AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I don’t think that I am.
* * *
Lucy was straightening the kids’ section when Jane entered the store, her cheeks red from the heat outside.
“Did you hear? Can you believe it?”
Thankfully, the bookstore was currently empty because if it wasn’t everyone would be gathered around to find out what Jane was talking about.
“I haven’t heard anything. What’s going on?”
“I was standing outside the hair salon talking to Mitzi,” Jane explained, sitting down on one of the cushions. “Mitzi got a call from her boyfriend Steve. He’s a deputy, you know? Anyway, he’d been called out because apparently a skeleton was found on the outskirts of town. They all think that it could be Lily Winslow.”
Lily Winslow.
She’d certainly been on the tip of every tongue lately. Because of the wedding, and then her children coming back to town. Now there was a body. Had she finally been found and could be laid to rest after a decade?
“That’s…shocking.”
“I know. It’s kind of spooky in a way. Creepy-like. It’s like Lily Winslow reaching out from the great hereafter and trying to stop her husband from marrying her sister. It’s sort of sinister and paranormal.”
“You don’t believe in the paranormal.”
“I don’t but after today I might change my mind. Don’t you think this is bizarre? Lily Winslow has been missing for ten years, and they find her the day before her husband and sister are supposed to get married. That’s some mad karma shit right there.”
Lucy didn’t believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and Bigfoot, but she was a big believer in karma. Karma, she was sure, was real. She’d seen it in action more than a few times.
“It’s also kind of morbid. They’re sure that it’s Lily Winslow? That’s a very fast identification.”
“They don’t know for sure,” Jane said. “They just think it might be.”
“It would be a good thing for the family to get some closure,” Lucy replied. “I’ll admit that it’s not the ideal time, but at least they might get some real answers to all of their questions. It can’t have been easy for them.”
From an outsider’s perspective, it had splintered the family apart. It was as if Lily Winslow had been the glue holding it all together. When she was gone…
“If she was buried out there, that means that this town has a murderer,” Jane said.
“It could have been accidental. It might not be a murder. You and I have been reading way too many true crime books.”
“It could be, or it could be a murder. A killer could be in our little town.”
“We’ve known for ten years that it was a possibility.”
Even longer, actually.
“Now we’d know for sure. That’s different.”
It was different even though Lucy didn’t want to admit it out loud. It meant that someone she passed or talked to on a daily basis might be a murderer. What was it that she’d seen in an article once? The average person walks by thirty-six murderers in their lifetime.
I don’t think I’ve ever met one.
She didn’t want to be the kind of person who side-eyed everyone she encountered on a daily basis.
“If it wasn’t an accident, that doesn’t mean we have a killer in Winslow Heights,” Lucy said. “They could have moved out, or they could never have lived here in the first place. That area has other little towns around it.”
“True. I don’t want there to be a murderer in town. It’s just that we have to think about the possibility. And that they were so clever, they got away with it.”
“We’ve definitely been reading too many crime novels,” Lucy chided.
