Текст книги "Sweet Jiminy: A Novel"

Автор книги: Kristin Gore

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Part Three

Chapter 13

Jiminy stood at the edge of the courthouse steps and scanned the lawn for Bo, whom she felt a bit desperate to find. She wanted to talk to him, alone, away from everything and everyone else. When they were together, she’d felt more like herself than she had her whole life, and she longed again for that sensation.

Disappointed not to spot him, she sank down beside the memorial for Fayeville soldiers killed in battle, closed her eyes, and turned her face sunward.

She tried to clear her mind, determined to have a little part of this day for herself only. A little sunny, quiet part. She needed to sort some things out.

A few minutes later, she sensed someone standing over her. She smiled without opening her eyes.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

It took a lot of willpower to keep her eyes closed, but she hoped the effect was confident and sexy. She wanted Bo to want her back.

“Meeting with the clerk,” Carlos answered.

Jiminy’s eyes flew open in surprise.

“Oh! Hi!” she exclaimed.

Carlos laughed.

“Expecting someone else?” he asked.

Jiminy blushed.

“I’m happy it’s you,” she replied.

This was sincere. She really liked Carlos. Nothing physical had happened between them since the night he’d almost kissed her, and Jiminy didn’t plan for them to be anything other than friendly colleagues. But the alternatives hovered, quickening the pulse between them. She felt them in the way he looked at her, in his crooked smile.

“Busy?” Carlos asked.

“Deeply. Can’t you tell?”

He lay down in the grass next to her, leaning back on his elbows.

“This is the best part of my day so far,” he said.

The night they’d been interrupted by the ambulance whisking Jiminy’s grandmother past them to the hospital, when Walton had spotted them and pulled over his car to tell them what was happening, Carlos had watched Jiminy struggle to process the news. He’d watched her blame and then absolve herself, all amid shock and grief. He’d fallen a little for her in that moment. His ex-wife would say it was because of the drama and the sirens and the overall chaos. She’d say the turmoil was what he was attracted to, and that he was simply cultivating affection for a woman who could conveniently embody it. And if that was true, then he would tire of Jiminy once the excitement had passed. He didn’t plan to overtly pursue her; he intended to focus on the work at hand. But her company was a pleasant perk of the job, and he allowed himself to imagine further possibilities.

“Any luck today?” she asked.

They’d run into roadblock after roadblock trying to persuade various Fayevillians to speak openly about what had happened to the Waters. Thus far, the defunct 1966 almanac had been more forthcoming about what may or may not have transpired that year than any living breathing human had. People didn’t even want to discuss what the weather had been like, or the crop yield. They just went silent and blank. Some seemed ashamed, others depressed, a few defiant. A surprising number seemed amnesiac.

Carlos sighed.

“None to speak of. You?”

Jiminy shook her head.

“No. Though I can’t get my mind off of those photos, especially the self-portrait of my granddad and the shot of Lyn. There’s something so haunting about them,” she said.

“You and your pictures,” Carlos replied.

Jiminy took Polaroids of everyone they spoke to—quickly and without asking permission. It often caused immediate discomfort, but Jiminy couldn’t help herself. Carlos had given up trying to dissuade her. At night, she arranged the photos across her bed in a celluloid lineup.

But it was the album of her grandfather’s decades-old photos that continued to preoccupy her. Carlos had threatened to confiscate it, to force her to focus on activities that might actually advance their case. Jiminy thought of this now, as the sun beat down on them. She felt herself getting overheated.

“Can we get out of here?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Carlos replied.

He stood and pulled her up after him. Just ahead of them, Bo walked out of the library. For a split second, Jiminy simply froze. Then she dropped Carlos’s hand to move toward Bo.

“There you are!” she exclaimed.

“Hi,” Bo said, in a tone that stopped her short of the hug she might have been going for.

He hadn’t meant to sound so curt. Bo had seen the look that crossed Jiminy’s face when she’d spotted him. It had been thrilled and confused and worried all at once. But he’d also seen her holding hands with Carlos, and now he just needed to get away from them. He didn’t want to hate Carlos, or resent Jiminy, or second-guess himself. He wanted to be bigger than all of those emotions.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Jiminy said.

Bo stayed silent.

“I’ve actually gotta check on something in the library,” Carlos interjected as he moved easily past them.

Jiminy kept her eyes trained on Bo.

“I need to talk to you.”

Bo heard the plea in her voice, but didn’t let himself weaken.

“I can’t now, I’ve gotta get somewhere,” he replied.

Jiminy nodded slowly, upset. They both were.

“So you must’ve taken the MCATs,” she said. “Congratulations.”

“I won’t know how I did for a while, but thanks,” he answered.

They stood looking at each other, hamstrung by awkwardness.

“I really miss you,” Jiminy blurted.

She was embarrassed, then resolved.

“I do,” she continued with a shrug. “A lot. I miss being with you. I know you don’t think we can be together in this place, but I just want you to know that I wish things were different. I’m trying to make them different.”

Bo took this in, swallowed, breathed.

“Thanks,” he replied. “But you seem to have moved on pretty well.”

Confusion flashed through her features. Despite himself, Bo felt an urge to lift his hand and trace the outline of her lips. He looked away.

“I really do need to get going,” he said.

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Jiminy protested. “There’s nothing—”

“I gotta go, J,” Bo interrupted. “It’s okay, it’s all okay.”

He smiled to cover the ache he felt, then moved past her, close enough to smell her coconut hair. He held his breath until he was in the clear.

Chapter 14

Walton hadn’t intended to abuse his ongoing privileges at the hospital to sneak into Travis Brayer’s room. Still, there he found himself, sitting bedside, scribbling in his notebook and looking at his old friend.

As he watched Travis sleep, Walton thought back to the night when he’d been brought the bodies of Edward and Jiminy, and Henry had implored him to treat them with the dignity he’d show any others. Any others who were white, he’d meant.

“There’s no difference,” Henry said.

“Of course there’s a difference,” Walton argued. “And you know the boys won’t like it if I do this. Edward and Jiminy are gone, their people will bury them, that’s it.”

“No,” Henry said fiercely. “This matters.”

“I know you were close,” Walton said, putting his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I know he was almost like a brother to you—”

“Do you?” Henry interrupted. “Do you really have any idea how close we were?”

Walton looked away, at anywhere but into Henry’s furious, anguished face.

“And Jiminy—” Henry exclaimed, his voice cracking.

This was the moment Walton had decided to agree, to help, to do no further harm. He’d set about cleaning and dressing Edward’s and Jiminy’s wounds, keeping his head bent, aware that Henry was watching silently, tears pouring down his face.

Walton hadn’t quite finished when Lyn came into the room, but he’d at least made them presentable—if it’s even possible to make the bodies of loved ones presentable to people who only want them to be alive.

Considering how Lyn behaved, Walton was relieved that he hadn’t let her see her husband and daughter when they’d been in any worse shape. Henry had been right: this mattered. There was no difference.

He watched Lyn’s excruciating reaction, and how Henry moved instinctively for her, as much to comfort himself as to offer support. She wanted none of him, that much she made clear. Her rejection was absolute. And unthinkable under any other circumstances. When she’d left the room, Henry collapsed against the wall, wracked with shuddering sobs.

Walton hadn’t known what to do. He waited for Henry to collect himself, which took an uncomfortably long time. Then Edward’s brother came to retrieve the bodies, and Henry helped move them out to the car. Henry never said goodbye to Walton that night; he simply came over and wordlessly took Walton’s hand in his.

Less than a year later, at the age of thirty-two, Henry was dead. Walton had seen his body as well, and it had also been too late. He’d been asked to perform an autopsy to help discover what had killed a man so young and seemingly healthy. He found the giant blockage in the main artery close to the heart, wrote “massive pulmonary embolism” in the chart, and sewed up the incision he’d made, with a sense of wonder and loss. Literally seeing the insides of men changed a person’s perspective. Walton thought about this as he stitched up the body. He thought of many things. Of whether this blockage had started as a tiny speck the night Henry had sobbed and raged and been rejected by Lyn. Of whether there was any way to see this death as a blessing. Of what would happen to Willa now; and to their daughter, Margaret, the little girl he’d delivered; and to Lyn, who had emotionally shut herself down even though she technically remained among the living. But most of all, he thought about how much Henry felt like Edward to the touch.

Walton remembered this now, as he stared at Travis Brayer’s sleeping form. He resisted an urge to reach out his hand to feel Travis’s skin. To get a sense of the shape of his muscles and bones, beneath what everyone saw on the surface. He wanted to do this, and he wanted Travis to wake up.

Suddenly, stridently, the phone on the bedside table rang. Startled, Walton picked it up.

“Trav?” a familiar voice asked from the other end.

“No, he’s sleeping,” Walton replied.

“Walton? Is that you?”

Walton recognized Roy Tomlins’s voice.

“Hey, Roy,” he replied. “I’m glad you called.”

“What’s going on there?”

“Just sitting here with Trav, scribbling down everything I remember about June of ’66,” Walton replied.

Roy stayed silent.

“Remember that month?” Walton continued. “We were all upset about the marches. Folks wanted to drive over to Jackson and shoot that Meredith boy. I remember you showing off which shotgun you’d use.”

“I don’t recollect that, Walton. Tell Trav it’s me calling.”

“And we were outraged that Jiminy Waters had dared to enter that state leadership essay contest, remember? How’d we even find out that she submitted something? She mailed it I guess. Did you open her letter, Roy? Did she drop it off herself at the post office, or did Edward?”

“Put Trav on the phone, Walton.”

“I told you, he’s asleep. But I’ll be sure to give him the message.”

Walton hung up the phone just as Travis started to stir. Walton wondered how much he’d heard or understood, if any at all. He thought about how easy it would be to turn off the machine that was keeping him alive. He knew exactly which switches to flip.

“Can you hear me, Travis?” Walton asked.

Travis nodded, a shaved-head little-boy nod.

“Good,” Walton replied. “Because we have a lot to discuss.”

Chapter 15

The drive to Bo’s great-uncle’s house was more painful alone in the daylight. Weeks ago, with Jiminy next to him in the darkness, everything about it had seemed surprising and fun. The woman by his side, the roughness of the hill road, the shock of the nocturnal animals they’d spotlighted along the way. Now it just seemed dusty and lonely and way too bright. Bo wished he hadn’t agreed to visit. He wished he’d said no, that it wasn’t a good time. But he’d been caught off guard and agreed instead, and now he was pulling up to his uncle Fred’s cabin under much more depressing circumstances.

Fred was scattering chicken feed on the dirt outside the coop. At first glance, it seemed that creatures ran wild on Fred’s property, but in reality there was some control to the chaos. He had a system he’d worked out that he described as being “in cahoots with the critters,” and it was true that among them he seemed to be part of a happy, raucous commune. As Bo approached, he looked up and grinned a toothless grin.

“Right on time for some lemony-lime,” he said.

Bo wasn’t sure what he meant until he saw the iced jug on the table in the front yard. Fred liked to invent different cold drinks in the summer, using whatever he could gather fresh from his garden or the nearby woods. This wasn’t the climate for lemons or limes, but Bo thought he saw some mint leaves and apple chunks floating in the punch.

He took a cautious sip from the glass jar Fred offered him.

“Whew,” Bo said, wiping his lip and setting the jar back on the table.

He’d been right about the mint. He couldn’t be sure about the apples, because whatever fruit they’d once been, they were now just little sponges for whiskey.

“Lemony-lime moonshine mint punch,” Fred proclaimed proudly.

“That’s something,” Bo answered.

Fred was a man of many projects, which Bo found intriguing. He was well into his eighties, and he lived a solitary, reclusive life. He could’ve just faded away from sense and sensibility the way he’d shied from other people, but he’d instead managed to stay engaged and alert. In addition to being a little kooky, Fred was filled with an energy that Bo admired.

“Where’s Lily-Lou?” Fred asked.

By which he meant Jiminy. He’d started calling her that when they were all together weeks ago. He’d said there was only one Jiminy he’d ever known, and so this other Jiminy must be Lily-Lou. Wanting to know all she could about the other Jiminy, the newly christened Lily-Lou had gracefully played along.

“I’m not too sure,” Bo answered, wondering if his uncle could leave it at that.

“You’ve lost Lily-Lou?” Fred gasped. “You don’t know where to find her?”

Nope, Bo guessed that he couldn’t just leave it at that.

“We’re not spending as much time together anymore.”

Fred nodded.

“Trouble with the Knights,” he said.

He didn’t ask it. He just said it. Bo didn’t know what he meant, but he tried to go along to get along.

“With the days, too,” Bo replied. “It’s for the best. She shouldn’t have to deal with any trouble while she figures herself out, and I’m gonna be leaving town again soon anyway.”

“You still lookin’ out for Jiminy?” Fred asked. “And Edward, too? They’re a pair forever and ever now, till reincarnation do them part.”

He was talking about the first Jiminy. The second one was still Lily-Lou.

“Of course,” Bo said. “Though it’s really Jiminy—I mean, it’s really Lily-Lou who’s gotten obsessed with them. She’s gone and gotten someone to come make a real investigation, to really dig into it. They’re creating quite a stir.”

“I knew it, I knew it,” Fred said, clapping his hands to his knees. “When they want some ammudence, tell ’em to come see Fred.”

Bo thought about it for a moment but couldn’t decipher the word.

“Ammudence?”

“Ammudence!” Fred repeated. “When they need some fire that’ll really stick, proof and power all in one!”

Ammunition. And evidence?

“What do you have?” Bo asked.

And why hadn’t Fred mentioned it weeks ago when they’d first visited him? Perhaps their questions had awakened old memories that he’d needed a little time alone with before feeling ready to act.

Bo had been horrified to learn what had happened to Edward and Jiminy, but he’d never personally known them. He knew his great-aunt Lyn as well as she let anyone know her, and he sympathized deeply with her, but overall, he felt removed from the long-ago events that had shattered her. And, in truth, he didn’t want to be saddled with all the baggage from them. He wanted to move forward into his own future, away from this place where the burdens of past generations, though unknown and invisible, somehow still retained the power to hold the next generation down.

But Jiminy’s obsession with his family’s past had shamed Bo into further investigation. For better or for worse, he’d been drafted.

“You wanna see some ammudence?” Fred asked him. “Follow me.”

In the yard, two peacocks strutted among the chickens. Worried that he might accidentally squash a chick, Bo stepped carefully as he followed Fred to a falling-down barn nestled against the hillside behind the house.

“Thisaway,” Fred said, ducking under a listing beam to enter the barn.

Inside, Fred walked toward a stall at the far end. He struggled to move a bale of hay blocking its entrance, and Bo hurried to help him, happy that his youth was good for something. Fred squeezed into the opening they’d made and pointed into the shadows of the stall. It took a moment for Bo’s eyes to make out what looked like a heap of something covered in dusty canvas.

Bo swatted a fly and stepped into the stall to get a better view as Fred lifted the tarp away. It seemed to be the rusted-up, burned-out front of a car, complete with charred seats and steering wheel. Bo looked at Fred, understanding dawning on him.

“Their car?” Bo asked. “The car they were driving that night?”

Fred nodded.

“It didn’t burn all the way up. I got it in the middle of the night and’ve had it since. Maybe now’s its time to shine.”

Bo nodded, suddenly unable to speak. Seeing these charred remains before him made what had transpired real in a way that nothing else had. He no longer just felt sorry for Lyn, or horror in general. He felt as if this had somehow happened to him.

“Maybe it’s the perfect ammudence,” Fred said.

 

“So it looks like a trial is really going to happen,” Jiminy said quietly. “With the Brayer connection and the governor’s race, there’s a lot of pressure to see if there’s anything to all this. It could happen really quickly.”

Lyn nodded, keeping her thoughts to herself. “Quickly” was an extremely relative term.

Jiminy had found her on Willa’s side porch steps, eating her lunch in the shade. She’d just sat down and started talking, not bothering to ask if Lyn wanted company.

“The car could play a key role,” she continued. “The FBI’s ordered DNA testing.”

Lyn didn’t want to think about that. She knew it could be helpful, but she didn’t want to revisit the specter of the people she’d loved most in the world being part of violence that had spilled and snagged and crushed and torn, leaving little pieces of them behind. She set her plate on the ground, willfully surrendering it to the ants.

“Are you okay?” Jiminy asked.

Lyn stared at her, noting that her face was darker from time spent in the sun, and that there was something more certain about her features. Willa and Henry’s granddaughter seemed to be settling into her body, slowly and steadily.

“I mean, I’m sorry if you didn’t want any of this,” Jiminy continued. “I should have been more sensitive about that.”

Lyn recognized that in addition to the physical changes, Jiminy was nowhere near as hesitant as she’d been when she’d first arrived. And despite her intrusiveness, or maybe because of it, Lyn appreciated her.

“This needed to happen,” Lyn said simply.

Jiminy took this in, and nodded slowly. After a moment, she reached into her bag.

“I’d like to show you something,” she said.

She’d made some copies of her grandfather’s photos. Carlos had reprimanded her for her preoccupation with her family’s personal connection to the case they were investigating, but what if that link held some valuable key? What if, in the end, it was the whole point?

Jiminy handed Lyn a copy of the photo of her that had been taken over forty years before. Lyn held it lightly, examining her younger self.

“Do you remember when that was taken?” Jiminy asked. “It seems like some kind of occasion.”

Lyn gazed a bit longer, then shrugged.

“Your grandpa was always taking photos,” she replied. “I was bound to be in one eventually.”

Jiminy handed her a copy of the photograph of her grandfather.

“What about this one?” she asked. “I thought it was a self-portrait, but I found out they didn’t have timers back then. Do you know who might’ve taken it?”

Lyn glanced at it, then shook her head.

“No idea.” she replied.

Jiminy nodded.

“Well, I couldn’t stop looking at it when I saw it,” she said. “He looks so sad, and so old for thirty-two. I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes.”

The hazel eyes that she’d inherited. Her grandfather had worn glasses, and the sunlight was glinting off their edges in the photo, winking at the camera.

“There just seemed like there was more of a story there,” Jiminy continued. “So I took it to the photo zone at HushMart and got a little help, and sure enough, there was something.”

Jiminy handed another photograph to Lyn. In this one, the eyes filled the entire sheet, and their magnified proportions revealed that the reflection in Henry’s glasses that had initially seemed like clouds or trees was actually a person, sitting opposite, holding a camera. Henry’s gigantic eyes were mirrors that showed a young Lyn snapping his photo.

“Does that help you remember?” Jiminy asked.

Lyn met Jiminy’s gaze.

“I think it’s time we took a ride together,” Lyn said.

 

A short time later, Jiminy was standing, hushed, holding her hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes reverently, then opened them again to gaze at the etched gravestones. One read “Edward Waters—beloved husband.” The other simply said “Sweet Jiminy.”

Lyn was standing beside her, swaying ever so slightly, like a sturdy tree in a strong breeze.

“This is a church,” Jiminy said reverently. “You’re a church.”

Indeed, as often happened when Lyn communed with her lost ones, she felt filled with something holy.

“Listen to what I tell you,” she replied. “Because I’ll only say it once.”

Jiminy nodded. She felt like she might be falling into some sort of trance.

“Your grandfather had more than one daughter.”

It was almost as though Lyn was telling her a bedtime story.

“He had your mother with Willa,” she continued. “But before that, he had another daughter. With me.”

Jiminy remained completely still. She didn’t even breathe.

“My Jiminy was your mother’s half sister, your grandpa’s first daughter, born five years before he even met your grandma.”

Now Jiminy blinked rapidly as her brain whirled into action. She didn’t feel as shocked as she thought she should. It was almost as though she’d known all along. She couldn’t have, she realized, yet still, that was the feeling. She needed to hear more.

“Does my grandma know?” she asked quietly.

Lyn sighed.

“We’ve never discussed it, and Henry never told her far as I know,” she replied. “But I think she figured it out.”

Jiminy nodded.

“It was an accident . . . a mistake,” Lyn said.

She closed her eyes a moment, then took a long, slow breath.

“I was in St. Louis, preparing to leave my sister and my folks and move down here to marry Edward,” she continued. “Edward and I fell for each other quick and didn’t see a point in waiting. I knew we belonged together within a minute of seeing him. Edward used to say it took him a minute and a half, but that I was always a step or two ahead of him.”

Jiminy smiled. She liked romantic stories about other people’s courtships. They were her favorite kind of fairy tale.

“By this point, Edward was living on Henry’s farm and they’d started their carpentry business. One of the Brayer cousins bought a place in St. Louis and wanted a replica of the dining room table and chairs at Brayer Plantation, so he hired Henry to take the measurements and start the job.”

“Okay,” Jiminy said, struggling to keep the judgment from her voice. “And you and Edward were engaged.”

“Till Henry got to St. Louis we were,” Lyn replied sadly. “But he brought a letter for me from Edward that broke it off. It said I shouldn’t come to Mississippi, that I’d have a better life in St. Louis, that I should go on along without him.”

“Why?” Jiminy asked.

“He didn’t say. My folks figured I’d done something wrong and kicked me out. Which is when I did do something wrong.”

“You slept with Henry,” Jiminy said softly.

Lyn looked off in the distance, at the rolling hills and the many bends in the river.

“Once. And hated myself afterwards. Then Edward showed up the next day asking for me back.”

“Oh God, why’d he break it off in the first place?”

Lyn closed her eyes for another long moment.

“The K.S.O. burned his mother’s house the week before, and he said it didn’t feel safe or right to bring me down to Fayeville to live. He said he loved me too much to have me be in a place that would only cause suffering.”

“Why didn’t he just leave himself?” Jiminy asked. “You guys could’ve lived in St. Louis, or anywhere.”

Jiminy felt the same sense of frustrated agitation she got when she watched Romeo and Juliet or Titanic—she desperately wanted to alter an unchangeable ending. Lyn shook her head.

“He had to stay in Fayeville to look after his mother and be close to his brothers and sisters. He wanted me, but he understood if I wouldn’t come.”

“And you obviously told him you would.”

“I married him that day,” Lyn said.

“So Jiminy could still have been Edward’s daughter, then,” Jiminy exclaimed. “I mean, Edward could have been the father just as easily as my grandpa.”

Again, Lyn shook her head.

“I couldn’t ever get pregnant again,” she said. “We tried for seventeen years. Jiminy was Henry’s.”

Jiminy took a moment to absorb this.

“So what did my grandpa do?” she asked. “Nothing?”

Lyn sighed.

“We only spoke of it once, which was plenty. He blamed me for marrying Edward after what we’d done. Told me I was fickle and immoral, and that Edward deserved better.”

“But you really did love Edward,” Jiminy said.

“More than anything in this world,” Lyn replied. “I woulda done anything to erase what happened with Henry. Anything. I kept it secret, and I don’t think Edward ever suspected. Folks said his real father was a white man who’d raped his mother, so he always believed this accounted for Jiminy’s lighter skin. And make no mistake, Edward was Jiminy’s father in every other way that mattered.”

“How did my grandpa treat Jiminy?”

“He loved her. Doted on her, to tell the truth, which made Edward so proud. It was me Henry hated.”

“He really never forgave you?”

“Not till it was too late,” Lyn replied. “He never wanted me around. Made me get another job at the Brayers even, which . . .”

As Lyn trailed off, Jiminy looked over at her quickly.

She pressed: “Which what?”

Lyn crossed her arms to hug herself.

“Which is when everything went wrong.”

Lyn shook her head slowly, and Jiminy wondered how she could possibly carry so much pain around with her every day.

“What do you mean?” she asked softly. “What went wrong?”

Lyn stared at the river far below them.

“Travis Brayer took an interest in me, and Travis Brayer don’t like bein’ told no.”

Jiminy felt suddenly and deeply chilled. She shivered violently.

“Henry felt awful about it,” Lyn continued in a detached monotone. “After Edward and Jiminy were killed, he just fell apart. He didn’t know how to make sense of any of it; he didn’t know how to grieve. He just got worse and worse. He asked me to take that photograph of him in December of ’66, right before Christmas. We came here to take it.”

Jiminy looked at the photo again. It was true; it had been taken right where she was now standing. She could see the magnolia branch above her grandfather’s head and the edge of Edward’s gravestone beside him.

“He told me it was important that I take the photo, that we needed a record,” Lyn continued. “He was a little out of his mind then, searching for something he couldn’t find. And then he just broke.”

Jiminy stayed very still, trying to imagine what her grandfather must have been feeling, standing here, over four decades earlier.

“He’d lost a close friend, and his daughter,” Jiminy said, almost to herself. “My mother’s half sister—my aunt . . .”

The full weight of this impacted her. She and Jiminy Waters shared more than just a name. They shared blood.

Jiminy looked at Lyn.

“Which makes you my . . .”

She stopped. This was getting too confusing. No, Lyn wasn’t actually related to her, she quickly worked out. And thankfully, neither was Bo. But they were all tangled up in the same web.

“So now you know,” Lyn said. “I’d just as soon the Henry part stay between us. For Edward’s sake.”

Jiminy nodded slowly.

“I won’t tell, but with the DNA testing, it’s hard to say what might come out,” Jiminy replied.

Lyn nodded, resigned to being disappointed. Jiminy ached for her. She ached for all of them. Things got so complicated when blood was involved.