PROLOGUE
It’s amazing how quickly—and slowly—a month can go by when you’ve been blindsided by shock and grief. It had been exactly thirty-one days since Hal Flick died, alone, in a hospital bed. The medical examiner listed the official cause of death as acute internal hemorrhage, but those words didn’t mean anything to me. That was just rhetoric, a slippery way of defining something with itself to avoid a harsher truth. It was like saying the cause of global warming was the rise in the Earth’s temperatures, or the cause of the opioid epidemic was too many people addicted to pain meds. The harsh truth here was that Hal Flick died because someone forced his car to crash, at full speed, into the rocky side of a mountain on a dark highway in rural Virginia. The harsh truth, in this case, was murder.
Images from the past month flashed through my mind like a slideshow. I closed my eyes and saw Holman driving me to the hospital that night. “I’m so sorry, Miss Ellison.” The ER doctor’s long gray ponytail. “Did you know Mr. Flick had given you power of attorney?” Talking to the Brunswick County sheriff. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm him?” The sun glinting off the mahogany casket as it was lowered into the ground.
There were moments when it felt like I was a spectator watching the whole thing as if it were happening to someone else on film, and then there were moments when I felt Flick’s loss so sharply, I thought I might suffocate under the weight of it. Most of the time, though, I was somewhere in between, just trying to get from one moment to the next without feeling anything at all.
Another harsh truth was that when someone dies, the world does not stop turning. There are certain responsibilities that must be dealt with even when all you want to do is sleep or cry or shake your fist and vow revenge. So, day after day you find yourself in one office or another—hospital administrators, lawyers, insurance agents—having conversations you don’t fully understand because your bandwidth for such things is limited by your heartache, and because none of this was supposed to happen in the first place. But despite your grief-induced apathy, you make the phone calls, you sign the documents, you file the paperwork.
It isn’t until much later—thirty-one days later, actually—that the numbness begins to subside. And when it does, it’s replaced with a deep sense of injustice that washes over you like acid rain. It’s not just the loss, which exists in its own emotional ecosystem; it’s the audacity of the crime that keeps you up at night. They took your friend. They took your grandfather. You may not know who “they” are yet, but it doesn’t matter, because you know you will find out. It’s that certainty that pushes past the shock, past the sadness, past the grief, and grabs you by the throat. Do something, it urges.
But the problem with bossy inner voices is that they are, almost without exception, infuriatingly vague. The fact of the matter is that you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to begin to seek justice. You don’t even know that if you could somehow figure out who was behind these terrible crimes, it would help heal the mile-wide hole in your heart. Do something, the voice calls again, this time more insistent. So you do. You claw your way out of your sorrow, you go back to work, and you start to live your life again. Everyone says that’s what Flick and Granddad would have wanted, but you know that they’d also want justice. And so, to the outside world, you look like a woman moving on. But on the inside, you’re making plans: You will not only find out who did this and why, you will make them pay.
Voicemail transcript: Jeannie Ellison to Riley Ellison. Sunday, December 26, 4:43pm
Hi honey. It’s Mom. I’m calling because I’ve been a little worried about you lately. The other day when you were going on about “making people pay” and “hunting people down” and whatnot…well, to be honest, it was a little disturbing. I mean, I know you’ve been sad—we’ve all been sad ever since…you know [clears throat], but you’re young and you have your whole life ahead of you! You should be focusing on your future!
So, in the spirit of focusing on the future…SURPRISE! I signed you up for one of those astrology websites! I got the idea from Sheila Nixon—do you remember Mrs. Nixon? Her daughter Lilith was a year ahead of you in school? Anyway, Sheila told me that Lilith told her that all the kids are super into astrology these days. [Lowers voice] Lilith lives in West Hollywood and has a tattoo of a lotus flower, so I feel like she would know.
Anyway, it seemed like the perfect little pick-me-up—to learn about all the wonderful things that the universe has in store for you! Hope you don’t mind that I shared your email address and birth date, place, and time with them. I’m sure it’s super safe.
Okay, sweetie, that’s it for now! Sorry this message is so long. [Laughs] I’m surprised it hasn’t cut me off yet. Seems like these machines are forever hanging up on—[Click]
Sign Overview: Scorpio
Oct. 23–Nov. 21
Symbol:
Scorpion
Element:
Water
Ruling planet:
Pluto
Best qualities:
Magnetic, passionate, loyal, protective, brave
Worst qualities:
Oversensitive, vengeful, insecure
Favorite things:
Your home, books, a good meal, comfortable shoes
What you hate:
Simple-minded people, insincere flattery, social-climbing users
Fiery, independent, and unafraid to blaze their own trail, Scorpios aren’t afraid of controversy. They love debates and won’t back down from a fight, especially if it involves defending those who can’t defend themselves. Protective of themselves and others, when they attach themselves to a cause, they will go down swinging every time.
In their personal life, Scorpios yearn for the very thing they fear: true intimacy. Allowing themselves to become vulnerable is difficult but worthwhile. As Scorpios open up and learn to trust others, they can heal in ways that are truly profound. But those who dare to cross you will feel the powerful sting of your revenge!
Scorpio’s ruling planet is Pluto, which is associated with depth, passion, intensity, and death. In this case, death is figurative, representing endings of all forms—relationships, projects, phases, ideas, and more. Scorpios use this concept of regeneration to grow, often killing off the ventures, activities, or relationships in their lives that no longer serve them to make room for something new. That is, if they can allow themselves to let go.
CHAPTER 1
I sat at my desk in the newsroom pretending to look busy. Again. Kay Jackson, my editor at the Tuttle Times, had been enormously understanding about my level of distraction in the month since Flick’s death, but I knew her understanding had its limits. I wasn’t the only one grieving. Flick had been a member of the Times family and we all felt his loss, Kay included. Besides, practically speaking, we were a small staff, and with Flick gone, we were down one.
I’d taken an entire week off when Flick died and had been coming in to the newsroom since then to do just the bare minimum—editing, fact-checking, updating stories—things that didn’t require much from me. The rest of the team had taken over the beats I normally covered to give me the time and space to work on Flick’s obituary. It was their way of honoring him and his contributions to our newsroom. But now that the funeral had passed, the obit had run, and Christmas had come and gone, it felt like some unseen line of demarcation had been crossed and I was expected to become a fully functioning member of society again—or at the very least, a fully functioning member of the press.