached it and opened it. I was starting to realize that no one had a sense of drama like a teenage girl—especially a Snell sister.
