The Wish Collector
Page 61

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
Jonah regarded the dying man. “It’s worth nothing.” He turned and he left, striding past the housekeeper who raced to show him out the door. He opened it himself as she stuttered a goodbye, her eyes widening on his scarred face before he donned his helmet and walked out into the night.
**********
“Myrtle,” Jonah’s voice boomed through the quiet halls of Windisle. “Myrtle!”
“For Pete’s sake. I’m right here. What’s all the fuss?” Myrtle asked, rushing into the kitchen where Jonah stood yelling for her. Half her hair was in braids, but the other half stood out in a massive puffball on the side of her head. She’d obviously been interrupted mid-braiding session.
“Where did you put the stuff the police gave you after the investigation? My stuff and Justin’s? He had a briefcase that day. A brown one.”
Myrtle looked startled for a moment, her eyes bugging out even more than usual beneath her thick lenses, and then worry transformed her features.
“I . . . I put all that stuff in a box. It’s in the upstairs closet. Wait—”
Jonah tore out of the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time and throwing the closet door open. He tossed out the coats obstructing his view and pulled out several boxes containing Christmas decorations or some such nonsense, before finding the one he was looking for.
Justin’s briefcase sat at the top and Jonah lifted it carefully, grief washing through him. He ran a hand over the soft, worn leather. There were large splotches of something rusty on it. Blood. His brother’s blood. Jonah swallowed back his anguish and opened the clasp.
There was a stack of papers inside, something pertaining to a case Justin had been working on, nothing of interest to Jonah. Underneath the papers was a yellow legal pad with doodles and small notes on it. He’d scrawled on this thing in court, Jonah remembered. He’d watched him a time or two, wondering what he was writing. Notes to himself it seemed. Random thoughts and small drawings.
Jonah’s eyes moved to a spot near the bottom of the page. In small, concise writing, his brother had written: Amanda Kershaw. No evidence. Next to that was a list of names, some he recognized from the courthouse, including Judge Rowland’s. Men his brother suspected were part of the club?
In smaller writing under that was the name of the law firm Jonah had worked at with several question marks next to it.
And then underlined twice the words that pierced Jonah’s already broken heart: Don’t trust Jonah.
He dropped the pad, leaving it where it was along with the rest of the mess he’d made in the hall. He walked woodenly toward his room.
“What is it?” Myrtle asked, her voice full of motherly concern. But he didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His brother had come to him that day because he’d known something more sinister was happening behind the scenes—or that it was likely—but instead of trusting him, he’d attempted to appeal to some sense of moral righteousness, and then he’d let it go. He had just let it go, and allowed Jonah to go on his merry, ignorant way. He hadn’t even given Jonah the chance to do something that might have altered the outcome.
I just have a feeling . . . you’re choosing a path here, Jonah.
A feeling. Jonah laughed, though the sound was empty. No, he had had far more than that. Far more. He’d been gathering evidence. And then he’d withheld it. Don’t trust Jonah.
Jonah closed the door in Myrtle’s face, her prattling voice muffled as the wood separated them. Jonah stood alone in the empty room for a moment, his chest buzzing with grief, with the enormity of what he’d discovered. Why, why, why?
He fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands as he cried.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Where are you, Jonah?” Clara murmured to herself, replacing her phone in her pocket after calling him yet again, and once more receiving no answer. What the heck was going on?
At first, the fact that he wasn’t returning her calls had made her feel insecure—was he ghosting her? But now, after two days of utter silence from him, she was beginning to worry.
What if something had happened when he’d been patrolling with the Brass Angels? What if he was hurt? Would Myrtle know how to get hold of her? She told herself that was silly, but it was difficult to convince herself he was just busy, when she knew he was nothing of the sort.
The opening night performance was in three weeks, so they’d been rehearsing constantly, but now it was her day off, and she was dying to see Jonah.
She’d spent the earlier hours of the day cleaning, doing much-needed laundry, and making a visit to Mr. Baptiste, where she bought a basket full of squash and even a small pumpkin to sit beside the plant outside her door. But now, the sun had set and she paced her apartment, too antsy to sit still.
Deciding she had to get out or go stir crazy, Clara called an Uber and decided to pass some time while she waited for Jonah to respond to her umpteenth message by attempting to get the answer to a question that had been burning in her mind since just after she’d spoken to Jonah about Angelina being unable to read.
Twenty minutes later, she was dropped off in front of the shop she’d gone to what now felt like a million years before, the shop belonging to Fabienne.
Clara suspected she didn’t have much talent for fortune telling, but she did seem to be an expert of sorts on charms and curses and the rules pertaining to such things. It was worth a shot, and it would move her worried mind from Jonah for at least a few minutes.
If he still hadn’t called her after this, she’d head to Windisle and seek him out like she’d done before. She had hoped they were past that.
When Clara entered the shop, Fabienne was sitting on the couch she’d sat on the last time Clara had come by, but this time, the baby she’d heard from the background was sleeping in her arms. Fabienne’s eyebrows arched. “I don’t give refunds.”
Clara shut the door, turning toward her. “What?” She shook her head. “I don’t want a refund. Actually,” she brought her credit card from her purse and held it out to Fabienne. “I’d like another . . . reading.”
“A reading?”
“Yes. Like last time.”
“Hmm.”
Fabienne looked away when a man came from the back, shirtless, dreadlocks hanging down his back. His sleepy eyes moved toward Clara and then back to Fabienne. “He asleep?” He nodded toward the baby.
“Yeah.” Fabienne stood, walking the short distance to the man and handing the swaddled baby to him. His full lips tipped as he looked down at the baby and then turned, disappearing into the back room. Clara heard him climbing the stairs beyond.
Fabienne turned back to her. “Two for one.”
“What?”
Fabienne nodded to the chair across from the couch. “I had a two-for-one special going the day you came in. This reading is on the house.”
Clara took the offered chair as Fabienne sat across from her. “That’s nice of you, thank you. I have a question about, um, the afterlife.”
Fabienne leaned back, regarding Clara. “Okay.”
Clara tilted her head, considering the best way to ask the question. “Say someone died believing something that was false. When they passed over, would the truth somehow become clear?”
“You do know I’ve never been dead, right?”
Clara laughed. “I figured. It seemed like you knew a lot on the subject, and maybe you’d be willing to make an educated guess.”
Fabienne toyed with the edge of the couch, running her fingers along the nailheads as if making sure they were all accounted for. “My mama used to say that when a person passed over, all veils were lifted.”
“So . . . they might be able to see the full picture in the afterlife, when they were unable to in this one.”
Fabienne shrugged. “That’s what my mama and my grandmama believed.” She leaned forward. “See, the afterlife is about forgiveness, and you cannot forgive a person if you cannot see the truth cast in every light.”
In every light. Something whispered at the edges of Clara’s mind but drifted away, too thin to grasp.