Silence filled the space between them before Jo voiced something to her best friends she hadn’t shared with anyone else. “He was murdered.”
Zoe sucked in a breath.
“What? I thought it was an accident,” Mel said, dumfounded.
“I know what everyone thinks. I also know what I know.”
“But everyone said—”
“Accidental shooting. I know. That’s what I was told. No one was more careful with his firearms than my dad.”
“Jo?” Zoe held doubt in her tone.
“What are the chances of you placing your palm in a vat of hot oil, Zoe? Or you pushing Hope off a cliff?” she asked Melanie.
Both women held their breath and stared.
“I know what I know. I read the reports. I have little memories that come back to me every once in a while. They started surfacing after his death. I remember this time of year always being difficult for him.”
“Kids graduating, lots of parties.”
“The annual high school reunion followed by the Fourth of July and everything surrounding it. I know. But it was more than that,” Jo insisted.
“Are you sure?”
Jo nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. One of the things I learned in the academy is that criminals often return to the scene of the crime.”
“And that’s why you’re still here. To find your dad’s killer.”
Jo met Zoe’s gaze and moved to Mel’s. “Yeah. I’ll find him. Eventually.”
She took in her father’s tombstone and offered her pledge in silence.
I’ll find him, Daddy.
“Did it shrink?”
“The gym?”
Melanie looked up into the eves of the high school gym and could have sworn the room had shrunk. “Wasn’t it bigger?”
“I don’t think so,” Zoe muttered.
“The whole town feels smaller than when we lived here.” It didn’t help that a few staple storefronts had closed down because of the poor economy.
“I hear ya. My old room feels like a shoe box.” Zoe had spent the first night at her mom’s and then decided to bunk up with Jo.
“I’m pretty sure none of us exploded . . . how is it possible everything feels smaller?”
Zoe led Melanie toward the purple and gold decorated registration table. The official reunion party wasn’t for another day, but today they were asked to help sort out the list of names of attendees who were coming to the event into the clubs and activities they knew the alumni had participated in.
“I think our minds expanded, making everything else feel smaller.”
Melanie could buy that. “You know what’s funny . . . the inn doesn’t feel smaller. Everything else . . . yeah. Even the gas station looks tiny. I know it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t, right?”
Zoe fell silent, her eyes locked across the room.
Melanie followed her friend’s gaze and sighed.
Luke stood talking to a couple of guys who looked familiar but she couldn’t place names to.
And Zoe stared.
Melanie stood beside her, silent with her own thoughts.
“Why does he have to look so damn good?” Zoe quietly asked.
“He always looked good.” But he only had eyes for Zoe. Once the two of them hooked up, the town instantly assumed there would be li’l Zoes and li’l Lukes following behind in no time.
The town had been wrong.
“Just the women I’ve been searching for.”
Melanie cringed.
“Margie.”
Full of her fake bubbly self, Margie approached them with a yearbook in one hand, a pom-pom in the other. “If it isn’t Zoe Brown, River Bend’s claim to fame.” The compliment brushed hands with sarcasm.
“Well if it isn’t Margie Taylor.” Zoe matched her sarcasm and added a smirk. “Still motivating the football team?” Zoe wiggled her fingers under the dangling plastic strings of their school colors.
“Once a cheerleader always a cheerleader.”
“Is that so?”
Margie kept her fake grin in place as she spoke. “How is that cooking thing you’re doing?”
Zoe’s jaw tightened and Melanie stood back.
In the past, Zoe would light into Melanie with a snarky zinger that put the other woman back for a week.
The tight jaw lasted two breaths and Zoe shook her head. “It’s doing very well, thank you. I’m happy to say my pastime in high school afforded me a living.” The words she didn’t say hung between them, but God help Margie, she didn’t hear them.
Margie’s pastime was hooking up with everyone else’s boyfriend.
“That’s wonderful for you.”
An awkward moment of silence followed before Margie glanced at her feet, and then the yearbook in her hands. “Oh, I almost forgot. There are a few people I was hoping the two of you could identify.”
The three of them moved to a table and peered at the yearbook.
Looking at the pictures of a decade past had Melanie wondering where her old yearbook ended up. She’d left it with her mom when she went off to college, but then some of her belongings went with her dad to Texas.
The pages of the track team splayed out and some of the happier times in her life surfaced.
“I’m going to break out in a sweat just looking at these pictures,” Zoe said.
“Remember Coach Reynolds’s punishment for showing up late to practice?”
Zoe cringed. “Running Lob Hill . . . that sucked.”
Lob Hill sat beyond the track and football field on the far north of the school. There wasn’t a street or anything to it other than a forty percent incline that made running up it grueling. Whenever the team had shown out or arrived late, or simply pissed off the coach by not paying attention, Lob Hill was mentioned and they all took off running.