Yet, I'm still looking to Jake for approval. Like he's my anchor here away from everything I know. Soon I'm going to have to be honest with him about why I'm really here, but until then, I need him to stay consistent.
“Alright,” he finally says, accepting my explanation. “I'm sorry. I guess it's just been forced down my throat so much over the last two years I don't understand why anyone would want to have it around even more. But people probably didn't get my grandmother's obsession with thimbles, either. Everyone has their own thing.”
“What's your thing?”
I ask the question despite the pain. I shouldn't be doing this to myself. I shouldn't be letting myself get deeper. The less I know about him, the better. It's easier to destroy the trust of someone you don't know well. Easier to walk away from the potential of something you haven't explored far. If I keep him at a distance, it won't be as difficult when the time comes for me to leave Feathered Nest. But I've already gotten too far, and I can't help myself to want to keep inching farther.
“Archery,” he smiles.
I tilt my head back in surprise, looking at him under slightly furrowed brows.
“Really?” I ask.
“Really. Why does that surprise you so much?” he asks.
“I don't know. It just… does,” I shrug.
“I learned when I was a lot younger. We used to have big targets set up in the backyard, and I'd go out there and practice for so long my parents would have to come out and force me back inside. I never wanted to stop. Not until I got it perfect. My dream was always to achieve the Robin Hood trick of splitting an arrow.”
Jake laughs, and I feel the compulsion to wrap my arms around his waist and give him a squeeze.
“Did you?” I ask.
“Yes. Finally. Maybe that's why I haven't touched a bow in years. It's my thing, but I think I hit my peak. Don't want to go down from there.”
I laugh. “Such a sacrifice.”
He kisses me and then sighs, stepping back from me.
“As much as I would rather stay here with you, I should probably get back to the bar. Will I see you tomorrow?”
I nod. “Yes. And since I'm the one who ruined dinner tonight, let me take care of the plans. Do you think you could get away for lunch? I just found this place I think you would really like.”
“Absolutely.” We start toward the door, and he glances back over his shoulder at me. “What flavor milkshake did you have, by the way?”
I stop in my tracks, my throat tightening, and my blood running cold. “What?” I ask.
Jake turns around to look at me, his head tilting as he gives me a strange expression, then gestures back toward the coffee table.
“Milkshake. What flavor did you have?”
I notice the cup sitting there, the spot where the waitress wrote 'shake' across it in black marker turned toward us. The breath streams from my lungs, and I shake my head to get rid of the disquieting thoughts.
“Strawberry,” I tell him.
“I'm a chocolate kind of guy,” he smiles.
I nod. “I can see that.”
I'm looking forward to another strawberry milkshake the next day as I walk up the long driveway to Cole Barnes's house. Without all the chaos of the police cars and listening to Jake scream, I can really look at the house and its surroundings. Like most of the other houses around Feathered Nest, it's modest and relatively well kept. There are bits and pieces of it that look like they could use a little bit of attention. Windowsills need a touch of paint, a crack along the sidewalk spreads dried, brown weeds across stones. One section of the gutter appears to be sagging slightly. But Cole doesn’t look like the kind of man who could quite handle the physical work of this type of upkeep anymore. He has the body of a man who was in good shape when he was younger but let time and bad habits take control and fade away all the signs of youth. Climbing up to the top of a ladder to fix a gutter probably isn't in his future.
Which makes me wonder how he could manage to dig up a grave and get an entire skeleton of bones back to his shed without anyone noticing. The door at the front of the house opens when I'm still making my way up the driveway, and a version of Cole that looks even more run down than the one I saw shackled in the backyard stares out at me. His firmly set jaw covered in white and gray bristles, his eyes deeply set into his face and nearly concealed by heavy bags beneath them, he looks like he’s on the edge of destruction.
“What do you want?” he snaps.
“Mr. Barnes? My name is Emma. I just came by to talk to you for a few minutes if you have the time,” I say.
I don't stop walking toward the house. It's harder for people to push you away when you're close to them. When you are confident and insistent, taking the space you need and putting yourself in a position to get what you want, people are much less likely to try to get in your way.
“Are you a reporter?” he asks. “I don't want to talk to any reporters. I don't want to be on the news. I don’t want to get in the newspaper. I just want everybody to stay out of my business.”
“I'm not a reporter,” I tell him honestly. “But I do want to know more about what happened.”
“Why?” he asks, but as I get closer to him, recognition seems to settle over his face. “You were here. You were here the day they locked me up. With Jake.”
I nod. “Yes. I'm a friend of his.”
Cole shakes his head adamantly and steps back into the house, moving his hand to push the door shut. I hurry up onto the porch and position myself so he can still see me.
“I don't want anything to do with this. I've already talked to the police and told them my side. There's nothing else I have to say.”
“I just want to know what really happened,” I say.
“Did Jake put you up to this? Did he tell you to come talk to me and try to get me to slip up and say something?” he asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Jake doesn't even know I'm here. This is for me. He told me a little bit about his father, and I know the two of you used to be best friends.”
“That was a long time ago. Things changed,” he says.
“I know. But I don't know why, and Jake wouldn't tell me enough to make me understand why you would want to do something like this.”
“I couldn’t do something like this,” Cole insists. “I don't know what happened or how those bones ended up in my shed. It certainly wasn't me. That day I was out in some of my old fields I'm thinking about selling, and when I came home, my place was crawling with cops. They slapped the cuffs on me before they even told me what was happening.”
“But you knew about the desecration of Jake's father's grave,” I point out.
“No,” Cole protests. “I had no idea. They just showed up telling me I dug him up and put him in my shed.”
“What happened between the two of you?” I ask.
He shakes his head again. “I'm not going to get into all that. That was years ago, and I put it behind me. When John died, he took all that with him. I'm willing to let it stay buried.”
“That's just the thing. It didn't stay buried. Neither did he. Someone wanted people thinking about the two of you again. Can you think of any reason why?”
“I told you, I don't want to talk about it. I just want all this to go away,” he says.
“But it's not going to. They are either going to keep pushing with these charges and you’re going to end up in jail soon, or it's just going to keep haunting you while they investigate and investigate trying to figure out what happened.”