All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Read online

  “It’s possible. I hope not. But it could happen. I won’t lie. This trip is sort of a test, I think. For both of us.” Alicia pulled out a Raggedy Ann doll she vaguely remembered getting for Christmas one year. It had always creeped her out, and she put it into a box marked for donations.

  Theresa’s box seemed to be full of baby clothes, and she shook out a little onesie and held it up. “What do you want to do with all of these?”

  “Donate. I don’t think I’m ever going to need them.” Alicia dug out another couple of stuffed animals. “Why did my mom keep all of these things? The toys we really loved, we kept out and played with. But all this stuff . . .”

  “Sentimental value?” Theresa closed the lid on the baby-clothes box and pushed it to the side. She opened another one to pull out some more papers that looked like schoolwork.

  Alicia sat back with a small groan. “Ugh. I want to get rid of all of it. Everything. All of this stuff. It feels like it’s weighing me down. I mean, seriously, I don’t care about my second-grade report cards. I want to travel the world, Theresa! I want to get out there and be . . . unburdened!”

  “Then you should be.” Theresa slapped her hands together from the dust at the top of the box. “C’mon. Get this stuff. Let’s take it out in the backyard and burn it.”

  “No.” Half-horrified, Alicia put her hand over her mouth, then took it away. Put it back. “No, I couldn’t. Could I? Oh my God. I could. I really could, right?”

  “You totally could. You have the fire pit. We can haul this stuff down there. Light it up.” Theresa grinned. “You have any marshmallows?”

  “In the cupboard. Graham crackers and chocolate, too. Let’s do it.” Alicia felt like she’d slammed a couple of beers on an empty stomach. Giddy, dizzy, buzzed. Euphoric.

  It took them only twenty minutes to haul all the boxes of papers to the backyard and pile them next to the fire pit. The items for donation had been settled into the trunk of Alicia’s car and would be delivered to the thrift store tomorrow. The stuff she needed to send to her parents had been sealed up and addressed, and she’d take that to the post office tomorrow, too.

  Now they would burn.

  “Do you want to call the boys over?” Theresa asked as Alicia handed her one of the metal stakes they used to roast marshmallows.

  She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah. I’ll hang out with Nikolai later, and to be honest, I don’t really want Ilya to see all this stuff that was Jenni’s. It might upset him.”

  “Are you sure it won’t upset you?” Theresa asked.

  Alicia shook her head. “Trust me, when I think about Jenni, the last thing I think about is her essay on how beavers build dams.”

  “And your parents?”

  “My mom put all that stuff away because she couldn’t stand to look at it.” Alicia shrugged. “The things we really needed to hold on to, I think we did. I did, anyway.”

  Theresa looked solemn, then smiled. “Right. Let’s light this up. What do you say?”

  Alicia hadn’t been able to find the bottle of lighter fluid, so they settled for twisting old papers and lighting them one at a time, then setting them on top of a small pile of papers in the fire pit. Slowly, the blaze grew, lighting the night and warming them against the balmy evening air. Pretty soon they were each gathering handfuls of papers and feeding them to the fire, gleeful at the way the flames rose.

  She felt lighter with each handful. Letting go. Alicia tipped her head back to watch the ashes lifting on the breeze, like black lace edged with red and gold.

  “This was a great idea,” she murmured. “Thanks, Theresa.”

  “Anytime.” Theresa stuck a marshmallow on the end of the metal spike and held it over the flames, turning it to get it evenly, goldenly toasted.

  They made a few s’mores, then sat down on the telephone poles Alicia’s father had sunk as seating around the fire pit. Theresa warmed her toes by pointing them toward the fire. Alicia pulled a box closer to her so she could add some more papers to the blaze. Her fingers brushed something hard. It rattled when she picked it up.

  “Huh.” Alicia held it to the light, turning it from side to side to try to read what it said. “It’s a mint tin. Weird.”

  She shook it, listening to whatever was inside clatter against the metal. The contents confused her even more. “Aspirin?”

  “Let me see.” Theresa took the tin from her hands before Alicia could get a good look at it.

  In the firelight, Theresa looked like she’d seen a ghost. She peered inside the small tin, then closed it. She clutched her fingers tight around it.

  “What’s wrong?” Alicia asked. “What is it?”

  “They’re not aspirin.”

  “No?” Alicia held out her hand to take the tin back, but Theresa didn’t release it right away. “What is it?”

  “Looks like pain pills.” Theresa lifted one, held it up.

  She tossed it into the fire before Alicia could stop her. “Hey! Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Theresa made as though to toss the entire tin into the pit, but Alicia snagged it from her before she could.

  “Don’t. I want to see.” She opened the tin to shake out a few of the dozen or so pills into her palm. She tried to see what was written on them, but the shifting firelight didn’t give her good-enough light. “I’m going inside.”

  “Alicia . . .” Theresa followed her into the house. “Wait. What are you doing?”

  Alicia had spilled the pills out onto the kitchen table and was carefully using her phone to figure out what they were. Not all of them were identifiable, but the ones she could figure out were definitely prescription pain meds. Something told her they weren’t for her mom’s infrequent but debilitating migraines. She pushed the pills back into the tin and closed it.

  “They don’t even make these kind of mints anymore,” she said.

  Theresa sat at the table across from her. “They probably don’t make some of those pills, either.”

  “So they’re vintage illegal pain pills.” Alicia forced a laugh that twisted and faded into nothing. “They were Jenni’s. She must’ve put them in the crawl space to hide them.”

  “I’m sorry, Alicia.”

  Alicia shrugged. “What do you have to be sorry for? You’re not the one who got my sister hooked on pills.”

  Theresa blanched, a reaction that seemed extreme. “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry you found them, though.”

  “I knew she was on something. More than booze or pot. I asked her, but she denied it. I knew, though.” Alicia swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I wish I’d known then. It might’ve made a difference.”

  “It wouldn’t have,” Theresa said with conviction.

  Alicia frowned. “You can’t know that.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up over it. I do know that. Whatever your sister was into back then, it wasn’t anything to do with you. And if she didn’t want your help, or she didn’t want to get sober, then she wouldn’t have, no matter what you said or did, or how many times you tried to help her. If you threw the pills away, she’d have found a way to get more.” Theresa cut herself off abruptly, looking away. She shook her head. “It’s what they do.”

  Alicia traced the letters on the lid of the tin. “I’m going to toss this in the fire.”

  “Good idea.”

  Out back, a shadowy figure standing by the fire pit startled them both. Alicia had gripped the tin in one fist but put both hands up in automatic reaction when Galina stepped out in front of her. Alicia yelped even as she recognized Nikolai’s mother.

  “I smelled smoke when I got home. I thought something might be going on over here. I had no idea you were having a weenie roast.” Galina looked at the tin in Alicia’s hand, and her expression tightened. “What are you doing? Burning papers? What’s that?”

  “I’m clearing out the crawl space so I can get the house ready to sell it. This is just some old junk I found in one of the boxes.” Alicia